Posts Tagged ‘Jon Bon Jovi’

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My Current Top 10 Songs (June 2010)

Friday, June 4th, 2010

There are the songs that you consider to be your favorites, and then there are the songs that you actually listen to.  And at least for me, the two don’t always line up.  Here, I present my current top 10 songs, according to the play count in Windows Media Player:

  1. Poison
    Artist: Alice Cooper
    Album: Trash
    I knew I liked this song–after all, I specifically ordered Trash just to get it.  But I had no idea that I played it so much that it had gotten all the way to #1!

  2. Hell is Living Without You
    Artist: Alice Cooper
    Album: Trash
    Not a surprise here–this is actually one of my favorites, being a collaboration between Alice, Richie, Jon and Desmond Child, and I knew I listened to it a lot.  It’s in most of my custom playlists.

  3. Cum on Feel the Noize
    Artist: Quiet Riot
    Okay, a bit of a surprise here.  I like Quiet Riot well enough, but they aren’t one of my all-time favorite bands.  But evidently I really like this song.

  4. Roulette
    Artist: Bon Jovi
    Album:  Bon Jovi
    Odd choice here.  I’m guessing because it shows up early in the list when I list out all of the songs in my collection, so I end up starting here a lot.  Otherwise, I don’t really seek this one out.

  5. This Ain’t a Love Song
    Artist: Bon Jovi
    Album: These Days
    I would have actually expected this one to rank a bit higher–in the #1 or 2 range, because this is actually a favorite that I do seek out on a fairly regular basis.

  6. Rainbow in the Dark
    Artist: Dio
    Album: Holy Diver
    I would have put this one as another of my top favorites–I know I seek this one out a lot, and include it in my playlists.

  7. Why Aren’t You Dead
    Artist: Bon Jovi
    Album: 100,000,000 Million Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong
    This isn’t a song that I truly think of as one of my favorites–if I were asked, I probably wouldn’t list it in my favorites.  But I do include in a lot of playlists, which most likely accounts for its rank.

  8. Temptation
    Artist: Bon Jovi
    Album: 100,000,000 Million Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong
    This is another song that I would have expected to clock in much higher.  This is one of the songs that I truly do think of as a favorite–but I guess I don’t actually listen to it as often as I would have thought.

  9. Santa Fe
    Artist: Jon Bon Jovi
    Album: Blaze of Glory
    Another well-liked but not essential track.  Evidently I listen to it way more than I thought I did.

  10. Nobody’s Hero / Livin’ on a Prayer (demo)
    Artist: Bon Jovi
    Album: 100,000,000 Million Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong
    I think this only got up this high because I replayed it a bunch of times when I was writing up a random song post on it.  I can’t think of any other explanation for it.

I find it interesting that there are no songs whatsoever from Stranger In This Town–even though I’ve long considered that to be my favorite album of all time.  Also conspicuously absent–anything from Slippery When Wet–only the most essential Bon Jovi album ever…

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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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Songs that make me cry…

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

I had my Zune on shuffle earlier today, and the song ‘I Want You’ came up. I hadn’t listened to that song in a long time, but it still plays with my emotions whenever I hear it. That gave me the idea to revisit a few of the songs that can make me cry when I hear them.

‘I Want You’ – Bon Jovi
There’s something so heartfelt in this song, that it just gets me. The first few times that I listened to Keep The Faith, this song didn’t particularly stand out. But then one day, it just sank in. I was sitting at my computer playing Bejewled with the stereo on in the background, and the song just hit me like a ton of bricks. There’s something so completely anguished about the chorus, especially at the end.

‘Blood Money’ – Jon Bon Jovi
Whenever I hear this song, I remember the night that I got to hear Jon sing it live at the Prudential Center back in 2007. I wasn’t as familiar with Blaze of Glory back then, so this really stands out as the moment that I first appreciated that song. Plus, the performance that Jon gave that night was completely stellar. It made the lament of the lyrics come to life for me. I just remember how electric that moment was–with just Jon’s voice soaring through the song and into that strange sort of silence that you can only get when thousands of people suddenly go completely quiet.

