Box Set Revisited

Good point though, considering the co-songwriters and the fact that it's the exact same grouping as Two Story Town that puts it into that era for me.

The box set was the first BJ release I got straight to myself (and no longer had to "borrow" my dad's records). Radio, I Get A Rush and the Always demo have always been my favorites off it. Goddammit, Jon's vocals used to be amazing...

https://youtu.be/RRD3xidAhM4

Just listen to that key change - if you don't get chills, I'll buy you a beer.

Great Research!!!! I knew you had a purpose
However, checking the songwriters is usually the first rule of thumb. I'm getting lazy in my old age (that's twice now)...

But yes, I googled Dean Grakal and his time with Bon Jovi was during that 1999 Crush time frame... Along with Mark Hudson who is also attached with Jon during the late 90's...

Mark is also a producer and anything with his name attached usually comes with a higher vocal. Last Chance Train for example almost sound unnatural however it's one of my favorite songs off the Box so go figure. It would be interesting to see what he could do with Jon's voice now... He could probably take off 15 years like they do with the Actors using CGI...

All 4 songs below are credited with Mark. They all have a very similar feel...

You Can Sleep While I Dream
Last Chance Train
Crazy Love
Someday Just Might Be Tonight

Bottom line, we'll keep it at 1999 and I'll update the main page with that information... Great Research Yovana!!!

Those Box Set songs are tough ones most of the time due to the Diamond-Ring-theory.

Jon has said on numerous occasions that there have always been songs they went back to because they weren't deemed "ready" yet at one point or didn't fit the album's theme in the end (I remember at one point Jon saying that the KTF album essentially had been written around the track Diamond Ring, yet it didn't make the cut).

Miss Fourth of July was written in 1991, yet the recording we know sounds like it had been recorded later than that. Drive was written in 1991, but released in 1997 and maybe even reworked there. I'm still convinced that they did reconsider Starting All Over Again at some point because the Box Set version sounds like he has to strain his vocals considerably and is much more out of his comfort zone.

I think they revisited some of their song ideas while preparing for Crush, simply because they had no idea where in which direction they should go and the lack of coherence on the record shows that.

And (I may be the only one here) to me some of the material from the post-DA/pre-Crush vacuum sounds somewhat similar to some of the Crossroad/Open All Night songs.

All points provided for You Can Sleep While I Dream are definintely valid, so I have two theories about that one:
1. The original song sketch really is from around 1993/94 since the whole song structure and melody fit too well. However, Jon may have decided that it needed different lyrics and that songwriter team worked out new ones for that after having finished copying One of Us from Joan Osbourne.
In the end, the song wasn't the direction the band wanted to take and it went back into the vault and then onto the Box Set.

2. Jon trying to emulate Saturday Night. Last year, he said in a Q&A that his regret about These Days was that he didn't put Saturday Night on there and made it the first single. So he's always had a soft spot for that song and may have wanted to do a similar one for Crush, hence the chord progressions being so close.

Now we should blame Obie for not labeling anything properly and leaving us with so much stuff to figure out about it.

All great points and let's just add that's probably the reason why Obie said they didn't know the dates... because it's so scattered, how do you credit a specific time???

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I agreee with you on that one. If they had worked on it in 1999 again, that's probably why it was labeled that way.

Yet I feel that even Obie doesn't analyze the material as much as we do and hence he didn't think that would cause so many discussions.
For the BWJBJ fans, these information were probably more than enough

I'd think Obie is the only person in the organization that cares about the songs as much as we do. Love his work or hate him I gotta defend the guy knowing how much of a project this was and how he made sure it was filled with stuff we didn't have.

Also I don't buy the Hey Hey's put it closer to mid 90's. Too many Hey Hey Heys throughout the entire discography (Something to Believe In, Lost Highway, Prostitute, Alive, What's Left of Me, etc...)

This wasn't meant as an attack towards Obie. But you gotta admit that the way we're taking all that stuff apart (in terms of analyzing every detail) is probably far above what they thought about it when putting the release information together.

It's not about the hey hey's, but the whole chord structure, melody, feel is why I put it there, at least originally.
Though we'll probably never know for sure.

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How elusive is Obie? Could somebody arrange for an interview with him? Obviously not about spilling any internal details, just about some of the track's origins.

That'd actually be quite a cool idea. Is he on Twitter or something?

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