Source: Montreal Gazette

It's the plight of the popular legacy band: to stick with the hits that brought you to prominence or to trudge along with potentially deflating new material. With a 26-song set, Montreal favourites Bon Jovi dipped their fingers in both pies, but commendably weren't sheepish about giving a supportive packed house (even filling the seats behind the stage) ample portions of their upcoming 12th studio release, What About Now, which comes out March 8.

So what about their latest? The self-aware rockers have grown accustomed to repurposing their existing hits (as in how You Give Love a Bad Name begot It's My Life begot Have A Nice Day), so the only thing that separated the new ones from their existing catalogue is familiarity, and even then the quartet (with two extra players in the live setting) have a knack for repeatable slogans.

Considering how often the New Jersey natives perform here, it was probably a welcome change for the band's many die-hards to hear some new music wedged between the standards. Compared to their stadium rock contemporaries, Bon Jovi keep things pretty minimal when it comes to visual or physical elements. Frontman Jon Bon Jovi, still getting good mileage from his Top Gun Maverick persona (minus the aviators), especially runs counter to the notion that a stentorian frontman should be scissor kicking non-stop for three hours. He spent most of the show standing and crouching in the same spot, gesturing his hands like he was guiding a landing plane, and even when he did make his way to the circular protrusion in front of the stage, through the crowd, it was done under the cover of darkness.

-----

Read the rest of the article by following the link below...

Related URL: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Jovi+gives+Montrealers+taste+tunes/7963899/story.html

back to news index / central page