HALF SPEED MASTER: JOURNEY ‘INFINITY’ 1978 CBS HC44912 CLASSIC ROCK ~A BEAUTY!

Description

HALF SPEED MASTER: JOURNEY ‘INFINITY’ 1978 CBS HC44912 ~ A BEAUTY!
JOURNEY
TITLE:
INFINITY (1978)
LABEL:
COLUMBIA HC 44912 (1982)
BARCODE: 7464-44912-1
VERSION: CBS HALF-SPEED MASTERED RECORDING
CONDITION: VINYL EX-
COVER EX-
A BEAUTY!
STYLE:
ROCK, STADIUM ARENA ROCK, CLASSIC ROCK
This is a CBS Master Sound Half-Speed Mastered copy of this classic Journey album and sounds fantastic.
The album cover features great art by San Francisco Rock Poster artists Alton Kelley & Mouse
This album was mastering by Vlado Meller at CBS Studios in New York and was released in 1982, almost 4 years after the original version of the album was released in 1978.
The album is in great condition. The cover is very clean with decent corners and minimal wear. The Half-Speed Master technical sheet is missing, but it’s not a big deal. It does have the original lyric sheet but it’s a little crunched up from inserting the record over it several times. If you are reading this, you know what these albums are and how good they sound.
The vinyl looks great. Very nice. Clean and crisp with no scratches, scuffs, damage or imperfections. A terrific looking copy. Labels are pristine. I tried to give several nice high-resolution pictures to show the quality of the vinyl and the cover.
~~~
Journey is an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1973, from former members of Santana and other rock veterans. Their first 3 albums were full of terrific proggy, soulful, jazz fusion music but didn’t get much love or airplay.
Then Steve Perry came on board in late 1977 and steered the band in a new, more commercial, direction and turned them into one of the best selling and most popular bands of the early 80s.
This album was recorded at His Master’s Wheels Studio, San Francisco, October-December 1977 and released in January 1978 to critical acclaim. This album was their first for Columbia and they worked hard to make the best album they could. It still sounds fresh and great 40 years later. This album is packed with FM staples of the day and contains two of Journey’s most recognizable hits “Lights” and “Wheel in the Sky.”
The first classic lineup of Journey was put together for this album. It’s their first with lead vocalist and iconic front man Steve Perry. His smooth tenor voice is just perfect for rock music and his register was amazing. He had an innate ability to traverse keys at will.
This album was produced by the famous Roy Thomas Baker. Baker said he aimed for a layered sound approach, harmonizing both the voices and lead guitars. Baker's production captured all those harmonies perfectly and this audiophile pressing really brings them out. The band had an amazing sound on the radio back in the day. Journey started their climb to rock superstardom with this classic album.
In Steve Perry, the band had found the proverbial needle in the haystack – a vocalist with unlimited range, unique delivery and looks that could kill. A perfect front man. Perry singlehandedly rescued Journey from mediocrity and turned them into megastars. His voice and songwriting ability completely redirected the style of the band. Perry's skills lifted the band up to become better, stronger, and tighter.
The band was suddenly playing better than ever. Schon’s leads were polished and improved to keep up with Perry’s soaring vocal style and Rolie’s singing improved in his efforts to keep up with Perry’s crazy vocal range. The way Gregg and Steve shared lead vocals was just amazing and sounded great. Some of the best songs on this album feature vocals shared by both Steve Perry and Greg Rolie. Their voices work very well together.
Neil Schon plays amazing guitar throughout this album and still had a little bit of a jazz feel to his playing. Both Gregg Rolie and Neil Schon proved themselves to be excellent skillful musicians on this album. It’s great to hear Gregg Rolie take the lead on vocals on a few of these songs.
~~~
For those who enjoy straight ahead bluesy hard rock music, this album is a classic to have in your collection. It contains some great music with fantastic songwriting and stellar musicianship. Each member is a master of their instrument and the whole band is firing on all cylinders. It sounds great on this Half Speed Master vinyl cut.
Among fans of classic American melodic hard rock, Journey are revered as masters of the art. All in all, a great album for fans of classic rock.
By the end of the 1970s, Journey was one of the most well-known bands in USA, with many hits, millions of albums sold and hundreds of thousands of fans.
Journey was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017.
~~~
Listening to this audiophile pressing before listing it made me realize how great the musicianship was in this band.
