Archive for February, 2010

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Robotics, and the Nerdier Aspects of Fandom

Friday, February 26th, 2010

In the midst of all the legitimately well-earned buzz over all the great set lists, I stumbled across a press release about the details of the robotic screens that will be in use on the tour.

First off, all of the nerdier aspects of my personality came to the forefront when I read about this. Honestly, I’d like the opportunity to investigate the software that makes all of these things work. Plus, those are some impressive robots. I think I’ve only ever seen robots that big in pictures of car factories. It’ll be interesting to see what they can do with the screens.

For me though, the shows are all about the music. The set lists that have been coming out lately are impressive to say the least, and certainly full of stuff that I would like to see live. I got my fill of hearing the old standards during the Lost Highway tour. That’s why I’m way more excited about getting to see Richie Sambora singing Homebound Train than I am about seeing giant robots. (Although, I must say, the giant robots are cool.)

Ultimately, I’ll have to see a show with these screens. For all I really know, they might actually improve the experience for those of us stuck up in the nosebleed seats.

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Another duet, this time with Ray Davies

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Jon seems to be a busy boy lately. Today I stumbled across an interview with Ray Davies of The Kinks, where he mentions that he is in the process of recording an album of duets.

This sounds interesting. Usually, I rate this kind of album as a low priority, mostly because in a lot of cases, I haven’t gotten around to getting the original albums and I really think that I should familiarize myself with the originals first. However, I already have a lot of stuff from The Kinks, and I definitely have stuff from most of the artists he’s working with. Plus, The Kinks, and most of the songs that they have recored are just plain awesome. They are one of the few bands to produce songs that can still feel completely fresh and new, even decades later. Every Kinks song that I’ve ever heard could have been written yesterday.

Plus, the list of artists working on this so far includes nothing but artists I like. Both Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen have what it takes to do a good job on a duet of a Kinks song. The Killers do as well–they’re one of the few relatively new bands that I enjoy. And I’m really interested to see what Metallica can bring to this project.

I’ll have to give the samples on Amazon a listen when this comes out. It sounds like one I’d be tempted to buy, which is rare.

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Richie sings Homebound Train!

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

I caught a video of Richie singing ‘Homebound Train’ in Seattle. If you’ve been reading some of my older posts, you know that for me, Richie forever owns ‘These Days’ after I heard him perform it at the Prudential Center back in 2007. (And above all else, it wasn’t ‘I’ll Be There For You’, which has to be one of the most tired songs in the Bon Jovi catalog.)

After seeing that video, I have to say that if I get to see Richie do ‘Homebound Train’ live when I get to see them, I think this song will be Richie’s too.

Richie was in fine voice when he did that song, and it was great. Like so many of the songs that Richie does on his own, he put that uniquely Richie blues spin on it. And Homebound Train is a song that works extremely well with that bluesy flair. Certainly better than ‘I’ll Be There For You’. I know that song is a Bon Jovi classic, but it doesn’t play to any of Richie’s strengths the way a song like ‘Homebound Train’ does.

It seems like Bon Jovi as a whole is putting a lot more effort into their set lists on this tour. Yes, they’re still covering the important bits, but by bringing out so much more of their back catalog and rotating it, it’s making us fans much happier and more excited. Now there’s a chance that I might get to hear some of my favorites–no matter how obscure.

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Honolulu Set Lists

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Yes, it’s taken me a while to get around to catching up with the start of the tour for The Circle-I’ve been playing more games on the Xbox again, and I think updating the router has finally fixed the odd glitch that caused me to occasionally not be able to connect to YouTube, the BBC and about fifty other sites of varying degrees of importance to my day-to-day life. (Kenobi already collected the good fan videos from Honolulu over at Blame it on the Love, so if you want to see them, just head over there.)

I did get to check out a bunch of fan videos, now that I’m having less problems with YouTube. Personally, I found the videos of the older songs to be the best ones–Jon seemed to be in fine voice. On some of them, it could have been 1986–the band was that spot on. I thought that it was so great that they were picking songs from the full depth and breadth of their catalog for once. 7800° Fahrenheit might not have been the critics’ darling, but I like it, and so do a lot of other people.

