Saturday night live on...Saturday

What to say about performance on SNL,Richie's playing was terrible,he made errors on both songs in solo sections and the chords sounded out of tune,can he even play his own simple solo accurate anymore without occasional errors,is it a hand problem because of accident or general drinking problem again or something else,one thing is certain IMO Rich the Jersey Star,King of The Swing is slowly losing his namesake.And what about Jon,his voice is deteriorating,even at whole step down versions of WWWB,ST he is struggling to match the notes,now days he's mostly singing from nose and barely uses strong and power voice shaping from lungs and throat,on the other hand if he learned to breathe from the stomach he could save the voice strings and still hit the high or long notes,but the first step should be to quit the smoking...

IMO since TC promo both Jon and Richie are shadows of MSG 08 performance and MSG 08 is shadow of late 80/early 90 shows...the rest of guys are ok and you just can't but not to ask yourself question are Jon and Richie deserve the same faith that Jon preached about Alec John Such for his playing/performance abilities and his departure?

i think ST is a hard song to sing but to your point if its being stepped down already - you are only playing 2 songs - you gotta leave all out there on the field for two nationally seen songs....

but i will tell you i think them being in game shape has a lot to do with it - i was at all 10 newark shows and they PALED i mean PALED in comparison to MSG finale - jon could barely breathe at newark and the band was so tight at MSG tightest ive seen them in years this last tour -so if they are going out for 2 years with lots of mini breaks we could see a good return to form -

they are not in game shape

and i am concerned for richie...to the point that i feel it just might be possible this tour is also partly so soon and so long for him to have something to do while fighting the good fight....

again - i think the first clues of this were on inside the actors studio and every performance since then, but his voice still sounds good - though thats a little off as well...

i hope im totally wrong...

I did notice during inside the actors studio that the licks Richie was doing on prayer seemed a bit off, and when I saw Jon doing the solo I was kind of caught off guard. Like a WTF? moment so to speak.

****, the clips are gone ! Anyone knows where to find them now ?

I tihnk we're all a bit hard on the band's live performances, but that's because we've seen so many of them, and some have been off the hook. There aren't many bands who sound all that great on ANY TV show. Not trying to make excuses, but this is something all artists say. It's not all their own sound and equipment, staging, etc. It throws them off a bit.

I've come to realize that no matter what the group does there will be people happy or not happy.Is there anything the band has done right in the last three months? My daughter said to me during Superman that Richie was overpowering Jon.Then when they played WWWB she said it seemed that they turned down his Mike.

I hope you are too. Unfortunately there are a few too many little things that keep adding up to Richie not being on his game. He should be able to play this stuff with one arm behind his back (so to speak) in comparison to the way he used to play.

I don't like the way he seems to have too much makeup on much of the time these days. After a certain age adding more makeup actually makes you look older, not younger. Surely someone among his band members or advisers could give him some better advice

I guess we shall see.

Everyone seems to be focusing on Richie... I think Jon looks terribly tired!! Tired of doing this...

I checked. Neither song was done a whole step down, the usual half step.

I thought WWWB was much better than Superman Tonight, by a mile. I agree that Jon does look tired and did sound like he had a cold but by the end of WWWB I saw the "magic" was still there.

Richie does look a little rough, i agree with Kathleen he has on waaay too much makeup and i really hope that nothing is wrong with him

Whoever said Jon looks tired of this, hmmm he doesnt always love doing television but i did have a slight pain in my heart when on Jimmy Fallon Richie said how they are booked to be on tour through Summer 2010 and Jon replied so disgustedly "Don't remind me"