For some reason, these songs seem to be hardwired straight into my emotions.

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Montreal Gazette Photo Gallery

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

The Montreal Gazette has a genuinely nice review of the Bon Jovi concert. The bonus, however, is the nice set of photos in the gallery that accompanies the article. (If you’re having trouble finding it, click the “Photos” tab at the top of the article.)

The best photo, in my opinion, is the shot of Jon bending over with his guitar. It’s a classic rock star pose, and he actually has a nice expression on his face. (So many concert photos tend to wind up being unflattering when the photographer catches the artist in mid-song.) Plus, there’s a nice slice of hairy chest on display in that one.

Plus, Jon’s wearing leather again. Personally, I’ve always thought that he looked great in black leather–it’s one of my favorite outfits on him. That was my one disappointment when I saw the band during the Lost Highway Tour–Jon wasn’t wearing leather.

Also, he’s got the floppy blond hair back. I love it. Go check out the gallery on their site, it’s great.

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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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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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Random Song: Dyin’ Ain’t Much of a Livin’

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Artist: Jon Bon Jovi
Album: Blaze of Glory

I realized after I had already started this post that I’ve managed to pull two of Jon’s solo songs in a row. It didn’t even occur to me at first because Jon’s two solo albums are so radically different. In a lot of ways, I’m like one of the old fans–I never really could embrace Destination Anywhere, but I sure never had a problem with Blaze of Glory.

Dyin’ Ain’t Much of a Livin’ first made its way onto a lot of my playlists because I could sing along with it. I can sing okay, (at least if I know the song) but I have a fairly limited range. I get bit by my range a lot when I do vocals on Rock Band. I’ll be doing okay, but every once in awhile I’ll hit a song that hangs around right outside of my range.

I like the lyrics on this song as well. With any song off of Blaze of Glory, you need to accept it for what it is–it was a themed work. But in the case of this song, I think the theme of the album actually helped with the songwriting in a lot of ways. Jon’s songwriting is criticized (and often rightly so) for being cliched. In this song though, while it sometimes comes pretty close, it never really descends into a full-blown litany of cliches that it might have been. In a lot of ways, this particular song is one of the closest to poetry that Jon has ever produced.

Maybe with the limited vocal range required for this song, it might make it onto the set list for the next tour. I forgot about it when I did the post on the five rarities I’d like to see included in the set list for the Circle Tour, but it’d fit in with Jon’s limitations and it’s a great song.

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Reader’s Digest Jon Bon Jovi interview

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

I ran across a Reader’s Digest interview with Jon today. Decent article, all told, though there’s not much here that won’t be very familiar to any real fan. And the stock photo that they pulled for the article (a Bounce promo) is hilariously outdated.

What I did find interesting is the question about the sound on The Circle. I don’t get Jon’s answer; the production on this album is anything but simpler. As a matter of fact, it’s overcomplicated and overproduced, as far as I’m concerned, but I’ve complained about that before, when I reviewed the album.

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Random Song: Queen of New Orleans

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Artist: Jon Bon Jovi
Album: Destination Anywhere

The first time that I actually listened to my copy of Destination Anywhere, I found it to be a brutal disappointment. In many ways, it was a very radical departure from the Bon Jovi music that I had been listening to up to that point. I already owned Blaze of Glory, but Blaze wasn’t a big change from New Jersey. In many ways, it was an extension of the direction that the band had been going with that album.

I did however enjoy ‘Queen of New Orleans’ and ‘August 7′. I suspect that it was because these were some of the hardest songs on the album. I got this album when I was really starting to turn away from pure pop music, and that was what put me off of most of the other songs on Destination Anywhere. Also, this was one of the few songs that didn’t sound like the percussion was nothing but a cheap drum machine.

Also, I liked the lyrics to ‘Queen of New Orleans’. Unlike the rest of the album, there was nothing depressing or downbeat about it. It was just a plain fun romp. Also, the lyrics to this song have a great flow–they’re easy to sing along to and the rhythm makes them easy to remember.

To this day, this is still the most-played track from Destination Anywhere if I check the play count in Windows Media Player.

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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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