Posts Tagged ‘Slippery When Wet’

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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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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Should Bon Jovi play all of Slippery When Wet in concert?

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Lately there has been a trend among a lot of rock bands to play complete albums in concert, especially on the anniversary of the original release. Judas Priest recently performed British Steel in its entirety in concert, and I have a live recording of Dio’s Holy Diver.

The 25th anniversary of Slippery When Wet is coming up soon, and it occurred to me that that would be the perfect time for Bon Jovi to join this trend. The 25th is a big anniversary, and Slippery When Wet is the album that made the band famous.

The problem is that Slippery When Wet is mostly known for containing three separate, very famous songs. It isn’t quite the same as British Steel, where the album as a whole is the iconic entity. While everybody knows Prayer, Wanted and Bad Name, the rest of the songs on the album aren’t anywhere near as well known.

Obviously, serious Bon Jovi fans know that the rest of the album is excellent, not just the three iconic songs that it contains. However, songs like Let It Rock and Never Say Goodbye are pretty much unknown to more casual fans. While a performance of the entire album would be a gift to the hardcore fans, everybody else would probably be sitting around scratching their heads and wondering what happened to It’s My Life.

Also, I would prefer hearing all of New Jersey performed live instead, and I suspect most of the hardcore fans would have the same preference. (That, or These Days, which would be really offputting for casual fans!) It doesn’t have the name recognition that Slippery When Wet does, and we’d have to wait a few more years for its 25th, but it does have more of the band’s hits on it, even if they aren’t as famous as the Big Three. I suspect New Jersey would work better as a whole-album performance.

Either way, I don’t see Bon Jovi doing it. Their current concert lineup works well for them, even if it does get tiresome for the fans that attend a lot of concerts. Doing all of Slippery When Wet would shake things up a bit too much.

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