Archive for May, 2010

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A few regrets…

Monday, May 31st, 2010

I didn’t actually go to any of the shows at the New Meadowlands Stadium this week.  That was mostly because I usually try to avoid outdoor shows.  I hate being rained on and with my luck, that’s usually what happens.

As it turns out, I should have braved the elements and taken the damp; what I’ve heard about those shows has been fantastic.

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I’ve been itching to hear ‘Dry County’ live for a long time.  You’ll also know that I haven’t gotten to hear it at the smaller arena shows that I’ve been to during both this tour and the Lost Highway tour.  If I’d gone to the Meadowlands shows and braved the rain, I’d have gotten it–with Jon in glorious full voice, by all accounts.

Add to that the fact that they did ‘Diamond Ring’.  For a confirmed lover of These Days, missing ‘Diamond Ring’ kind of hurts.

Also, one of my friends who usually comes along to Jovi shows with me has been deeply disappointed.  He’s been to three shows with me so far and has yet to get to hear the band play ‘Bed of Roses’ (his favorite song).  If I’d gone and talked him into going along, he’d have finally gotten his one wish.  (Well, actually, he really wanted to hear ‘It’s My Life’ too, but that’s guaranteed and he’s gotten that three times now, so on that count, he’s happy.)

Let’s just say that I have some regrets at this point.

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Bret Michaels on the Tonight Show

Friday, May 28th, 2010

I know, I know, that was on Wednesday night.  But we’ve been having bigtime storms ripping through here in the evening and making my power flicker, so I haven’t really gotten the chance to write it up before now.

Anyway, for a guy who’s been through so much lately (he and Jay Leno were cracking jokes about how he needed to get on the show before he lost any more organs), he seemed to be doing pretty well.    Most of what they talked about during the interview was Bret’s recent triumph on Celebrity Apprentice.

Personally, I think it’s great that Bret went on Celebrity Apprentice and won.  It really gave him a chance to show what a nice guy he is.  Granted, Rock of Love may have made him a major celebrity again, but it didn’t really put the focus on Bret.  On Celebrity Apprentice, he really had a chance to show the world that he’s a great (and talented) guy.

This interview was more of the same–it showed Bret to be a really decent guy.  The whole interview really just made me like him more–he really made me want to root for him to get better, and made me happy (all over again) that he’d won.

Up until recently, I hadn’t really been much of a Bret Michaels/Poison fan.  Sure, I liked their music and I had been keeping watch on the local concert scene waiting for a chance to see him live.   But it was his appearance on Celebrity Apprentice that really let me see that he was a decent guy, with a lot of talent.  It really made me like him a whole lot more.

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Jon Interviewed About Opening New Meadowlands Stadium

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

NorthJersey.com has an interview with Jon about opening the New Meadowlands Stadium.

Nothing earth-shattering here.  But it’s kind of nice to get Jon’s perspective on getting to open the new stadium.  Especially since Bon Jovi has played the old Giants Stadium so many times and Jon has always referred to it as his home.

In a way, having Bon Jovi open the new stadium bookends things nicely–they had The Boss close the old Giants Stadium,  and now Jon’s coming to open the new one.  That way they’ve managed to get the two biggest musical legends from New Jersey involved in the transition, and no one group of fans has any reason to get cranky about it.

All that being said, though, this is home turf for the band, and they’re still trotting out ‘Hallelujah’ instead of doing one of their own songs?  Doubly so since Bon Jovi spent most of the 90s known for being a ballad band.  This, if ever, would be time to trot out one of the big ballads from their own catalog–something like ‘Dry County’ or ‘This Ain’t A Love Song’

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Random Song: The Fire Inside

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Artist: Bon Jovi
Album: 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong

This was one of the tracks the box set that I found difficult to get into when I first got the box set.   I suppose a lot of it was because the song starts off so simply with just Jon’s voice and the guitar.  Without the keyboards, drums and the heavier production of the regular album tracks, it was too far outside the boundaries of what I had accepted as Bon Jovi’s music.

But once you get to the chorus, this song really opens fire, and then I got it.  Jon’s voice isn’t perfect here, but this song is built around the passion in the chorus and the slow burn of the verses that build up to it.  Those choruses hit like the blows of a musical sledgehammer.

