A review by Matthias Holzer / holzer01@gmx.at

Now this was a great show! No sign of Jon being sick. I don't know what happened in Padova, but this was simply great. Two and a half hour of Bon Jovi music at its best.

When I entered the stadium shortly after 18 p.m. (I had a rather good seat, middle row, exactly in front of the stage) the first opening act "Short people" was already playing. Sorry for the boys, even though they are from Austria, but I didn't like them very much. They didn't seem to have too many own songs, so they played Mozart music on electric guitar, poor "Falco" covers in hard rock style and things like that. The second support act, the Swiss band "Gotthard", was a lot better! I didn't expect an opening act to be so good. Their music style reminded me of early Bon Jovi, the singer had a great voice (sounded somewhere between JBJ and Joey Tempest of Europe). They got rather much applause (for a support band).

Finally at 8:30, Bon Jovi entered the stage with the Empire State Building elevator scene. When they started with "One wild night", I thought I've never seen a lame crowd like this. The part of the standing crowd near the stage was rockin', in the seats I couldn't notice any movement at all. Thank God it got better during the show, the third song "You give love a bad name" could break the ice that seemed to freeze the crowd. My personal favorites at this show were "Raise your hands" (what a great decision to bring this wonderful song back on the stage), "In these arms" (another favorite of me as an old KTF-maniac), "Always" (I'm not so much into ballads, but this performance was breathtaking), "It's my life", "Wild in the streets" (a lot of Slippery today, but that's fully OK with me), "Blaze of glory" (WOW - what a great surprise, with the band it sounds so much better than on the solo album), and of course "Keep the faith" and "Livin' on a prayer". A lot of fireworks was set off during some songs, especially at KTF with every "Faith". Thank God they played the "electrified" version of Livin', I hate it so much when great songs like this are destroyed by playing them in boring unplugged versions. The show ended with "Tequila", "Twist and shout" and more big fireworks. The band disappeared in the "elevator", and after many encores at 23:00 it was really over.

The set list (maybe not the 100 % exact order):

One wild night
Raise your hands
You give love a bad name
In these arms
Born to be my baby
Always
I got the girl
Wild in the streets
Captain Crash
Just older
It's my life
Blaze of glory
Lay your hands on me
I'll sleep when I'm dead
Bad medicine
Someday I'll be Saturday night
Keep the faith
Say it isn't so
Wanted dead or alive
Livin' on a prayer
Tequila / Twist and shout

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