I just caught the DirecTV concert series live recording of Journey in Manila; with their new lead singer Arnel Pineda.
For those of you who don't know; in 2007, on the strength of many youtube videos, Journey brought Philipino singer Arnel Pineda (who was well known in Asia for his spot on covers of Steve Perry Journey songs) into the band.
I was initially doubtful about it; thinking that he would just be propping up the corpse.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
Pineda is amazing.
He has far more energy than Perry ever had. He has all the range Perry ever had... and his presence in the band spurs them on to really incredible performances.
I've seen Journey live, and listened to their music for most of my life; and they have never been as good as they were in this one concert in Manila.
During much of the 80's, people forgot how great a guitarist Neil Schon is (he was playing with Santana, and Eric Claption, at the age of 15). Playing off against Pineda, he was every bit as good as he ever was in the 60's and 70s.
Unfortunately, I can't find any good quality clips from that concert; but you can see just how good a performer Pineda is from this 2008 clip:
