A review by dence

Friday night certainly rocked in Dublin but I felt the first half of the show was a bit 'routine'. The songs they played from Bounce just don't do it for me (with the exception of the awesome Undivided). I thought the sound on Misunderstood was terrible with Richie's guitar being far too loud. However, the slight disappointment with the first half of the show was more than compensated for by an awesome second half. Born To Be My Baby was terrific and Sleep When I'm Dead is always a treat live. Saturday Night was probably the highlight of the show for me. I love Wanted DOA but I wish they would play it a bit later in the set when it's darker. Shout sounds great at the end of Bad Medicine and These Days is one of the best songs they've ever written. I thought it was funny when Jon was introducing the band and some people in the pit held up cards with Tico's name spelled out on them. Jon wanted the camera guys to get it up on the screen and he asked them to do so a coouple of times but they didn't seem to understand so he said "Do I need to write you guys a book or something?!" and then he turned the camera round himself. Twist And Shout was simply brilliant - everybody was dancing on the pitch and in the stands.

All in all it was a great night. Perfect weather and a great live band but I noticed a lot of the people near us didn't know any of the old tunes that weren't on Crossroad so they were a bit static during Raise Your Hands, Wild In The Streets and Born To Be My Baby. We were at the awesome Milton Keynes show in 2001 and we've also seen them in Wembley Stadium among other places so those concerts always become the standards against which the others are measured. I loved the RDS show in 2000, probably because I reckon Crush is infinitely better than Bounce. We're heading to Hyde Park on Saturday night and I'm expecting to see the best Bon Jovi show ever - I hope I'm not asking too much!

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