Video Hangover: "Faithfully"
Twice a week we dig up a music video so ill-conceived it's no wonder MTV stopped playing the damn thing. But hey, at least we learned something...
"Faithfully"
Journey, 1983
THE CONCEPT
This song is about being a music man on the road. Let’s make a road movie about music men!
WHAT THEY WERE THINKING
With this video, Journey was apparently trying to make being in a rock band so dreary and unappealing that all of their young fans would put down their guitars and become car salesmen, thus eliminating a generation’s worth of competition and ensuring Journey’s status as the Greatest Band Ever.
WHERE THEY WENT WRONG
When a video director chooses to show literally what the lyrics are describing, it’s an invitation to disaster. We get someone on the phone (“Sending all my love/along the wire”), someone looking out of a plane window (“Through space and time”), and a few moments later … Steve Perry shaving his moustache (“Wonderin’ where I am/Lost without you”). Is Steve speaking directly to the moustache? Without whom is he lost, exactly? The moustache? Then why the fuck is he shaving?
THE LESSON
If the year is 1983, and you have the chance to tour with Journey, politely decline. When all of your groupies wear Mom Jeans, and the most fun you have backstage is one guy in a sleeveless shirt laughing at another guy drumming on a couch (“We all need the clowns/To make us smile”), you know you’re not exactly in for a booze-fueled, ant-snorting, tits and cocaine fuckfest.
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Posted at 2:11 PM in Video, Video Hangover
Tags: Journey
Great Moments In Rock and Roll History
I actually met Steve Perry's mustache backstage at a Philly show in 82'. He was surprisingly well spoken, but carried a detectable stench of whiskey and was going on and on how he had written a song but Steve didn't think it was any good.
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Should've been "Honestly" by Stryper -- power ballads that double as worship to invisible deities?
Now that was MTV Crap.
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Faithfully WTF??? How can you ignore Separate Ways?
A homage to Air keyboards and Home Depot.
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see now, that was bad, but it wasn't as bad as, say, the Michael Jackson/Eddie Murphy one. It wasn't even in the same league of bad, by a longshot. That was just your standard overly ambitious rock vid from the 80s, really.
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I agree with Jed. You've got to try harder to match the Murphy and Jackson duet. I'm sure you can.
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dude, you guys are fukkin crazy. Not only does Journey rock the house, but that video is a testament to what it was all about. Not to mention all the hipsters in Williamsburg must of studied this video for their ironic look and how it is cool to rip journey off but not cool to like the six headed beast that is JOURNEY!!!!!
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Seriously, abstracto, you beat me to it. Seperate Ways is waaaay more ridiculous.
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Sure, it's cheesy as all get out, but this really isn't all that bad considering the decade.
www.retrolowfi.com
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Why exactly is this supposed to be "crap"? Journey is great, in my opinion. I saw them over the summer at Nissan Pavillion in Virginia and was blown away. It was like watching REM or the Pixies in that it was just awesome song after awesome song: every single one was great. This video isn't particularly bad either; I'm not saying it's great, but I don't see how it's crap.
I think the other commenter who noted how it's cool to rip off Journey's look but not cool to like them brought up a fair point. And I'd add to that my skepticism that most of the bands Stereogum likes take part in "booze-fueled, ant-snorting, tits and cocaine fuckfest[s]" very frequently or that Stereogum would even give them props for doing so other than on an "ironic" level. I'd be even more doubtful that the people who wrote this segment would ever do that themselves.
What they would do, of course, is create an ironic distance from all of it, probably because they're losers. Irony is for idiots. I believe every word Steve Perry sings, even though most of it is corny and cheesy. And you just wish you had the balls to grow a mustache like that!
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If you love Journey, or love to hate Journey, you should check out Yacht Rock. Steve Perry is one of the villains in the show. He doesn't turn up until episode 3, where he tries to lure Kenny Loggins away from the world of smooth music. It is one of the funniest things I have seen on the web.
http://www.channel101.com/shows/show.php?show_id=152
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still a feckin great song
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I love checkin out these old videos. Lonely Note blog has been doing these music vid reviews for a long time. Here's a pretty funny take on Journey's "Separate ways"
http://lonelynote.blogspot.com/2006/01/caught-on-tape-journey-separate-ways.html
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Journey rocks. The video for "Send Her My Love" is a good testament to the arena rock genre, literally.
That was back when rock bands could fill stadiums.
cheers.
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