Question about Bon Jovi - In My Arms At Christmas

Aloha !

I'm organizing my bootlegs and on one of my discs I found the bootleg In My Arms At Christmas. It says that it's recorded at 20-12-1993 but this is not entirely true since on some songs the sound (which is soundboard quality) is different, Jon's vocals are different and the atmosphere is different as well.

Tracklist:
1.Keep The Faith
2.Blaze Of Glory
3.In These Arms
4.You Give Love A Bad Name
5.Born To Be My Baby
6.I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
7.Blood On Blood
8.Bad Medicine
9.Shout
10.Livin' On A Prayer
12.I'll Be There For You
12.I'd Die For You
13.Wild In The Streets

I'm almost certain that Faith and Blaze are indeed from the Red Bank show, since they sound identical to the ones that were officially released as b-sides from singles from the Faith era. A few songs have a beginning that's a fade in.

Anyone knows any information about this? Was it a radio broadcast from 1993? It contains the following tracks:

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

I have 2 different bootlegs with the date Dec 20, 1993. One appears to be a fan club show ie. Tico singing Waltzing Matilda and the sound is bad. The other appears to have the same 13 tracks that you just listed and the sound is great. Mine is called Live 93, New Jersey. I never figured out the difference - perhaps you could clear it up?

Kathleen

Aloha !

I think the show of which you think is a fanclub show is the Christmas show from that year. I don't have that one.

Maybe you could compare the very bad audience recordings to soundboard recordings from the other disc to check if they're the same performances?

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

I'll check it out tonight Seb - it's taken me longer than usual to get home because it snowing pretty hard here. I'll let you know tomorrow.

Kathleen

Hi Seb - sorry I didn't get back to you sooner today. I finally checked both shows that I had. One show is on my computer and is in mp3 format - probably downloaded from the old file sharing forum. The other one is on a CD received in a trade. Unfortunately it turned out that the CD is mp3 sourced too, damnit. Since I was listening I checked it out. Both shows have the first 10 tracks in common:

1.Keep The Faith
2.Blaze Of Glory
3.In These Arms
4.You Give Love A Bad Name
5.Born To Be My Baby
6.I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
7.Blood On Blood
8.Bad Medicine
9.Shout
10.Livin' On A Prayer

They are identical sounding too - very good quality.
The show on CD has the next three tracks the same as yours:

12.I'll Be There For You
12.I'd Die For You
13.Wild In The Streets

The show on my computer has the following four tracks instead of the above three:

Waltzing Matilda - Tico
Stranger in This Town - Richie
Blood Money - Jon
It's Only Rock and Roll

The sound is actually pretty good on these four also after listening again.

To confuse matter even more - I checked Nige's site and he has a completely different setlist:

Final Faith (This is a different title too)

Track List

1, Help!
2, With A Little Help From My Friends
3, Bad Medicine
4, Let It Bleed (David Bryan on Vocals)
5, Keep The Faith
6, Waltzing Matilda (Tico Torres on Vocals)
7, Love For Sale
8, Stranger In This Town (Richie Sambora on Vocals)
9, Blood Money
10, Blaze Of Glory
11, Dry County

Disk Two

1, Lay Your Hands On Me
2, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead ~ Jumpin' Jack Flash
3, Livin' On A Prayer
4, The Answer (Richie Sambora on Vocals)
5, Wanted Dead Or Alive
6, Blood On Blood
7, You Give Love A Bad Name
8, Born To Be My Baby
9, Just Like A Woman
10, Bed Of Roses
11, I Wish Everyday Could Be Like Christmas
12, It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (But I Like It)
13, Never Say Goodbye

Recorded live on 20th December 1993 at Count Basie Theatre, Red Bank, New Jersey, USA

I don't know if this makes any sense to you - it sure doesn't to me. I'll also post this on Dry County in case anyone else has some information. I have asked about this discrepancy before and not gotten an answer though.

Kathleen

I probably should have replied to this earlier. The "In My Arms At Xmas" CD was not recorded at the Count Basie show at all (maybe the first 3 tracks are as they have been released officially).

The others are compiled from various radio broadcasts from 1993 - mainly Milton Keynes I think. I don't know why it's been labelled as the Christmas show - presumably to sell a few more copies.