| 20 November 2000 - Chicago, IL, USA Concert Review |
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Jovi follows the script, and there's nothing wrong with that.
This concert was the fourth time I’ve seen Bon Jovi, and like all the rest, they gave a solid, entertaining performance. Since the concert sold out, I wound up paying someone well over face value for my tickets, and don’t have any regrets about doing so. Most of the other reviews have mentioned how well the show was, and I really can’t add too much. The band was really rockin!
Sure, some of the 'personal' commentary by Jon was probably the same as he used in a number of other places. But I'm more than willing, along with the other 20,000 people that were there, to pretend for one night that that wasn't the case.
Having said that, let me just make a few comments about things that I think could maybe have been done better.
First of all, for their first encore, they did a long version of ‘I’ll Be There For You’ that I absolutely LOVED! It would have been the perfect thing to close the second encore with; it was just that satisfying. But anyone in the audience who can name more than one movie Jon has been in, could tell that there was going to be another encore – since they hadn’t played ‘Dead or Alive’ yet. I would have liked it better if they used that at the end of the main set. That way the audience really wouldn’t have known what to expect for the encores. Then ‘I’ll Be There For You’ would have been the perfect capper.
The second issue I have is their slow song selection. Jovi has some serious power ballads to draw from (I would have paid double to hear “Bed of Roses”!). But of their first four slow songs, two were from the new album, and two were fast songs (Runaway, and Someday I’ll be Saturday Night) slowed down to a crawl. For these two songs I think everyone was waiting for them to sing a verse or two, and then kick it into the usual faster tempo. No can do.
But as I said, they made it up for it with ‘I’ll Be There For You’, and ‘Never Say Goodbye’.
So don’t think I didn’t love everything else about the show. Believe me, I’m waiting with the rest of you for the dates of their next tour! |
