Foreigner's Mick Jones keeps band's fire burning

It sounds like Foreigner isn't just going through the motions but is still inspired to play kick a** Rock n Roll. Their legacy will always remain based on their huge catalog of great hits & deeper tracks. I'm gonna see them & buy the new CD due out in the Fall. Having said that it still reminds me of the Journey situation w/out Steve Perry.....Sure it's Foreigner but it sucks that Lou Gramm isn't in the band!

Foreigner without Lou Gramm on vocals? Are you kidding? Mick Jones is a great songwriter, but the identity of the band is inextricably tied to Gramm's soulful rock vocals. IKelly Hansen is a good singer, but make no mistake....he's covering Lou Gramm.

A Foreigner Fan wrote:

It sounds like Foreigner isn't just going through the motions but is still inspired to play kick a** Rock n Roll. Their legacy will always remain based on their huge catalog of great hits & deeper tracks. I'm gonna see them & buy the new CD due out in the Fall. Having said that it still reminds me of the Journey situation w/out Steve Perry.....Sure it's Foreigner but it sucks that Lou Gramm isn't in the band!

Well we saw the band the end of september in Jim Thorpe, PA and that show was incredible. The people up here are laid back so the crowd was tough, but the sound and the voice of the new singer was the BEST show we have seen lately. My wife and I have seen many older bands like the Stones who after the last 2 tours we are done with and The Allman Brothers who we feel asllep at the show. Mick Jagger still has it but the tempo has slowed and everytime Keith plays a tune he is re-inventing it. The Allman Brothers the tempo was SOOO boring, and 3-5 minute stops between songs and every song was 10-15 minutes long. Well Mick Jones and the new band members rocked from minute 1 and never stopped. I would recommend them to anyone.

Rock is full of parrots who do it better than the orignal, and that's clearly the case here. Kelly Hansen is no Lou Gramm -he's technically much better, with iron pipes and the ability to sound _exactly_ like the records night after night... while injecting his own energy. Lou grew up a mile from me... he made the sound instantly recognizable. If you've ever heard Paul Sinclair (Get the Led Out) or the dude touring with Boston or the little Phillipino kid in Journey -- same thing. I saw the Boston/Styx tour 2 summers ago and it was absolutely great. Could anyone replace Brad Delp or Steve Perry or Dennis DeYoung? Yup. They can, they did, and the shows were great.

Then you've got pathetic shells of what they once were like Neil Young and the Allmans and etc. They sound terrible, they don't come to play, and worst of all - their vocal chops are gone.

I've studied the human physiology behind this... no different than a major league pitcher, some singers have "iron pipes" that let them blast it out night after night no matter what... others lose their fragile voices after one or two sets, and fight medical problems their entire career. Being a rock singer is very much like being an opera singer -- they are the heavyweight body-builders of the voice, have to have the ability to go higher, louder, longer than the human voice was ever designed to do. So even if they're still alive and can manage to record occassionally... there is a very good chance that voice you love on the record simply does not exist anymore. We'd all love our original line-ups but it's not aways possible.

I hope that the new songs are good. They really rocked my youth.