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.