Journey, on this ‘Infinity’ album, consisted of:
Steve Perry – Lead Vocals
Neal Schon – Guitars, Vocals
Gregg Rolie – Keyboards, Harmonica, Vocals
Ross Valory – Bass, Vocals
Aynsley Dunbar - Drums
Steve Perry’s voice has got to be one of the best in rock. His voice is just amazing. You may not like everything he sings, but boy can he sing. He has fantastic vocal ability and range. Steve Perry delivers some very fine and very solid vocals on this album.
Neil Schon's guitar playing is first-rate. He plays some of the best guitar of anybody in 80s rock. Schon doesn’t stretch out very often and his solos are short, sweet and well placed, but he is a virtuoso guitar player. He does terrific little fills, plays some technically difficult licks and even does some two-handed tapping on some of these songs. There’s not a bad guitar part on this whole album.
Greg Rollie is a master on both the Hammond organ and the harmonica and his lower pitched voice is a perfect complement to Perry’s higher pitched soaring style.
The bass player in Journey, Ross Valory, doesn’t get much recognition but he does a great job holding down the bottom and adding just the right flourishes to Schon’s guitar playing and Rolie’s keyboard work. Outstanding.
Aynsley Dunbar was a veteran English drummer with a strong blues and jazz background. He spent years playing with Frank Zappa where he honed both his drumming and percussion skills. He played many different styles as a studio drummer over the years before joining Journey. There’s nothing he couldn’t play and play well. His drumming on this album is fantastic.
~~~
Here’s my comment on the songs after giving this Audiophile pressing a listen:
Infinity opens up with ‘Lights’, their first song to reach the charts. This song was introduced to the band by Perry, who wrote it before joining, and is one of the reasons they thought he would be a good match for the band. They saw the potential in both his voice and his songwriting. I’m still amused by the fact that San Francisco has adopted this as their song. Perry has mentioned several times that it was written about L.A. and had nothing to do with the other ‘City by the Bay’.
The next two songs, ‘Feeling That Way’ and ‘Anyway’ flow into each other seamlessly and they were often played together on FM that way. I think they would have made a great A/B second single for the band. Rolie’s vocals on “Feeling That Way” are just fantastic.
“Anytime” features Rollie singing solo on lead vocals. This song was co-written by Robert Fleischman during his short time as lead singer with the group.
“Lă Do Dā” is an upbeat, pure hard rocker. I always thought it would have been a great instrumental jam, without the vocals. The music, just by itself is fantastic. It really brings all the best elements of the band together.
“Patiently” was the first collaboration between Perry and Schon and soon became a fan favorite. They would eventually team up to write many hits on the next few albums. The song ends with a great full-band jam.
Side two opens up with “Wheel in the Sky”, which has a bit of a country feel. It’s another of Journey’s most recognized hits. Schon and bassist Ross Vallory play great together on this track. The lyrics were based on a poem written by Vallory’s wife Diane. ‘Wheel in the Sky’ became their first legitimate hit, and more than half the tracks on this album remain classic rock radio staples to this day.
“Somethin’ to Hide” is another pleasant quasi-ballad gem, the type Journey do so well. Perry’s vocals take flight on this and Schon plays some amazing guitar work, showing off his technical fret work.
“Winds of March” has some great piano runs by Rolie and some interesting flange effects from Dunbar’s drums. It sounds great on this audiophile pressing. The intricate guitar chords were supposedly written by Schon’s father Neal, a jazz musician. It features a rocking instrumental section.
“Can Do” is a great upbeat party rocker, written by the bass player Valory, and really shows off the various members of the band.
The album closes with the only soft-cheesy ballad on the album, “Opened the Door.” This song hints at the softer songs that would appear on the next few Journey albums. It features synthesizer playing by Rolie, another hint at where Journey were headed.
~~~
This is one of the finest rock albums ever made. Great songs, strong melodies, superb production, fantastic performances; just wonderful stuff, a classic slice of American Rock. Really good, and sounds even better on this Half-Speed pressing.
The album as a whole features great guitar work, combining it with excellent song writing and the amazing, distinctive lead vocals of Steve Perry. The musicianship on this album is competent and professional. Subtle arrangements, magnificent guitar solos, great melodies! There’s some nifty keyboard work and vocals from Rolie and fine guitar work by Neil Schon on almost every track.
This is a great album by a band who do what they do very well. A great set of slickly-crafted FM rockers designed to showcase frontman Steve Perry's powerful vocals and Neil Scon’s blazing guitar work. The production and vocals are stellar.
I cannot help but feel Journey are given an unfairly harsh treatment at times. If you like high caliber AOR/melodic rock this is a great album. The production is top notch and the album still sounds fresh and strong after all these years. Plus hearing it on this Half-Speed Mastered vinyl is a real treat.
~~~
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