Episode #7 -AOR Heaven

Last week’s many-guitared machine gun attack of Flotsam & Jetsam, Overkill and Testament was a joyous and joyful rampage through some of the wonderful excesses of mid-80s to early-90s thrash metal. We enjoyed it so much that we were thinking about maybe doing it all over again the following week.

And then someone mentioned REO Speedwagon and Journey in the same sentence and we all got a bit emotional. Rich and Mark went looking for a blouson to wear and dug out their old Zippos to hold aloft. Steve went in search of something else - something unknown even to Wikipedia.

And so it was that two of us emerged blinking into the arc-light-drenched permy panoramas of the American Great Lakes and the golden-gated birthplace of free love and flower-haired beatniks; Steve, on the other hand, ventured to Scotland in search of the lesser-spotted Celtic AOR band.

Richard managed to get through the crush of eight million people trying to simultaneously download Don’t Stop Believin’ on Spotify to grab his copy of Journey’s seminal 1981 album Escape; Mark waded through piles of letters from girls wanting to end their relationships with Kevin Cronin and brought along REO’s Hi Infidelity from 1980; Steve’s trip to Glasgow saw him emerge with the 1987 sophomore album by Strangeways (nee China White).

So would Journey manage to prove the boys’ predictions true and gatecrash the party going on in the top 3 of the Hall of Fame? Would REO Speedwagon’s low-concept album of heartbreak, tears and many, many, many questions from Kevin Cronin about whether he should follow his head or his heart give it a run for its money? And would the fact that 66.66666% of the Enter Sadmen entourage had never heard Strangeways (the five decimal points are important in the Hall of Fame, metal fans …) prove a help … or a hindrance?

REO Speedwagon - Hi Infidelity (1980)

One of the original monster AOR albums from a band that had honed their craft over the course of eight albums prior to the release of the one that would shift 11 million units in the US and Canada alone, spawn five supersized hit singles, three Billboard Hot 100 top ten hits (including a #1) and more singability than you could shake a karaoke machine at.

This was Mark’s choice and he arrived on the show muttering darkly about it being a concept album about abandonment. Steve naturally just chalked this up to Mark’s natural inclination to conspiracy theory and gibberish until Richard revealed that, in fact, there might be a grain of truth to it. But what was the concept? The clue, Mark claims, is in the album title.

Concept or no, there’s little doubt that in 1980, AOR didn’t come much bigger than Hi Infidelity.

Journey - Escape (1981)

Unfortunately for REO Speedwagon, 1980 proved not to be immune from the passage of time and, as years are often wont to do, it gave way, at the end of December, to a new one. As 1981 dawned, there emerged a contender hell bent on stealing Kev’s title of AORster Extraordinaire.

If only having seven albums under their belt when they went into the studio to record Escape put them at a one-album disadvantage compared to their spray-jeaned Illinois rivals, Journey mitigated it with the addition of celebrated ivory-tinkler Jonathan Cain, recently departed from the critically acclaimed and John Waite-fronted The Babys.

Setting out their stall as they intended to go on, Journey launched their latest assault on AOR’s castle gates with a barrage of songs that would prove relentlessly timeless.

But would they be sufficient to sit above the REO songwriting dream machine and, if so, could Escape challenge the three albums sitting at the top of the Hall of Fame?

Strangeways - Native Sons (1987)

Every now and then, one of the boys turns up a wild card - and they don’t come much wilder than Strangeways. A phoenix from the ashes of a late-70s/early-80s British rock band called China White (not to be confused with the American post-Punk band of the same name), Strangeways headed into 1987 with a new singer - American Terry Brock, who would later audition (unsuccessfully) for Deep Purple.

Native Sons was their second album and got a shot at the Enter Sadmen Hall of Fame thanks to Steve, who had discovered the band thanks to a favourable Kerrang! review that cited the release as ‘the most perfect’ AOR album ever made.

But would this largely overlooked curio cut the mustard in the company of the AOR juggernauts idling alongside it at the starting line of the most melodic episode of Enter Sadmen yet? It was time to find out …