Track Listing:
• Escape
• Line of Fire
• Lights
• Stay Awhile
• Open Arms
• Mother, Father
• Jonathan Cain keyboard solo
• Who's Crying Now
• Where Were You?
• Steve Smith drum solo
• Dead Or Alive
• Don't Stop Believin'
• Stone In Love
• Keep On Runnin'
• Neal Schon guitar solo
• Wheel In The Sky
• Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'
• Any Way You Want It

This concert preserves the Journey experience at the pinnacle of their career. Typical of album tours, the Escape show is jam-packed with material from the then-current recording, at the expense of superior songs from Journey's earlier repertoire (I especially missed "Feeling That Way" and "Anytime" from Infinity). The show whips along at breakneck speed, and at 77 minutes seems—at least to any Journey partisan who paid for the privilege—a little too brief. In their hour-plus upon the stage, however, the band struts, frets, and delivers the goods that made them ubiquitous on FM rock stations for nearly a decade.

For a 25-year-old made-for-MTV event, Journey: Live in Houston 1981, The Escape Tour looks and sounds spectacular. The visual presentation is bold and vibrant—at times, a mite too vibrant, as the amped-up red spectrum combines with blazing stage lights to result in occasional color bleed. The imagery, however, remains crisp and sharply defined overall after a quarter-century on the shelf. The soundtrack, which can be appreciated in either PCM stereo or Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, thunders from the speakers with nary a hint of fuzz or rumble. Interestingly, I found the stereo mix preferable. The surround track, though crystal clear, sounded a bit boomy and artificial to me. Your ears may vary.