Survivor
Vital Signs

THE REVIEW

The three minutes that change life...

This was for the Survivors "Eye of the Tiger". Three minutes that settle the bank account forever, win a Grammy, and bring you a notoriety you would otherwise never have had. There are bands that in their entire careers couldn't achieve the results that Jim Peterik and company achieved with that single song. However, the Survivors were forever imprisoned in that golden cage created by that single track and will forever be remembered as "...those from Rocky..." or for the young people of the Italian soil "...those from Maria De Filippi....", since their leading song serves as the background for the pathetic challenges in the little theater of Mrs. Costanzo.

But it would be criminal to limit the history of the Survivors to only their presence in some Rocky movie, to that captivating riff that, for better or worse, consigned them to history.

If AOR is a rock that marries pop sounds, the Survivors will represent its softer, more radio-friendly side. They couldn't boast a global musical vision like that of Toto, nor the technical abilities of Journey, but their music was simple, essential bass and drum lines overlaid with keyboards that dictated the motif and a guitar that was never aggressive. The Survivors are the ideal soundtrack for car journeys in convertibles, on roads lined with palm trees, on sunny beaches where the lifeguards are beautiful and wear red suits.

They owe a lot to "Eye of the Tiger" but the best things came later, as in this "Vital Signs", the year 1984, which saw the entry as vocalist of the talented Jimi Jamison, with a voice less expansive than the departing Dave Bickler, but certainly warmer and deeper.

"Vital Signs" is a record made for the radio, where each of the nine tracks present is a potential hit. The production is perfect, crystalline and damn pop. Forget the main riff of Eye of the Tiger, here the absolute master is Jim Peterik with his keyboards, as in the splendid High on You, or in the 80s ballad The Search is Over. I Can't Hold Back starts with a sweet guitar arpeggio but increases in intensity until it launches into a chorus to sing and sing again at the top of your lungs. In each of the remaining tracks, the chorus represents a trademark and it is by no means easy to always find the right notes, those singable by anyone. The Survivors have often been defined as "cloying" or "saccharine", almost as if creating simple and direct melodies was a disgrace, and what in some way was their quality ended up becoming a limit.

The ailment that AOR suffered is precisely this, being considered not intellectual enough, suitable for housewives or teenagers looking for summer crushes, surprising little, but adapting and scavenging from a couple of genres to thus build all its hypothetical fortunes.

The Survivors represented the ideal soundtrack of that America over twenty years ago, that America we got to know in films and TV series, that we watched dreamily and did not find (willy-nilly or by bad luck, this is always to be seen) in our small provincial towns. Just as that American dream ended, even the Survivors, after a couple of other excellent albums, had to lay down their instruments and make way for those who did not sing of beaches, sea, and love, but only of desolation and frustration.