If we hadn't been suspended a few feet off the ground in classic rock-induced ecstasy, Seattlest might have been more irritated about the 2.5 hour drive home from Auburn on Friday night after the Journey/Heart/Cheap Trick concert. However, we were happily cocooned in the memory of hearing Heart's "Crazy On You" and their Led Zeppelin covers only twelve rows from the stage. And though we were exhausted by the time we reached Capitol Hill somewhere close to 2am, that hasn't stopped Journey's "Faithfully" and "Lights" from looping continuously through our minds for the entire weekend. Now that is a rock concert, Seattle.

Heart's eleven-minute encore brought tears to our eyes for sheer love of the Wilson sisters and their effortlessly talented, unapologetically rocker chick existence. Those eleven minutes were musical perfection. Ann's voice is big and powerful, Nancy's classical/flamenco-inspired guitar solo was damn good, and even the strains Seattlest & Co. could hear as we scurried from the gravel parking lots towards Will Call gave us chills. "Hip" would not be a good way to describe either the crowd or the music, but was it "awesome"? In a huge, big-hair, jeans-and-a-bustle way. Heart's still got it.

As for Journey, the enthusiastic and cover-band-ish Not-Steve (aka Arnel Pineda) stole the show with his unflagging energy. No, he's not Steve Perry. But Steve Perry couldn't be leaping around on the stage like that, and Pineda sounds eerily like his predecessor. With the exception of the end of "Don't Stop Believing," Pineda's voice was strong; we got concerned during those few questionable minutes, but Not-Steve fully recovered by the first bars of "Faithfully"--a song which was quite possibly the highlight of Journey's set. The other song we loved was "Lights," during which everyone did the obligatory cell-phone/lighter wave. Journey's new material was not inspired or even interesting, but we weren't there for the new material. We were there for "Ask The Lonely!"

More on Ross Valory, Neal Schon, and the epic adventures to and from White River Amphitheatre after the jump!

It was amusing to see the other band members interact with Pineda. Ross Valory would be plucking away at his bass guitar, doing his leathery, possibly dried out career rocker thing, and Pineda would run over to him and sink into a lunge. Valory would then (this happened a couple times) shoot him an indulgent look, and you could tell he was thinking, "my knees hurt just watching him do that." Neal Schon has his three facial expressions through which he rotates, which was funny in a "how classic rock!" kind of way--though the close-ups of his fingers on White River Amphitheatre's big screen proved he hasn't lost his prodigious musical talent.

Okay, now for the downside: White River Amphitheatre takes forever to get to. Seattlest & Co. have a crappy car that makes squealing noises when we turn the ignition, and the crappy car certainly does not have such luxuries as a radio, so for the two hours it took us to get from Pioneer Square to the stage we had to share headphones to listen to the one Journey song we had on the iPod. ("My iPod cost more than your car," our companion noted. True.) Because of the traffic and because both Seattlest & Co. have jobs, we missed all of Cheap Trick and all of Heart's set--save the encore--which was disappointing.

Then after the show, the King County Sheriffs didn't show up when they usually do to help move traffic out of the parking lots--so we sat in the car for an hour, listening to Gary Wright blasting from someone's car stereo (damn them for having a stereo) and wishing we couldn't see the couple getting on their sexy in the car across from us. Then we got re-routed out to God-knows-where, and it took us another hour and a half of "I need to go to the bathroom and all the gas stations are closed" before we finally got home.

That said: it was worth it! So, so worth it.