Archive for December, 2009

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Entertainment Weekly names The Circle one of the Worst of 2009

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Entertainment Weekly has placed The Circle as the #5 Worst Album of 2009. (You can see their critique here, as well as the rest of their list of the best and worst of 2009.)

Their commentary isn’t wrong–they echo many of the same criticisms that I had when I reviewed The Circle. However, a quick check through the rest of their five worst albums begs the question–wasn’t there anything else out there that was worse than The Circle? The only thing wrong with Bon Jovi’s album is how flat, rushed, and uninspired it feels. Compared to the other clunkers on their list (including some of the supposed ‘best’ of 2009), The Circle is a positive masterpiece.

Well, at least they didn’t put Lady Gaga in the “best” list. Seriously, sitting through those videos of hers waiting for Bon Jovi were the worst thing about the VH1 Top 20 Countdown when We Weren’t Born to Follow was at the top of the countdown.

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Five songs Bon Jovi can cut to make room for the rarities

Monday, December 28th, 2009

The band has announced that they’ll be playing more rarities and album tracks on the tour for The Circle.

Here’s a list of five ‘old standards’ that most fans would be glad to see eliminated (especially if there’s a chance of getting the good stuff like Dry County):

  1. I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
    This is a song that Bon Jovi always includes, for no particular reason. It’s not a hit, nobody’s particularly attached to it, and it’s not even one of their best songs, but they include it anyway. This should be an easy cut.
  2. Raise Your Hands
    This is one of the most generic songs in the entire Bon Jovi catalog. It’s nothing but a piece of concert filler that’s easily malleable to the current location. Once again, swap it for a song the fans like and nobody would even notice that it’s gone.
  3. I Love This Town
    This song isn’t all that different from ‘Raise Your Hands’. While it might have been written as a tribute to Nashville, its role in the concert setlist is pretty much the same as the previously listed song. If they have to have a nod to the current location, pick this OR ‘Raise Your Hands’, but not both.
  4. I’ll Be There For You
    Firstly, it’s tired, and it’s not a big enough hit that the non-fans would miss it if it weren’t there. Secondarily, Richie’s got an extensive catalog of his own music. Let him sing one of his OWN songs this time out instead and give this song a break. I can guarantee that if Jon lets Richie do lead vocals on ‘Rosie’ instead of this, the fans will go NUTS.
  5. Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen from Mars
    Much as I enjoy this song live, it’s an easy choice to cut. It’s another inexplicable song choice in the Bon Jovi concert setlist. Much like ‘I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead’, this is another non-hit, and the fans have all heard it performed live before. The non-fans won’t miss it and the fans would like to hear something different.

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Merry Christmas

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

Just a quick post to let everyone reading know that the blog is officially on hiatus for the holidays. Regular posting will resume sometime after January 1st. Until then, there may be posts if I see something cool and have time to put it up. In all probability, I won’t have time to put it up. The family has declared that they are descending on me for Christmas, I haven’t finished my Christmas shopping, and the blasted Xbox has chosen NOW to start blinking the Red Ring of Death at me.

In short the next week and a half will be spent running around malls, wrapping, scrubbing the entire house and cooking. And doing all that while listening to the hold music from Microsoft Support, I figure.

But Christmas Day should be gorgeous. Straight out of Norman Rockwell. Well, if Norman Rockwell painted Christmas scenes that included ‘A Christmas Story’ playing on the TV in the background and came accompanied by the sound effects from various people electing to test out their new presents by holding an impromptu LAN party. Last year my brother and I managed to make everyone over the age of 30 in the room motion-sick by hooking his laptop up to my parents’ big-screen TV and taking turns playing Portal.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to all. If you’re all prepared, sit back and enjoy the holidays. If you’re not, I wish you the best of luck navigating the holiday parking lots.

