OWN live album - Why?

We all know Bon Jovi are praised on being an awesome live band so why the lame OWN album?

Here's my opinion. It all comes down to royalties which = money.

Why didn't the band choose songs when they were performed better in the 80's? Because Alex played bass on them. Yes, he played on Runaway and In & Out of Love which I'm sure he got paid for but that's only approx 10% of the album. Why give him more?

Why not choose better covers like Drift Away? Because the ones an the OWN album were already released on other albums and the rights were already paid for.

Why only one disk? That's easy. Keep the cost down anticipating that the album wouldn't sell anyway.

Here's my gripe. IMO, OWN (and most Greatest Hit Albums) are for the fans. Call it a thank you album or whatever. A band that's been around for 20 years (at that time) should have tones of amazing live stuff, which we all know they do. They record every show. Even if the band had to fund a little themselves, why wouldn't they want to get it right? Putting out an awesome live album after the success of Crush should have been a slam dunk for them. They should have made Kato, I mean Obie, do some work by going into the live vaults and pull out some amazing stuff that us fans have never heard before. Instead, they have him trying to be funny with those ridiculous on-line question & answers (I'm not even sure he was doing that back then but still....).


And here's my opinion of TLFR:

I'm sure it had something to do with artistic creativity but part of it was Jon trying to reinvent the songs in a lower key so he could get away with singing them live that way ongoing. Yea Jon, great idea. Take 12 classics and rework them. Awesome! He actually should have done that with some of the less popular songs. Probably would have been more successful. Nah, probably not.

Aloha !

One Wild Night was released because the record company told the band they could cash in on the success of It's My Life and release a greatest hits, but Jon is against greatest hits record. Therefore the One Wild Night album was released in order to promote the next tour planned for 2001 and to get rid of the record company's demand for a greatest hits.

I still remember how proud Obie blasted on bonjovi.com how much work it had been and how he had listened to thousands of tapes. When the tracklist was revealed 8 songs of the album had already been released before. The only song of which a live version had never been released was Something To Believe In yet the version on OWN live is edited and there's a good soundboard version available. Thousands of tape my ass, this was mixed in a week and even in a week I could do better.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

A Greatest Hits album is not for fans. We have had the songs for years and some of us probably have multiple copies so unless we collect, buying another Greatest Hits doesn't make much sense. Greatest Hits are for the casual fans or someone who might buy it for a few songs they know and will get to discover more of their "best" songs all on one album in hopes of turning them onto the band and the rest of their catalog.

Now you bring up an interesting point and I'd even venture to take it one step further. For those who do not know this, Metallica does the same thing in that they record every show. Then, they turn around and sell them to their fans. I don't understand why Bon Jovi doesn't do this to some degree because a good amount of us believe that they are in it for the money. What a great way to earn more money because I'm sure just like Metallica, there are a great amount of fans who would like to listen to every show and would be willing to pay for them because they are soundboard quality.

Obie is a joke of a sound engineer and his schtick was somewhat bearable at first. Now he just comes across as a twat; however, he can't be entirely to blame for OWN. You can bet the house Jon had the final say and liked it or thought it was a good release or wanted to release it that way, etc.



I think the boat has sailed on this one and you aren't on it. I do belive it was some creative avenue the guys wanted to do and did it they way they wanted to and didn't give a crap. I don't think it was so that he could sing them in a lower note because they would never perform some of their classics that way. Sure they did a few versions primarily on the HAND tour as a somewhat acoustic portion of the set and it seems that the acoustic portions have returned but this time no one is complaining because they are being done properly and with songs we as a fanbase as a whole like.

None of those versions released on OWN are the best live versions the band did of those songs...with the exception of Runaway. But I heard better ones from every other song.

It's the flow of the album that really throws it off. Also the fact that the back states that the song OWN is from Toronto shows how fast they stapled this together

Lay Your Hands on Me should have opened the album, let alone be on there somewhere

"WHY" is pretty much what comes to my mind when I think of the live album too. I considered it their worst album until The Circle came along because of what it COULD have been and what it SHOULD have been.

One Wild Night is just sad. It could have been an amazing live album for the fans but instead we got versions that we already had and a weird tracklist.

This band should have released a 2 CD live album back then. And another at the end of the Live 2011 tour with songs from The Circle and Live 2011 tour.

Edit: I remembered that, when this was released, I really liked the versions of Prayer and In And Out of Love. I guess that worked for the casuals.

I agree that from a fan point of view this album is a big disappointment. Because we all know what this band was able to deliver live and this album shows this capability only rudimentary.
But this album wasn't for the fans. Like somebody else already said it was released to benefit from the success of Crush and It's My Life, to teach the new audience some of the back catalogue and to satisfy the label's demand for a greatest hits. And I think all three goals were achieved with it.
When I became a fan around 2003 OWN was one of the first albums I bought myself (through my father I already had Blaze, Crossroad, TD, Crush and Bounce). And I absolutely loved that album! Because as a newbie I hadn't had a clue about the live performances and so couldn't classify that album without all that knowledge I have now. I was blown away by the power on that album.
Well, since I started to collect countless live performances from every era my rating for that album changed about 180 degrees. But back then I thought it was just great and so I can't blame the band for making anything wrong with it.

It was certainly a disappointment as their first live album, but I did manage to enjoy parts of it. I actually like "It's My Life" and "Just Older" as presented. I got a bit of a kick from the edit on the intro to "In and Out of Love" (and actually took advantage of the fact that the ending was present to mix it in to the cut on the 7,800 F Japanese Remaster Bonus so it was complete versus fading out for no reason. I finally got a hold of a pristine Laser Disc rip of the Tokyo show not long after.) Although edited, I liked that particular performance of Something To Believe In was included, as it was rather obscure. Runaway from Tokyo was at least an excellent choice of performance.

Otherwise, the album is killed the choices made. Bad Medicine, Prayer and Bad Name from Zurich? Ugh! An uninspired Keep the Faith? Ditto for Wanted.

I know it's been praised here, but that version of One Wild Night does nothing for me to this day. What was really the point? It's never been performed live and it went nowhere even with a music video for it. It's inferior to the original, which is what should have been made into a video and released as a single.

I think hey were either unconsiously or on purpose maybe copying a bit of Ricky Martin in that. I think Ricky Martin was pretty big around that time. The sound of that mix echoes so much of Ricky's sound around that time (which Desmond had a big hand in creating also), and even Jon's choice of clothing in that video is very much like his Versace crazy era....