Nostalgia acts take crowd on journey back to the 1980s

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This article was published 04/03/2024 (940 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s plenty of truth in the phrase “soundtrack to our lives,” which rock acts use as a justification to keep touring decades after their songs topped the charts.

Bands such as Journey and Toto showed off many of those moments of nostalgia Monday night at the Canada Life Centre.

A study published in Psychology Today in June 2023 found people best recalled songs that were popular when they were between 10 and 30 years of age; these songs evoke the most vivid memories and defined who they are.

For the many 50- and 60-year-olds in the crowd Monday night, hearing Rosanna and Africa, songs from 1982 that Toto performed during its hour-long opening set, no doubt evoked fond high school reminiscences, calling to mind a time long before families were formed, careers were built and retirement strategies were devised.

The same feelings were stirred afterward when Journey took the stage and played Don’t Stop Believin’ and Who’s Crying Now, the group’s 1981 mega-hits, early in its set.

Journey, which included Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain in its lineup Monday night, both of whom co-wrote Don’t Stop Believin’ with former lead singer Steve Perry, received thundering applause, even if it was Filipino vocalist Arnel Pineda singing the rock ballads rather than Perry at the microphone.

Their PR teams didn’t allow the Free Press — or any other media organization on their North American tour — to photograph the concert last night, lest images of Schon, 70, and Cain, 74, and the absence of Perry mess with the recollections of the crowd, who sang along with Don’t Stop Believin’ like they did when they listened to the group on their Sony Walkmans.

Pineda’s vocals were strong and his relatively youthful energy fit the show, as did Schon’s guitar skills, especially during his guitar-solo version of O Canada.

Pineda, who has been with Journey for 16 of its 50 years, was at his best during the band’s famous weepers, Open Arms and Faithfully while Schon seemed to have a lengthy solo for every occasion, including Any Way You Want It, the night’s finale.

Despite what the Psychology Today study revealed, life does goes on after the small-town girl and the city boy take the midnight train going anywhere and we do store more events in our memory banks after we hit the big 3-0.

And that’s a problem that afflicts the music industry in 2024. When Journey and Toto hit the road with their hits in the early 1980s, they only had to compete with their contemporaries.

Sure, the Rolling Stones toured off and on in football stadiums, but Led Zeppelin and the Eagles broke up in 1980 and the Beatles were just a baby-boomer memory.

Compare that to today, when a rock act on the rise is squeezed for radio airplay by Taylor Swift and her budget-breaking Eras tour and for Winnipeggers later this year, visits by rock heavyweights Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.

Today’s new rock and pop acts also compete with the growing popularity of country music — the genre’s biggest song of 2023 was Luke Combs’ version of Fast Car, Tracy Chapman’s folk-rock hit of 1988 — and legacy acts such as Journey and Toto, the latter of which featured an all-star-laden seven-piece band that has recorded with Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and even T-Swizzle herself, delivering a note-perfect version of Africa that had the crowd dancing, singing, photographing and filming, all at the same time.

They were potent, yet delicate moments, to steal a phrase from Don Draper of TV’s Mad Men, which might, just might, become part of the lasting memories of what Winnipeg was like in the year 2024.

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @AlanDSmall