Another look at the 1994 Steve Perry FTLOSM Beacon Theatre Concert

Screencap from the 1994 concert

Before Steve Perry made his set of recent appearances with the Eels to show he's still got a lot of vocal talent left to share in live performance (here, here, here), the last look look at his live chops was during the 1994 For The Love of Strange Medicine (FTLOSM) tour. I decided to take another look at it. [He would later rejoin Journey for Trial By Fire (1996), but did not tour behind the studio album (you die hard fans probably already know that whole story).]

FTLOSM just came out at the wrong time; grunge was in. Listening to it today it has aged well; special props to the then baby-faced guitarist Lincoln Brewster, he's fantastic here; he's currently a popular contemporary Christian music artist.

The songs are all downtuned significantly here for SP in 1994. Even with a reduced vocal range because of time (and all that wear on his instrument from overtouring), what remains is his styling, soul, astounding sense of melody and lyrical interpretative skills.

This full concert vid at the Beacon Theatre in NYC was obviously shot bootleg. SP/Journey fans have to thank the boot videographer, TheNYBG1 for capturing this; it was shot before small camcorders, point and shoot cameras or cell phone vid. He said this in the YouTube comments:

"I'm the filmer of this video. Obviously back then, there were no cell phones doing video. You either had a $1,000+ video camera or you had no video. By far most of the concerts I filmed in the late 80's and 90's, the only video to come out of a show was what I filmed. That being said, to try and give people a feel for what it was like to be there filming it, the Beacon Theater 2nd balcony in the 1st row where I filmed quite a few shows from, as you can see, it's quite a steep angle down to the stage.

Sitting back in the seat, I was filming above a ledge, but below a bar that was about a foot above it. Plus, add in security coming to seat people in the only 9 seats across rows (like the camera duck about a minute in due to that). Regardless of anyone's opinion of this video, the fact is that there wouldn't be any video of this show to watch if I didn't videotape this. I left my mark. :-)"

The set list:
1) Only The Young
2) Girl Can't Help It
3) Oh Sherrie
4) Lights
5) Foolish Heart
6) You Better Wait
7) Someone's There
8) Missing You
9) Listen To Your Heart
10) I'll Be Alright Without You
11) Wheel In The Sky
12) Dixie Highway
13) Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin'
14) Any Way You Want It
15) Separate Ways
16) Don't Stop Believin'
17) Faithfully