This is one of the songs that led me to truly appreciate Jon’s musical skills.  The lyrics might not be the greatest–some of the choruses tend toward the repetitive, and the lyrics border a bit on cheesy.  However, the building tension of the verses that lead up to the power of the choruses is very well performed here.

In a lot of ways, this song showcases the core of the best of Bon Jovi’s songs–their ability to write songs that build perfectly up to big choruses.  This structure is what the best arena rock is built on–and ‘The Fire Inside’ displays the technical grasp of this format that made the band great.  Like the demo version of ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ that’s also on the box set, this song really helped give me an insight into what made Bon Jovi so great at what they do.

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Ronnie James Dio has died

Monday, May 17th, 2010

I had, like every other self-respecting metal fan, known that Ronnie James Dio had stomach cancer and had been battling that disease for some time.  I totally get what Brian May said  in the MTV article about how it just didn’t seem possible that Dio wouldn’t beat the cancer and make it through.

I suppose that part of it was that he was so much larger than life to me, both on his own as a solo act and as a part of Black Sabbath and later, Heaven and Hell.

Opening up the Google News homepage while I was on my lunch break today and seeing the MTV article of various fellow rockers eulogizing Dio was a shock.   It took a long minute for the reality of it to sink into my brain.

Dio’s solo work was what first introduced me to real heavy metal.  Sure, I’d listened to plenty of hair metal up to that point, and I certainly had an appreciation for the harder and heavier sounds to come out of that scene.  But I had yet to truly start discovering bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath.

I picked up my first Dio CD–a greatest hits collection–on the strength of Edgar Hansen saying that he liked ‘Rainbow in the Dark’ and a vague memory of the song being listed in one of those VH1 ‘best of’ countdowns and the clip being fairly awesome.  Of course, it only really took one listening for me to determine that this guy was more than just ‘fairly awesome’.

Of course, from there I went on to explore the world of heavy metal more and more.  But it was really Dio’s voice that first sold me on the concept of heavy metal.  This man could sing, and he could take you to the most amazing places with his voice.   I’ve always respected that talent, from the first time I heard his work.  Dio, and his great talents, will be sorely missed.

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Steel Panther Producing TV Pilot

Friday, May 14th, 2010

The hair metal cover/parody band Steel Panther is producing a pilot episode for Comedy Central.   There are more details, including the planned premise of the show in the original article at the Las Vegas Sun.

I can honestly say that this sounds like a great idea to me.  Yes, I do enjoy listening to hair metal, but I do realize that it’s all more than a little ridiculous.  (Hey, I enjoyed Brutal Legend, which made hair metal the butt of more than a few jokes.)

Steel Panther is really good at mining this territory for laughs too.  I’ve seen a couple of their videos, and they seem to have a good grasp of exactly how far over the top to take their act to turn it into comedy gold.  These guys are experts at manipulating every cliche that comes with the hair metal territory and turning it into entertainment.

Plus, they’re more than just jokes.  These guys, while they might have started out as a cover band, do have a pretty good grasp of how to construct songs of their own.   I remember the first time that I heard ‘Death to All but Metal’ — my first thought was that they could have released it as an un-ironic song in the 80′s and they would have had a hit with it.

All together, I’d say that they’re pretty good candidates to do a show of this type.  They have the right attitude to make it really entertaining.  I’d say that this shows way more promise than that “Livin’ on a Prayer” TV show that I heard about awhile ago.  Personally, I’ll be watching to see what comes of this.  Hopefully Comedy Central will pick up the pilot.  If they do, I’ll be tuning in for that.

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Bon Jovi on American Idol Review

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

This turned out to be nothing more than a standard appearance to promote the current tour, so the song was “Superman Tonight”.

Now that I’ve heard ‘Superman Tonight’ performed live by the band in person, the televised performances of the song don’t seem to have the same punch.   The performance was fine–but didn’t seem to have any special punch to it.

Richie was showing off the arms again.   He’s really coming into his own again on this tour.   Also, I like the shiny shirt/vest combo on him.

Jon was actually wearing a black leather shirt for the first time in a long time.  Jon with blond hair, wearing leather, and showing off the chest hair is just about the best thing ever.