Speaking as a relatively new fan of the band, it’s great that I’ll be getting to hear older songs like Only Lonely and Shot Through the Heart live on this tour, since I never had a chance before. In some ways, a lot of these songs are as fresh as the songs from The Circle–think about it, I can’t possibly be the only fan to have come on board in the last ten years who is familiar with the band’s full catalog but has never gotten to hear it performed live. Yes, the old songs are a treat for the old-timers, but they’re even better for those of us who have never gotten to hear them live at all.

I have to say, after this I am totally looking forward to the shows that I have tickets for on this tour, and now I’m thinking about going to more shows.

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The Music Video Exposed: Wayne Isham

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

I caught an episode of The Music Video Exposed on VH1 Classic this weekend. That’s not one of the shows that I ordinarily go out of my way to watch. You can tell that I was still very young during the golden age of MTV–most music videos hold very little appeal to me, and they’re usually completely secondary to the song itself, as far as I’m concerned.

I caught the tail end of the episode dedicated to Wayne Isham. The name honestly meant nothing to me. I had conked out and was too tired to keep up with the game I had been playing on the Xbox, so I powered down and settled for watching VH1 Classic until the show I was waiting for came on.

As it turned out, I got lucky. Wayne Isham directed the video for Livin’ on a Prayer, and the Prayer video was one of the ones featured in his episode. There’s no profound insights here, but some interesting storytelling from Wayne Isham himself. I had always figured that the silhouette of the guy running through the curtain of sparks was deliberate–but that’s the director, abruptly realizing that he was parked in the middle of the shot. That may have been a complete accident, but I always thought that it worked.

As for the rest of it, there’s nothing really profound there, other than a few brief interview clips with Richie. He mostly talks about how Isham helped the band break big. Not sure when it was recorded. Judging by how Richie looked in the clips, it was probably fairly recent.

The other neat video included in the show was the video for Skid Row’s 18 and Life, another one of my favorite songs. Once again, nothing terribly profound, but at least on that one they got Sebastian Bach to show up. Bach’s comments were more interesting–he was remarking on how, even after all this time, he can watch the video for 18 and Life without getting embarrassed. He has a point–Isham did do a fantastic job on that video, and it really does stand the test of time better than many of the other videos from the same time period that tried to tell a story.

It was kind of neat, just tuning in randomly and getting the scoop (such as it was) on the videos to two of my favorite songs.

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So I finished Brutal Legend…

Monday, February 15th, 2010

I finally finished Brutal Legend this past weekend. It’s taken me awhile to finish the game, even though I didn’t find the main story mode to be particularly difficult or long. (Having the Xbox decide to develop the Red Ring of Death does tend to put a crimp in my gaming schedule.) Honestly, I could have done with a longer story mode. I didn’t find anything to be all that great about the multiplayer mode, especially since none of my friends have Brutal Legend. If a few of my friends were interested in playing some stage battles, I might get more mileage out of it. But as it stands, the multiplayer mode holds no real interest. (Most of my friends would rather play Halo Wars.)

The rest of my follow-up is after the jump. Consider yourself warned: there are spoilers after this point, so if you’re haven’t beat the game yourself and don’t want the end spoiled STOP NOW.
(more…)

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Jon on 30 Rock

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Thanks to the snow, I caught Jon’s cameo on 30 Rock last night. (I had been scheduled for an evening meeting, which would have relegated me to catching it later on the internet.)

I guess that I misread the information that I had gotten on this, because I thought that he was going to be doing a guest star role, as opposed to a cameo as himself. That being said, what we got was pretty good. (NBC had better do its best to hold onto Tina Fey as long as possible. She’s one of the few truly talented people that they’ve got right now.)

Personally, I loved the jokes about the band’s “Artist in Residence” stint that they did with NBC earlier this year. The satire there was pretty much spot-on in skewering the overexposure that the band managed to get out of it.

Jon’s acting skills usually aren’t all that great, but for some reason, he’s good at playing the straight man. (Probably years of practice around certain of his bandmates.) That was also put to good use here.

Also, FINALLY, Jon’s hair is blond again! It actually looked decent for the first time in quite awhile. Not sure what it’ll take to get him to go back to being a blond permanently, even though it’s the most flattering hair color for him these days.

All told, a decently good evening’s entertainment.

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Superman Tonight Video

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

I guess it’s about time that I get around to reviewing this…

I know it’s been out for some time, but it just didn’t seem to be a priority for me to get around to watching it. That’s actually kind of odd now that I think about it, since Superman Tonight was one of my favorite songs on The Circle.

