It’s been an expensive 12 months if you’re a fan of Journey and it’s spin offs. We’ve had two versions of the Soul Sirkus album, a Neal Schon solo album and of course a new studio album as well from Journey themselves. 

This DVD/CD package sees the band just as they went from big to massive, at least in the United States and was captured, as the title suggests, in Houston during the Escape tour by the then fledging MTV network. In fact at one point this concert, or at least most of it, was even broadcast as part of the Late Night In Concert series on our very own BBC 1, now how likely are we to see anything like that again I ask? 

Now I must admit to the fact that Journey are one of my favourite bands but I have a major problem with this DVD/CD release. The truth of the matter is I’ve had ten tracks from this concert on a bootleg for more years than I care to admit to and, given the fact that most of the tracks have been released in some way shape or form of the years, what’s the point of this putting this out now?  I guess it’s a case of the A&R men ( Appropriate and Repackage) seeing money for old rope. 

With former vocalist Steve Perry  over seeing the production and mix of this package, which cannot be faulted by the way, and the band producing a performance that is spot on then, if you’ve never seen or heard this material before, it’s must buy. But I think that it could have been so much more, the interviews are interesting and I would have like to have seen a few current interviews as well with band members reminiscing over the tour in general and memories of this particular gig.  It speaks volumes that there is no mention of this DVD on the bands official website. As a Journey fan I would rather have seen more unreleased footage, I believe that there are recordings of the band made during the Raised On Radio Frontiers and Departure tours! Why have these not been dusted down to give the true fans something new. This release is Sony just pushing existing product as far as it can possibly be stretched instead of say a new Steve Perry album or an CD of unreleased Journey tracks. 

One thing that thus DVD has done is wetted my appetite for the proposed 30-year Anniversary three hour DVD that the band have recorded on their recent tour, now that should be worth seeing. So although this package gets 8/10 for the band and their performance it only gets a  2/10 for the thinking behind it!

Dougie