Julie and I made this the first of three shows for this tour.
For the first time ever in over 70 shows since 1986, we didn't buy any tour merch. Quite simply all the designs looked like ass. Horrible graphics, no cool logos, just out of focus artsy pics of Jon, not even any band shots. Prices $50 to $140 per shirt, which wasn't the issue, just all ugly. The one cool looking shirt with a sweet logo on a blue tie dyed type shirt ended up being a $30 bandanna. Who the f*ck buys/wears a bandanna? Marketing fail all around, they had other various little swag, but nothing cool like the bobble heads from the last tour or the smiley enameled pins from the HAND tour. We expect merch to be way overpriced but really there was nothing we had any desire to buy even if it was free. SAD. We will grab a $25 tour book at one of the shows closer to home, next month. The bootleg shirt people were everywhere both outside and inside the venue with thier 1/2 price bullshit wares. Many of the graphics were exact retreads of the Bounce era bootleg shirts, same exact picture of the band.

Seats were 4th row upper deck, Richie's side first section in front of the stage. Sound was awesome, the hanging speaker arrays really pump the sound and it was clean and gorgeous. Our main view was a giant HD video screen hanging from the ceiling, so while all the stuff on stage was cool our view was a pretty severe angle. Everyone was filming with cameras and phones throughout the show and tweeters/posters were constant everywhere as well.

For the first time since the 9/11 era shows we encountered hand held metal detectors at the doors to the venue. These were pretty cursory, they beeped at everyone and everyone just said, that's my camera/phone/etc and walked right in.
We received an e-mail from the venue saying non professional cameras with less than a 3 inch or non removable lens were fine, a few days before the show. Obviously the grey haired gentleman at the gate has no idea about cameras, my Panasonic FZ200 was ushered right in and he didn't even ask about the small monopod. This camera seems to be allowed but since it shoots continuous 1080p video, it might technically be disallowed if they really cared.

Lots of merch booths, but little in the way of lines, we did take a few pics of merch. The tickets say the show starts at 7:30 and when I asked a member of venue staff, they said the show starts promptly at 7:30 as well. Well BULLSHIT, there are ads on the video screens above the stage during the pre-show, hawking the Bon Jovi app and iTunes DL of thier album/single. At about 7:30 a graphic popped up telling us it was 30 mins to showtime. Then graphic later saying 15, 5 and 1 mins to showtime, then about 15 mins later at 8:15 the arena went dark.

There is a new guitar and drum intro for the show, I am pretty sure it is a Bon Jovi original like last tour, pretty intense and catchy. From start to finish nearly everybody was filming the show with some type of device, crowdsources videos should be everywhere online I imagine.

The setlist was pretty decent, we got to hear 5 new songs and really four of them are catchy/fun live. Amen was flat, not vocally, but in the sense that the crowd was more into trying to massage Jon's leg than hear another slow song. Overall too much Lost Highway, too slow a tempo and too little Jon moving about. He wasn't totally rooted to his mic stand but was much less energetic than in the past. Vocally he seems to be hitting the pitches alot more than in the warm up gigs/Canada, and I liked his choices as far as changing notes rather than trying to scream through tones out of his range. Richie tweeted pre-show that he had a cold, but seemed in great form vocally and in his playing. He actually took a little improv action on some licks and outros that he as been playng rote for years now. As much as I think the whole Lost Highway album/tour was a low point for the band, the fans eat that shit up live, bangin and sangin like 16,000 rollan stones. I fear these tunes are gonna stay in the set forever.
Keep the Faith was a major high point during the main set, the ending breakdown while Jon changes costumes is a fun musical jaunt. Richie takes an ad lib solo turn then there is a set transition piece and then Dave gets a solo spot into the same transition where Bobby takes over and does a surprisingly appropriate solo . It must be a bitch to do a solo as a backing guitarist in a band with a megastar lead player, on one hand you want all the fans to stop saying that your playing sucks taint all day long and on the other hand you don't want to piss of the lead player by being too awesome. This might be the first time i enjoyed Bobbie's work with BJ. Julie commented that Booby was killing puppies again (thanks Seb).

You can all see the setlist in the main show thread so I won't bother here, but the new songs and KTF were the best part of the main set, the rest was fairly standard, nothing super special, but no glaring errors or big misses except Amen and Make a Memory which both signalled everybody to go get another beer.

WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE spend the whole show talking to each other!!!
My recordings came out well despite the idiots around me yelling for Marsha every ten seconds, even though she was sitting 2 seats away. I really wanted to throw people off the balcony, but I remained zen somehow.

SOLID F*CKIN ENCORE - I mean absolutely killer, it made the whole show worth it, including the sloppy drunks, the snoop dogg rental car, the overpriced hotel room, with it's $28 parking fee, the ice storm, the lumpy hotel bed, the cold windy weather, the ugly tour merch, crazy side stage view, MARSHA!!, and the head cold we both somehow caught from Richie. A complete uptempo full on morning wood spectacle, we haven't seen from the band in years.
After every great song, I silently prayed that they wouldn't play I Love This Town and the gods took pity on poor little me and prevented that horrible song from crossing Jon's lips.
Ooooooooh those soft......... supple........ lips
Dave