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The Company Is Better Outside (at least at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)

Monday, December 21st, 2009

This year’s batch of inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced awhile ago. While the ongoing omission of popular favorites like Bon Jovi and the simply shameful snubbing of Alice Cooper were already known outrages, the induction list is a further outrage, at least as far as I’m concerned.

KISS and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were snubbed in favor of ABBA. That’s just ridiculous; ABBA is anything but a rock band. (I won’t argue the induction of The Stooges and The Hollies, both of whom have more than enough rock cred. I mean, look at the Hollies. They started out as nothing more than a pop knockoff of the Beatles, but then artfully transcended that beginning to become a pretty cool rock and roll band.)

There’s just no good explanation of the supposed Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s ongoing policy of inducting anyone with a few hits that hit it big on mainstream radio. If this continues, they will have absolutely no credibility left with anyone. (That’s assuming that they have any credibility now, which as far as I’m concerned, they don’t.) Madonna before Deep Purple? You’ve got to be kidding me.

They keep on talking about how you have to be “influential” to get in, but then they leave out Deep Purple, quite possibly one of the most influential bands ever to perform. If you hand a person an electric guitar and ask them what they want to play, I can guarantee you that the riff they want to play is NOT from a Madonna song. But Madonna is in, and Deep Purple, creators of Smoke on the Water, the greatest riff ever, are not.

The way it’s going, if someone wants to prove whether they’re a real rock star, all they have to do is answer the question: “Are you in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?”

(Here’s a hint: the correct answer is “No”, at least if I’m doing the asking.)

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Bon Jovi participates in Stand Up to Cancer On Demand

Friday, December 18th, 2009

The Examiner has an article on Comcast’s Stand Up to Cancer On Demand. Evidently this will include videos from Bon Jovi in addition to a number of other artists.

Unfortunately, I’m not on Comcast, so I won’t have access to this. Also, the content from Bon Jovi and the other musicians is only described as ‘music videos’. Neither the article from the Examiner nor the press release from Stand Up To Cancer have any information about exactly what Bon Jovi content will be provided as part of this event. The press release details a bunch of brand new content for this event, but none of it is Bon Jovi content. Jon usually puts on a good show for charity events, so it would be neat to see this.

Hopefully someone else who does have Comcast will post a review of it.

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Brutal Legend is Awesome

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

I picked up a copy of Brutal Legend on Black Friday, when Best Buy had it for $39.99. I had been hesitant to pay the full $59.99 price tag after all of the talk that I had heard about the real-time strategy portions of the game. For years I’ve had problems with RTS games. I’ve just never done well with them. (It’s odd, because my day-to-day life is an exercise in multitasking, but I can’t handle the level of multitasking that RTS games require. Silly, but true.)

But at that sale price, I figured it was at least worth a shot. Especially since I had been looking forward to it so much since I had first heard about the game. Black Friday was nuts, but I did manage to get all of the stuff that I went out for. Brutal Legend turned out to be the closest call on that count though. I got one of the last Xbox 360 copies that my local Best Buy had, at least from what I could see in the bin. I had to dig pretty far down into the bin to find it.
(more…)

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In Which All Roads Lead to New York City

Monday, December 14th, 2009

You may have noticed that I skipped a post on Friday. I apologize for that. I didn’t have time to get a prefabricated post scheduled for Friday, and I went to New York with my family for the day. I tried to get some Christmas shopping done, but didn’t really see anything that suited the bill for the presents still remaining on my list.

I did try to argue in favor of getting tickets for Rock of Ages when we passed through Times Square, but by that point everybody else was tired out and didn’t want to go to a show. (We’d already walked pretty far by that point.) We ended up eating Thai food for dinner and counting the taxis with signs for musicals with a Bon Jovi connection. Seriously, it’s like every other taxi in Manhattan has a sign for either Memphis or Rock of Ages on it.

