Blueshadow's Bon Jovi Blog » acoustic

Santa Fe live at the O2!

admin — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:21:12 +0000

This just goes to show that I need to pay attention to my own blogroll around here. Lee-Ann picked up on this over a week ago (she’s got the video of ‘Santa Fe’ and a few others over at Blame It On The Love, so I won’t repost ‘em here).

‘Santa Fe’ is only one of my favorite songs of all time… and it took me this long to catch up on my reading and figure out that they actually did this live at the O2. Makes me wish I lived in London, because the lucky folks in the audience at the O2 shows have gotten plenty of treats. (See also the blue sleeveless shirt that Jon was wearing in that video.)

Anyway, ‘Santa Fe’ has been one of my favorite songs ever since I first brought home my copy of Blaze of Glory. It has actually come up a couple of times when I was writing Random Song posts for this blog, but I always skipped it because I wasn’t sure that I could do justice to the song, or my feelings about it. Something about the powerful delivery in this song just spoke to me. It’s certainly one of Jon’s best outings as both a songwriter and a performer.

(I substantiate that claim by the fact that several people have simply refused to believe that the song they were hearing could possibly have been a Jon Bon Jovi song. The least insulting of these was my mother, who merely thought that it was Richie.)

That legendary status made me a little nervous when I saw the video show up on Lee-Ann’s blog, doubly so when I saw that it was one of the acoustic performances. I guess I was a little bit afraid that it might have gotten TLFR’d, or that Jon’s voice wouldn’t hold up, and I’d be disappointed.

Ultimately, though, it was anything but disappointing. Sure, the acoustic performance doesn’t quite have the same fire as the original, but it still works. Part of it is that Jon performs the song straight–it’s not a re-imagining (the TLFR treatment that I had feared) but just the real thing. Right down to the “Lord have mercy” before the solo. Jon doesn’t soar in quite the same way as the original, but his voice was great in this performance.

Also, Dave’s accordion is actually quite welcome here. I actually find its sound to be superior to the strings in the original recording.

And on a final note, I have to say thank you to Lee-Ann for gathering up all of these great videos, not just from the O2, but from all of the tour.

Wachovia Center Review

admin — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:01:11 +0000

I did make it to the show at the Wachovia Center in Philly last night. I didn’t get to post a review last night, mostly because I didn’t make it back to the house until 1:30 in the morning or so, and I pretty much fell straight into bed.

I had something of an incident when getting tickets–or rather, the person who bought them did. They had one of those fancy credit cards that is supposed to have a service to assist in purchasing tickets. Somehow, something went pear-shaped, and either the credit card company was slow on the draw when the tickets went on sale, or there was a mis-communication somewhere. Either way, we would up in the second row of the second tier, way up in the nosebleed seats. However, it turned out fine; the view from there was actually better than a lot of the seats down below. (And it wound up being much easier on the budget.)

I personally could have done without Dashboard Confessional. I’d like to know why it is that bands think that volume makes up for quality. My mother put earplugs in for their set, and I honestly considered bailing out and hanging out in the hallway or getting myself a T-shirt until they were done. Really, if performing a cover of a Bryan Adams song improves the net quality of your set, you’re doing something wrong. (Their cover of ‘Summer of ’69 was the only song where I could make out the lyrics in their whole set.) I said before that the choice of Dashboard Confessional was a bad decision, and that was reinforced by last night’s experience.

At any rate, things got better when Bon Jovi started their set. ‘Blood on Blood’ was a great choice for an opener; high energy, and a song that I, at least, hadn’t gotten to hear live before. Most of the songs from The Circle held up pretty well live; ‘Superman Tonight’, especially, was a treat to hear Jon sing in person. ‘

The acoustic set was awesome. I really do love every song from These Days, and I got to hear ‘Something for the Pain’ live last night, which pretty much made my day. I enjoyed Jon’s performance of ‘Hallelujah’ as well–not only is it a beautiful song, I’ve always thought that Jon brings something special to it. I suspect the secret is that Jon enjoys performing it.

My only real peeve in the entire show was how long Jon dragged out Who Says. Honestly, I’m not that fond of the song to start with, and somewhere around the twentieth “It’s alright!” it really, really started to get annoying.

I really think that ‘Love’s The Only Rule’ was a really bad choice to end the regular show. It was well-performed, and it was pretty, but it just killed the energy in the audience–ending with a song like ‘Brokenpromiseland’ would have had the audience on their feet and chanting right away.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to hear any of the songs that I really, really wanted, like ‘Dry County’, ‘Living in Sin’, or ‘I Believe’. Honestly, much as I enjoy hearing Jon perform ‘Hallelujah’, I’d have traded it in a heartbeat for ‘Dry County’.

Richie was looking really, really hot last night. That man does the whole rock star look really well. And when he ditched the jacket to play ‘I’ll Be There for You’ and the arms came out–well, it was hot. Really, really hot. Especially with the tight pants.

I was just grateful when Jon stripped down to the T-shirt and showed off his arms as well. Much as I might enjoy eyeing up Richie’s gorgeousness, I’m really a Jon girl at heart, and it’s Jon’s muscles that I really want to see. That being said, Jon was rockin’ the tight pants too, and he looked good.

Corzine Fundraiser in my Google Ads

admin — Mon, 25 May 2009 15:36:04 +0000

Again from the Google AdWords File:

Ads for Jon’s fundraiser for Corzine are showing up in the ads on my Google searches today. I wonder if he’s trying to pull in new campaign contributors (who otherwise wouldn’t contribute), or if he just can’t get anyone to cough up $50 a head for his fundraiser dinner in the current economic climate.

I’m sure these tickets must have been offered to his usual campaign contributors first… or maybe not. The ad is phrased in such a way as to make it less obvious that it’s an ad from Corzine’s campaign. The headline of the ad just says “See Jon Bon Jovi for $50″. They’re clearly trying to suck in people who aren’t politically interested.

(Incidentally, $50 still only buys you a seat in the nosebleed section–just like a real tour.)

Raising Funds for Corzine?

admin — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:45:56 +0000

According to this article, Jon will be doing an acoustic concert to raise money for Jon Corzine’s re-election campaign.

This is a brilliant maneuver on Corzine’s part–it’ll get money out of Bon Jovi fans who may or may not actually support his campaign.

Personally I won’t be going. Honestly, I’m not fond of the acoustic versions of Bon Jovi songs–the auto-ratings on the songs from This Left Feels Right in Windows Media Player on my computer all show up at 1.5 stars (or broken hearts in the Zune software). I doubt that I’d be getting all that much enjoyment out of this, especially since I don’t even live in New Jersey, so re-electing Corzine isn’t even remotely a priority for me.