161. "Dead or Alive" by Journey
When I returned home to Arimo after my mission, before I even drove up the lane to the house, my father took me to the shed he'd built at the Y and showed me a big surprise that he had kept secret from me during my last months in Sweden. He had purchased a new black step-side Chevy pickup. He didn't give me the truck outright. It always remained his vehicle. But he did let me drive it a lot that summer. It had a pretty good stereo system in it, so I spent a couple weeks rounding up all of the vinyl albums that my family had and making tapes to play in the truck. My sister Renda had Journey's 1981 "Escape," which had a lot of very good songs on it, including their multi-generational hit "Don't Stop Believin'." But the song that I ended up liking the most from that album was "Dead or Alive." It wasn't because of the lyrics. The song told a very short tale about a double secret agent/international assassin that ends up getting killed by a "heartless woman's 38." Not exactly the kind of story a farm boy from Idaho will immediately relate to. But the music was a turbo-charged arena rock romp that served as the perfect background music for my favorite thing to do in that Chevy truck--a roadside peel-out on gravel, followed by the fastest possible acceleration to the speed limit (and sometimes beyond). When Neal Schon's guitar blasted out that first note, I'd floor it. Those back tires would start spinning Old Blue style and the gravel would fly. Then a little bit of rubber would get laid down as the tires hit the pavement and start to squeal. Adrenaline surge!
Punch it!
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