The next post (when I can get to it) will return to the review of the Live from London DVD. (I promise, I really will finish that out soon! I haven’t got much left to go.)
But tonight, I got home from work, and I was feeling pretty tired and worn out. I stuck a frozen pizza in the microwave, and turned on the TV–straight to VH1 Classic airing Bon Jovi performing ‘Always’ at the London Calling festival.
I was channel-surfing late on Wednesday night, and ran across a re-run of Saturday Night Live. They were cutting to commercial, and I was about to proceed with my channel-surfing when they announced that Bon Jovi was the musical guest.
I saw Bon Jovi’s performance on the American Music Awards last night.
I did manage to tune in for the webcast at 8 yesterday. This was not a show that I was going to miss. (I know my own brain; I programmed the alarm on my cell phone to go off to remind me.)
I’ve been lucky with the random channel surfing this week. Yesterday, I stumbled across Alice Cooper’s episode of Behind the Music, which I hadn’t gotten to see before.
I was channel-surfing late last night, and stumbled across Bon Jovi’s episode of Unplugged on VH1 Classic. It was a nice treat to find Jon on TV after a long day at work followed by getting completely lost while out running errands.
I found a video of the cast performing on America’s Got Talent on Blabbermouth.net.
Maroulis’ performance on ‘I Wanna Rock’ was interesting. I’m very used to the original version, and Maroulis was actually bringing a more melodic sound to the performance rather than belting it out the way that Dee Snider did. He actually takes it and makes it into a real Broadway song, which is pretty cool. Plus, Dee Snider himself shows up halfway through the song.
‘Don’t Stop Believin’ came out much better as far as I’m concerned. The song actually lends itself amazingly well to an ensemble production. It comes out rather drastically different from the original recording, but once again they’ve taken it and made it perfect for use in a Broadway musical. Also, this song seemed to be better suited to Maroulis’ vocal style than ‘I Wanna Rock’. ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ really lets him shine.
I’m not a big fan of awards shows. I know some people just love them, but I mostly just find them tedious. Awards shows are about the only thing that makes me wish my TV had picture-in-picture. With that one feature I could have kicked back and watched a movie or played a game on the Xbox and just kept an eye on the ceremony until Dave was up.
That being said, it’s good to see Dave get so much recognition for his work. Honestly, I had fully expected that he might pick up an award or two, but I did not expect Memphis to get ‘Best Musical’! (I was sure that Fela! or American Idiot was going to nab that spot–they were both major critics’ darlings. Especially American Idiot, which was based a pretty good album that was also a critical darling.) But sometimes it’s nice to be surprised.
This also vindicates Dave’s songwriting and composing skills. Richie and Jon may have been the members of the band that were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame–but I’d argue that Dave is at least their equal, especially when it comes to the musical composition. (Personally, I’d actually say that he’s better than Jon when it comes right down to it.)