see Journey in concert

My mom went with me to the Journey concert when I was in high school in Los Angeles. Simply amazing.

I came THISCLOSE to being able to cross this one off my list! My beau and I found out that Journey and Def Leppard were playing at an amphitheater in Cincinnati a few months back. We are both huge Journey fans (I consider “Stone in Love” to be “our song”). Well, I don’t know what we were thinking, but we assumed we’d be able to get lawn seats at the gate instead of booking online and paying the Ticketmaster fees, so we drove up there (hour and a half away) only to find that the only tickets left were the expensive seats. Well, neither of us were really in financial condition to pay for those tickets, so we wound up sitting in the grass outside the Riverbend fence, where we could still hear the music perfectly well. We consoled ourselves with the knowledge that at least it wasn’t Steve Perry we were missing, or even Steve Augeri, but the “third-string” replacement, Jeff Scott Soto, who’d taken over for Augeri on the tour due to a throat infection.

Could’ve been worse for us, I guess! It is a funny memory, at the very least. The drive up was hilarious… we were stuck in concert traffic for about 45 minutes, and carloads full of drunk fans all around us were blasting various Journey/Def Leppard songs, singing at the tops of their lungs, running between cars to trade beers and god-knows-what-else, and scampering off into the brush along the highway to relieve themselves. Priceless, really.

Come back, Journey! I can only go see my local ‘70s cover band so many times before I’ll need a fix of the real thing!