Personally, I still think the band should have chosen one of the more high-octane songs from The Circle as the next single.  This would have been the perfect opportunity to introduce the song.  It might have helped give the album one last big push.

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When We Were Beautiful Video Review

Monday, May 10th, 2010

The video for ‘When We Were Beautiful’ is available on the Universal Music Portugal site (in case you didn’t already know).

First off, it’s not in black and white, which is a relief. Bon Jovi has a tendency to over-use black and white as an effect in their videos. This is just a straight-up concert video (which shouldn’t be a surprise, seeing as how it was recorded at the show in Dallas about a month ago).

The visuals are mostly what I’d expect to see on the big screen at a show, actually–just shots of the guys, blending in and out. There’s an occasional shot of the audience mixed in, which is a good move; it really reinforces the live feel of the video.

I would actually have liked to see Richie get a little more face time during the solo. (Usually during live shows they show Richie or a closeup of his hands during the solo. Great for the Richie girls, but it does tend to deprive the girls in the back from seeing some of the dance moves that Jon does during the solos.) In this case, with Jon dominating the screen during the verses, it would have been nice to see Richie during the solo.

That being said, Jon was hot. That sweaty slice of chest on display was just plain gorgeous.

All told, I thought that this was a decent video. A bit of a back-to-basics approach. Performance videos have usually worked out well for Bon Jovi in the past. This one shouldn’t be any different from the others.

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Random Song: New Year’s Day

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Artist: U2
Album: War

I’m not a particularly big U2 fan. They’re the darlings of critics and serious music aficionados everywhere. But for some reason, I always found their music to be a tad inaccessible. (Most of the bands that I listen to don’t require frequent trips to Wikipedia to understand what the lyrics are about.) I always feel like there’s some deeper subtext that I’m just not getting when I listen to their stuff.

That being said, I do enjoy an occasional song of theirs, and ‘New Year’s Day’ is one of those songs. This particular song has always stood out to me for its beauty. Listening to this song is what led me to recognize the true amount of skill that goes into their work–and made me realize that in many ways, they do deserve a lot of the praise that they get.

What has especially struck me about this song is how well-balanced this song is. No one part of the mix is allowed to overwhelm anything else. The bass and drums are the driving force here–but Bono’s voice manages to shine like a jewel. In a song with this sort of structure, it can be easy to let the bass overwhelm all else–but nothing ever gets lost here.

Perhaps some of that balance can be put down to good production, but I think a lot of it has to do with the skill with which the song was composed.

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Bret Michaels is out of the hospital

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

According to the BBC, Bret Michaels was released from the hospital. He’s even planning on resuming his tour later in the summer.

I’m glad to hear that he’s going to make a full recovery. He was too young to go.

When I found out that he’d been admitted to the hospital and was in critical condition, it hit me far harder than I had thought it would. Sure, I liked his music, but it’s not like I thought about him or Poison every day.

But his work, especially with Poison, was one of the driving forces that shaped my love of hard rock. Bon Jovi might have introduced me to the world of hard rock and hair metal. But it was Poison, along with Motley Crue and Whitesnake that truly drew me into the world of hard rock. They were the bands that truly opened my mind to the possibilities out there as I explored.

I had picked up my first Poison CD (one of their greatest hits compilations) shortly before going on vacation with my friends. Before I left, I transferred every song off that CD to my mp3 player and I took that with me. It ended up providing the soundtrack to that vacation. I still remember driving through the dunes on the outskirts of Sea Isle City with ‘I Want Action’ playing on the car stereo, in the orange light of late afternoon.

When I heard that Bret was in critical condition, it was a complete shock. (The fact that I first heard about it from a comment on an unrelated blog post didn’t help. At first I thought it was just a mean joke, but a quick Google News scan turned up that it was true.) It didn’t seem possible that he could be gone already. It was a strange moment–and a big reminder of not only the mortality of my heroes, but my own as well. It kind of shook me up.

Anyway, I’m just glad that he’s going to recover. The man has amazing talents, and deserves a long, full life. I can’t be the only person that Bret’s music has influenced so deeply. To lose someone with a gift like that would be a loss for all of us.

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