A review by Promonex / h_promonex@yahoo.de

Oh damn, what a great night!! This was my second BJ concert and i doubted that they'd do any better than on their Crush Tour, especially since their current album doesn't seem to be that popular, with people saying they're losing their style and Richie getting rusty (less solos, more powerchords on Bounce). But this concert has proven me totally wrong!! The stage was totally high-tech with tons of light effects, six movable screens which finally composed one big screen and a background that changed each song! Richie was better than ever (did he always look so old??), playing lots of solos (unlike on the album) and even taking the lead vocals of "I'll Be There For You" and pumped it up to about 12 minutes!!! Now that was one great performance!
But let's start at the beginning...

The Maimarktgelaende is a huge area where each year the biggest industry exhibition of the region takes place. Many shops and brands took advantage of this and designed it like a fair. When my girlfriend and I arrived at about 7.30 p.m. the fairground was already totally filled up and the support act Live were rockin quite well, but, as usual, people were rather waiting for the main act and didn't quite notice the pretty good supporters.

At 8.00 Live left the stage and 30 minutes later the grand headliners appeared! Man, what an atmosphere when finally Jon entered the stage!! They instantly brought the crowd in a good mood by beginning their performance with the title song of the album and the tour; in my opinion not a good choice, coz people weren't heated up enough yet to bounce along (well, i was ^_^ ), but at least it was a good opener. They heated the spirit even more up when they played their classic "You Give Love A Bad Name". The whole crowd was singing along and clapping their hands. The enthusiasm flowed away a bit during "Wild in the Streets". But when the audience noticed, that that ballad afterwards was a light version of "Livin On A Prayer" it came back immediately. After rocking the crowd once again they continued with "Everyday" from their current album. I was quite disappointed from this song, not due to the in fact great performance of the band, but due to the poor activity of the crowd: very few hands were in the air and even fewer people sang with Jon. This confirmed me the antipathy to the new album which i mentioned above already. However, they brought the spirit back again quite fast by returning to the classics: "Runaway", "Keep the Faith", "Wanted Dead or Alive", "In These Arms" and "It's My Life" were a good order to heat things up! People were singing, clapping, waving, applauding, screaming!!! With "The Distance" another new song followed, which was appropriately accompanied by a moving street map of the United States in the background. The next song was "Bed of Roses", another really great song! Waving hands, lighters and sparklers were all over the place and during the chorus you really had problems of understanding Jon, so loud was the crowd!! Afterwards came some more songs from their new album. "Undivided" and "Misunderstood" were both quite good, but the interaction of the audience was rather mediocre. The mood dropped down when they reached the flaw of the concert: "Joey"! In my opinion a big mistake to play that song since nobody, really nobody was carried away!! But afterwards came my personal highlight of the evening: Richie singing "I'll Be There For You"! Oh man, what a great performance, what mad guitars!! Richie pumped the song up to 12 minutes and when he finally finished the audience was still singing, demanding for more! After a while Jon gave them some more by playing the very last part of the song again, singing together with the crowd, which applauded like hell afterwards!! After this experience the people were rather spoiled and the amazement during "Blaze of Glory", "Hook Me Up", "Born To Be My Baby" and "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" wasn't as great as if played before Richie's "I'll Be There For You", but of course they also were great. BJ finally really excited the audience with "Raise Your Hands" again and all the people did as they were told. At the end they played "These Days" and the entire crowd sang along again.

Ok, it was over, the Bounce logo was flashing and turning on the screen and some people headed for the exits already. But the major part begged for more, singing, clapping, screaming, whistling. After letting them nearly get desperate by waiting for a few minutes (or at least it appeared like minutes to me) Bon Jovi re-appeared and played "Just Older" and "Someday I'll Be Saturday Night" in their encore. The crowd, glad to have its idols back, got really excited and interacted quite a lot and still couldn't get enough when BJ left the stage again.

So here it came again, the ceremony of begging for some more. And again BJ gave in and came back with "Captain Crash & The Beauty Queen from Mars". The following "Bad Medicine" made the people sing along again and having fun. Fast beats by Tico, short riffs by Richie, Jon throwing his head from one side to another faster and faster and the view on the screens changing at the same pace let us predict that it's as good as over yet. But it came different as we thought: Jon's obviously last yell of the evening was in fact only the beginning of the grand final!! Coz this particular yell was only the first "Shout" of their great Isley-Isley-Isley cover and there were more to come! The public made party by shouting, singing, clapping, waving, whatever until the point of exhaustion, while Jon presented the other band members and let the audience give them their well-deserved credits by applauding and whistling. I just wonder why none of the others took the word to let Jon enjoy the same, but whatever. Now the concert was REALLY over and after this grand second encore the people were saturated and thousands of people heading for the exits. Those who still hadn't enough were watching the screens where now video clips from BJ's current tour were shown and enjoyed a can o' beer, a pizza or whatever they still could get in the fairgrounds...

So this was it, the greatest concert I ever visited. I hope you enjoyed reading my review and I'm looking forward to meet lots of you guys and gals on one of their next tours ^_^

So long,
Keep the Faith!
Promonex

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