![]() Pineda says at one point that it's like hitting the lotto, what happened to him, but in truth, Schon hit the lotto, too. ![]() As much as it's about how a band lifted an unknown singer into a dreamlike world of screaming crowds and far more money than he'd ever known, it's also about how a band found just the right guy at just the right time to help capitalize on the surprise comeback of one of the band's most famous songs. I would have dropped the bomb a little sooner, just to avoid the sense of inevitability.īut the film is fun, and it's worth seeing, not because it's the tale of an internet sensation, but because it's the tale of a bunch of guys who really, really want to hear crowds scream – either again or for the first time ever. But at some point, waiting for it becomes a bit of a tease, and the build to the performance (and the holding out on playing much of that song after playing most of Journey's others that are well-known, sometimes more than once) turns into a game. This tour happened after The Sopranos put "Don't Stop Believin'" in the spotlight but before Glee put it there again, and the closing titles of the film point out that it's now the most downloaded song written in the 20 th century. I don't think it's a spoiler – I really, truly cannot imagine how it could be – to tell you that the film builds to the performance of that particular song. Then there is also the problem of "Don't Stop Believin'" itself. There are some background segments on the general history of Journey that don't seem to have been made with the love that went into the Pineda-era stuff, and a persistent subplot about Pineda getting colds and drinking tean - while care of the voice makes a nice tour detail - keeps coming back and back and back but never really goes anywhere. It comes to what seems like a natural ending at one point, and then it goes on for probably another 20 minutes. ![]() It doesn't have a lot to do with YouTube the better story is about a band taking a huge risk on a completely unknown quantity because they need a guy and they found one they think will be a fit.īut at almost two hours, the film feels long. At its best, it's about a working singer – not a YouTube fluke, but a working, day-in-day-out singer who's been playing for years and years – can suddenly find himself jumped to the head of the line, playing to 22,000 people with musicians he's admired all his life. The story threatens at times to become a wacky internet novelty, but at its best, it's something a bit more satisfying than that. He's a stretch younger than guys like Schon, who's pushing 60, but he's not Justin Bieber being plucked from YouTube because he's never done anything. Pineda isn't quite as young as he sometimes seems in the film he can seem like a kid, but he turned 41 during the 2008 tour. Other than the fact that he was in the Philippines, Schon found his guy the way he set out to find him. Maybe even for lead singers doing Journey songs who sounded a lot like former lead singer Steve Perry – which Pineda surely does. Maybe he was even looking for lead singers doing Journey songs. Schon didn't stumble on him accidentally or get an e-mail from someone that said "You've got to see this guy!!!" he found Pineda while specifically searching YouTube for lead singers, because it's a not-unusual way to find musicians. There is a certain fairytale quality to all of it – the guy who was singing Journey covers when he suddenly got The Call – but really, it's not that weird.
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