It wasn’t until we were walking past the big tree in Rockefeller Center that I realized that I’d managed to miss Bon Jovi’s Saturday Night Live appearance by one day. If I’d been paying attention when we scheduled the trip, I could have pushed it to Saturday instead and tried for standby tickets for SNL. (I understand that you have to get there pretty early to get those, if they’re available, though. I’ve never tried.)

Besides, after actually watching it on Saturday, I’m actually glad that I didn’t manage to get tickets. The opening monologue was so boring that I managed to fall asleep on the couch about 30 seconds into it Granted, I was tired, but still. Falling asleep that early on a Saturday night is positively embarrassing. The good part about that was that I missed most of the actual sketches, and my finely honed Spidey Sense woke me up the minute Bon Jovi started playing.

While the opening monologue (and evidently the rest of it, according to my friends who did manage to stay awake) was evidently pretty bad, Jon and the boys did a good job. First, it’s good to hear a song from The Circle other than ‘We Weren’t Born to Follow’ getting some exercise. Also, ‘Superman Tonight’ is one of the better tracks on the CD. I think it’ll do the sales of the disc some good if they get some exposure for some of the other songs.

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HELP Genesis JBJ Soul Homes Ribbon Cutting Video

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Jon Bon Jovi helps open HELP Genesis JBJ Soul Homes in Newark

Took me awhile to find a video of this that I could embed and that was of reasonable quality, but this one from the Star-Ledger is pretty good. Jon makes a decent speech toward the end, so don’t close the page before you see it. He’s actually gotten pretty good at doing these sorts of speeches at charity events.

Also, what I like about this video is that it actually shows some of the facility, and not just Jon. As a fan, I hear a lot about Jon’s charitable projects, but when they’re covered in the media, the attention is usually focused solely on Jon. Now, (once again, from the perspective of a fan), that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does detract in some ways from what he’s accomplished. It’s nice to be able to actually see how much was really done on this project. The facility is far more impressive in the video than the impression that I got from some of the articles.

Jon’s hair still needs highlights though…

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Nice article on David

Monday, December 7th, 2009

There’s a great article on David Bryan from The Star. It’s mostly focused on Dave’s recent successes in musical theater.

I don’t usually cover Dave’s work much around here. By and large, musicals and their soundtracks aren’t really my style anymore. That’s something that I grew out of around the time that I started college and really started broadening out my musical horizons. In a lot of ways I’ve looked at musicals and their soundtracks as kid stuff. Not because it is, but more because they were what I was given as a child, before I really had the opportunity to form my own taste.

When I went through the obligatory period of ‘teenage rebellion’, I kind of tossed a lot of that music out the window. Once again, not because it was bad, but in an effort to find out what my taste really was. (As it turned out, my taste really doesn’t run toward Broadway musicals, or I wouldn’t be running a hard rock blog.)

All that being said, I still respect the craftsmanship that it takes to create musicals like Dave does. The creative process that it requires is awe-inspiring. Dave does a better job of explaining it in the article. Much like Richie, Dave’s solo efforts outside the band didn’t get the recognition that they deserved for a long time. It’s nice to see him getting some of that recognition now.

Now if Jon would just give Richie enough of a break to let him get back to work on another solo album…

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The A.V. Club Suggestions for Star Wars: In Concert

Friday, December 4th, 2009

The A.V. Club has a list of their suggestions for songs that should be played at Star Wars: In Concert.

Of course, (this being the A.V. Club) it goes heavy on the more embarrassing pieces of music in the Star Wars universe. And that means that R2D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas tops their list.

I’m a nerd, and a Bon Jovi fan, and even I don’t listen to this song very often. Mostly I just end up feeling vaguely embarrassed when it comes up on the computer, even if I’m the only one in the house who can hear it.

However, the A.V. Club guys do have a point. The only people who are going to go to a Star Wars concert are the hardcore Star Wars fans, who probably would actually enjoy hearing a lot of these songs. (That, and if you’re in a big enough group of other people who enjoy these songs, I’m sure it wouldn’t be anywhere near as embarrassing.)

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