The Librarian's Notebook

Arts & Culture

Books, music, film, buildings, and the occasional argument about why one of them is good.

3 entries · All writing

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CULTURE · SEPTEMBER 12, 2026 Escape, and the Four Times I Paid for It The second entry in my Journey series is the record that got me — Escape, July 1981, the first with Jonathan Cain, the one with "Don't Stop Believin'" on it. It came to me off the radio, and then I bought it on LP, and then on cassette, and then on CD, and then took it for free on Napster like everybody did, and now I stream it like everybody does. I have paid Journey many times over for the same music. I do love them, so it's okay. CULTURE · SEPTEMBER 12, 2026 Raised on Radio, the One I Have to Defend My favorite Journey album is not Escape and not Frontiers. It's Raised on Radio, from 1986 — the one Steve Perry produced himself, the one made after two founding members were let go, the one the band never quite recovered from. This is the entry where I say why: it was mostly Perry, it mixed his voice with the new synthesizer sound of the mid-eighties in a way that felt beyond normal music to a fourteen-year-old, and "The Eyes of a Woman" still moves me and "Girl Can't Help It" is still what I drive to. CULTURE · SEPTEMBER 12, 2026 Why Journey My favorite band, of all time, is Journey. This is the first entry of a series about them — not a history of the band, which exists already and was written by people who were in the room, but one record at a time, each paired with where I was when it reached me. It starts with why, with the singer who is the reason, and with a confession about a song I somehow missed for five years.