| Time seems to stand still as Bon Jovi rocks on |
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Boston Globe article
Like fellow populist success story REO Speedwagon before it, Bon Jovi was never going to be mistaken for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame material, but what the band did, it did with a ruthless efficiency. With hooks aplenty to grab the pop crowd and just enough crunch and power to grab the ear of the metalheads, its songs may have been aggressively middle of the road, but it defined anthemic '80s rock as much as anyone.
Showcasing a liberal mixture of career-spanning hits and tracks from Bon Jovi's latest album, ''Have a Nice Day," Friday's show at the TD Banknorth Garden showed how well the formula has held up, as well as how little it has changed. Every song had a catchy simplicity, and new material such as the charging title track and the vaguely rootsy ''Who Says You Can't Go Home?" sounded right at home alongside ''Bad Medicine" and ''You Give Love a Bad Name."
The band's audience-friendliness resulted in singalongs on ''Born to Be My Baby," ''Livin' on a Prayer," and ''Wanted Dead or Alive," but it was a double-edged sword. Jon Bon Jovi seemed to play to the cameras as much as to the crowd, and the video on the stage-size screen that served as a backdrop made it tempting to ignore the action onstage and just watch television. Opening the show with the singer on a satellite platform out by the mixing board (a stunt he repeated from another spot during ''Blaze of Glory") gave those without front-row tickets a close-up of him and allowed him to high-five and hug audience members on the way back to the stage, but it also completely drew away attention from the rest of the band.
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