The Bounce Album?

That, plus the fact that it got **** all promotion or airplay, was released about 6 months after both the first single and the album, and Jon had actually said that he didn't really care about promoting it outside the US anyway. Which makes it a bit bizarre that the European tour for the album went on to have the best setlists in 10 years. I swear, since the end of the HAND tour, I have no idea what the bands game plan has been, they seem to change it about every five seconds

Bounce had fairly good single releases ... by my count there were 8 non-album tracks released on singles and as bonus tracks on various versions of the album, plus various early demos and acoustic versions of some of the songs from the album, and some live tracks like Celluloid Heroes which you couldn't officially get anywhere else. It's really with HAND that they started doing the "endless live versions of the same song as b-sides" thing.

Also, I don't quite get your reasoning behind "the album didn't sell well so there was no need to release singles". Surely singles are promoting the album?

I like that album pretty much. Undivided, The Distance, Hook Me Up, Right Side of Wrong(Desperado-cover to my ear though) are great songs. But then there are Everyday, Bounce, All About Lovin' You and Love Me Back to Life... What can I say about those songs...well catchy choruses... but that's it. Too easy and stupid to be released... When Bon Jovi is obviously band that does melodic music it isn't enough that they can put together songs that only lean on those catchy choruses...
I still think that Bounce is much better than HAND or LH though... HAND should have been released by some pop artist like Pink becauce that album is just meaningless and pointless piece of junk, electric guitar and some heavy riffs itselves do not gualify as rock music... in my opinion

Aloha !

Then why did One Wild Night 2001 (the 4th single from Crush) do it better in the UK charts than Say It Isn't So (the 2nd single)?

Your memory isn't that good then. Bounce had the most studio demo's of any Bon Jovi record and they even put a poll online on bonjovi.com asking the fans what the next b-sides should be (studio demo's/live tracks). When many fans voted for studio demo's we got the demo's for Undivided and Right Side Of Wrong. And just to remind you; here's the full list of b-sides released on singles coming from the Bounce record:

Lucky (Demo)
No Regrets (Demo)
Standing (Demo)
Another Reason To Believe (Demo)
Breathe (Demo)
We Can Dance (Demo)
Everyday (Acoustic)
Undivided (Demo)
Celluloid Heroes (Live)
Joey (Demo)
Right Side Of Wrong (Demo)
Misunderstood (Live)
All About Lovin' You (Demo)
Postcards From The Wasteland (Demo)
Alive (Demo)
All About Lovin' You (Acoustic)
Everyday (Demo)

Which both had been released before on singles coming from Slippery. How does that make them good b-sides? The only difference was that they were now available on CD instead of vinyl, but there weren't that many b-sides released in the eighties. It was only when Keep The Faith was released the band started to release as many b-sides as possible, although all of the being live tracks.

Bon Jovi singles always sold so well because of the many b-sides the band released. First live tracks, then studio demo's. Now that the single market is dead the band puts no effort in it anymore, but their singles used to be quality. So your rant about shitty b-sides is incorrect and pointless.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

It's an awful album, just awful. Too glossy production even for Bon Jovi's standards, too short songs, awkward synthesizer effects throughout the album, poorly written crap songs. Everyday and Bounce are pure clones of It's My Life, and IMO the band had never before copied their own material this much. Sure their old power ballads may have at times reminded each other quite a lot with their lyrical content but now when they had one big hit, for the first time they started to do more songs that followed exactly the formula of that hit. It's like they have no shame at all, and are truly desperate to get more hits.

All About Loving You is a boy band song. It's the kind of ballad Backstreet Boys and N'Sync and those other boy bands used to do, and the song has nothing in common with the rock ballads this band did in the 80s and 90s. Hook Me Up is also a boy band's "rock song"... I have never understood it when people have called this a heavy song, sure there's a miserable attempt at a heavy guitar but always when I heard this song I thought of the Backstreet Boys.