I watched the version of the video over at bonjovi.com. I initially had some trouble with the video loading. However when I played it a second time it worked fine.

All told, I found it to be a rather unremarkable video. Most of the background imagery with the tunnel and the lens flares echo the cover art from the album.

The video explores the wealth of small-scale heroes in everyday life. Whoever came up with the concept of the video (and the person who directed it) did a nice job of paying tribute to all of the heroes of everyday life. I’m sure that the concept originator was most likely Jon–this seems like one of the many ongoing influences from his charitable work to carry over into the band’s music. It’s good to see at least some musicians drawing inspiration from positive sources rather than purely negative.

Jon’s hair on the other hand, not so good. It’s better than it had been, but I stand by my assessment from the Grammys–it’s starting to look like politician hair. Richie did look great though, keeping up the streak started with the video for ‘We Weren’t Born to Follow’. If Richie keeps it up, he might be able to steal me away from Jon completely…

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I forgot about Spaceballs…

Monday, February 8th, 2010

It’s amazing how much our pop culture is saturated in Bon Jovi. For all that people love to make fun of the band, they’re everywhere. Yesterday, in under an hour, I managed to run into four Bon Jovi songs. One on the radio in Arby’s (Who Says You Can’t Go Home), one on the radio in the dollar store (Make a Memory) and one on the car radio on the way home (Wanted Dead or Alive). Then once I got inside, we found Spaceballs on the TV–and came in right at the part where Barf is listening to ‘Raise Your Hands’.

Honestly, I had forgotten that ‘Raise Your Hands’ was in Spaceballs. That’s actually kind of embarrassing, especially since that’s been one of my favorite movies since I was a kid. I knew I hadn’t watched it in a long time, but I hadn’t realized just how long. (Obviously, I haven’t watched it since I became a Bon Jovi fan, or I would have noticed ‘Raise Your Hands’.) That puts it at least five years since I’ve watched it.

Anyway, it’s still kind of awesome how you can run into a Bon Jovi song anywhere–even in one of your favorite movies. And it’s cool how it can make your day.

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Full Album Concerts during The Circle Tour?

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Awhile ago, I discussed the possibility of Bon Jovi doing some full album concerts. At the time, I didn’t think that it was likely, because I really didn’t think that Bon Jovi has had any of the sort of albums that work well in this format. They are a band that are (justly or not) mostly known for their singles.

Now it seems (at least according to Billboard) that Jon and the boys may be considering doing this.

I still stand by my earlier assessment–the best candidate for this treatment is New Jersey, as it has the best balance of well-known singles with a strong overall album. Yes, Slippery When Wet has more of their well-known singles, but as I’ve said before, the rest of the album isn’t anywhere near as strong as the Big Three singles from it that made Bon Jovi famous. New Jersey has more Top 10 hits than Slippery, and even the filler is stronger on that album.

Unfortunately, the two albums mentioned are Slippery When Wet and Lost Highway. While Slippery When Wet wouldn’t be a bad choice, I personally think that doing a complete performance of Lost Highway is a terrible idea. While Lost Highway does have Make a Memory, which is the best ballad that the band has made since This Ain’t A Love Song, the rest of the album isn’t all that great. Plus, with that being the “country” album, I think a lot of folks turning up for a show on The Circle tour would be really disappointed if they got treated to an evening of the back tracks off Lost Highway.

I suppose that if I did get stuck at a show where the band decided to do a complete album, I’d much rather have Slippery than Lost Highway. For one, I’m really not a country girl at all. Don’t like it. And I really didn’t care that much for Lost Highway, other than Make a Memory. Also, the song that originally introduced me to Bon Jovi–Wanted Dead or Alive–is from Slippery When Wet. Granted, you get to hear Wanted at pretty much every Bon Jovi concert, so it’s not like that’s a big incentive to hear them do the entire album live. But even the lesser songs from Slippery When Wet beat Lost Highway hands down.

All told, I really think that if they’re going to do this, they should do something like the Holy Diver live CD that I have. It’s actually a two-disc set, and the concert includes all of Holy Diver–but Dio also throws in a smattering of songs from his days in Black Sabbath (Heaven and Hell) and Rainbow (Man on the Silver Mountain) to break it up. If Bon Jovi could pull off a show like that–Slippery When Wet spiced up with a few songs from The Circle and maybe a few of the covers that Richie mentions in the article–that would be awesome.

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