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© St. Petersburg Times, published May 6, 2002
ST. PETERSBURG -- It's as if they dropped a big, musical time machine in the middle of Vinoy Park.
At the park's south end Saturday evening, rapper Ja Rule headlined Bay Fest's Jeep stage, pumping the sound of modern-day MTV Saturday evening, showing off the rhyme skills that have sold millions of albums and spiced the records of friends such as Jennifer Lopez and Jay-Z.
But a short trek north, to the festival's Chrysler stage, was like stepping back 20 years to the days of skinny ties, leather pants and mullet hairdos. This was the kingdom of The Knack and Journey -- a hard rocking, fist pumping, guitar slamming neverland where rock 'n' roll was still king and rap was but a distant curiosity.
That's the curious, vibrant musical playground Bay Fest organizers presented Saturday, drawing close to 15,000 fans to sample the two sides of these strikingly different musical coins.
Classic rockers Journey hit the stage like they'd been stuck in a cryogenic tube the day after Live Aid ended (excepting a new drummer and new lead vocalist Steve Augeri's eerie resemblance to former frontman Steve Perry). The glass-shattering high vocals (with just a few stumbles), Neal Schon's guitar hero-style fretboard athletics, Jonathan Cain's interminable keyboard excursions -- they all survived the years, as if grunge rock and boy bands were just the music industry's collective bad dream.
Drummer Steve Smith, who has an actual new career as a jazz drummer with his band Vital Information, was replaced by former Bad English skinsman Deen Castronovo. He dug into Smith's classic parts with abandon and skill, earning his spot in a band that somehow avoided Spinal Tap-levels of self parody while recreating a time of classic rock supremacy long gone.
Hundreds of the hard rocking faithful crowded near the stage to sing along with chestnuts such as Open Arms, Wheel in the Sky, Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin' and the classic combo Feeling That Way/Anytime (complete with sample-perfect background vocals). The evening's sole nod to a contemporary event: Schon's predictable, distortion-heavy rendition of The Star Spangled Banner -- a move that might been dismissed as a slick Hendrix ripoff before Sept. 11.
Even rock fans who weren't sock hopping when mega-hits such as Don't Stop Believin' and Separate Ways were climbing the charts have had 20 years of classic rock radio pounding the melodies into their DNA. So it's no wonder the crowd went wild, even for the set's only misstep -- a plodding Latin-jazz-rock tune Cain wrote years ago with former Santana sideman Schon.