I've always thought that the lyrics of Joey are retarded. They tried to do a storytelling song but this song has simply none of the drama and suspense of Springsteen's storytelling songs. With this song they truly show how they are the poor man's Bruce Springsteen. Bounce has the whiniest and crappiest Bon Jovi ballads ever. You Had Me From Hello, AALY and Open All Night are such unbelievable cheese and treacle that I don't even know how to describe it. Misunderstood is an annoying, disposable pop song. There are only two decent songs on the album, Undivided and The Distance, and compared to their old material they are not that great either.

The album's name is stupid. It was pathetic how they used to say how the word "bounce" can mean different things to different people... they could have just as well named the album Ball or Table. Shoe would have been an equally intelligent name for this album. I also hate the Bounce promo pictures because with no other album do they look more like a group of supermodels rather than a group of musicians. Looking at the pictures on the album's sleeve, it's obvious that they put much more effort into posing in photographs than making music.

Simply put, this album fails in everything. In 2002 this album had the most uninspired, poppiest, shortest and most unoriginal songs they had ever done and it was hard to believe that they could go any lower than this. It's funny how some people like Walrus say they became fans because of Bounce, when with me it was the opposite: when I heard Bounce for the first time, I immediately knew that this band was done.

I listened to it on a long car ride yesterday, as I was in the mood for it. I loved it, just as much as I did in 2003 (it really needed some months to grow on me back then). Afterwards I listened to some bonus tracks from that era, only to find out again how much I love "Postcards From The Wastelands", which SHOULD have replaced "Open All Night" (which I still like, somehow) as a closing track. That would have lifted the album a lot.

It's certainly not their best ever album, but still not as bad as people put it. The production isn't great and here and there and there is really a Richie solo missing at the end of "The Distance", but overall it creates a great atmosphere. It may be because of my memories about the time of its release. Someone here said it was a good time to be a fan. Yes it was. It was the first album I followed on the internet, I heard the broadcast from Shepherds Bush in my car (which rocked me totally off my feet) and I agree, the band felt totally confident about their stuff. Probably the last time they were so much into their songs that they really presented them with a passion, a bit like in the KTF era when older fans were confused about the new sound.

I discovered the album on vacation in Spain, spring 2003, sitting on the beach, getting into it. Then I went to Australia for two months, backpacking the country, and I remember one walk through Adelaide by night, listening to the album, then again on some beach in Cairns... so many things connect to it, and the concerts on that tour were GREAT, among their best ever. At least the ones I have seen, Mannheim and Munich - the latter being their outstanding performance with 3 hours of music and a totally exhausted Jon, that gave his last to perform 2 more encores, "These Days" and "Twist And Shout". As I said, they gave it all. And the songs worked live as well, the performance of "Joey" convinced me, though "Undivided" was waaayyy to slow.

The album has great songs. Period. And the flow is great, too, always liked it. That needed to be said!

With some little changes here and there and a different production it could have been a masterpiece - dark, mighty and heavy. And looking back I liked that they tried something different after "Crush". Though you can see at what they were aiming with "Everyday".

And again I learned something new. Never heard of that. I mean, by the time I was a member of this board, and the old one before, and I never heard that I could have had the chance in voting for more demos or outtakes? Wow, that's... making me nervous now even after 7 years. Or was it a Backstage thing?

Didn't it go to number 35 or 37?

I didn't say that, I said I happened to became a major fan during the Bounce gestation period. Like a lot of people, It's My Life first attracted my attention to the band, then I really got into them in mid 2001, coincidentally just as news of the follow up to Crush was beginning to happen.

I already said, it peaked at number 21

Like Paul, I never said I became a fan because of Bounce. I became a fan after getting into IML, and when I got SWW and OWN in August of 2001. By the time Bounce came out, I already owned half the discography. What I said was that Bounce was the first record that I bought when it came out, and the whole Bounce period was my first "with" the band.

Yeah, at the time Bounce was released, the only band albums that existed to that point which I didnt have wherre the first two. I'm not sure I had any of the solo albums except Stranger either