Jon Bon Jovi & The Kings of Suburbia - New York City, July 19th-21th

Thanks Javier, crashed and Becky for your posts. I agree and can relate to your sentiments. I don't think I could articulate my thoughts as well as you have.

When I first came on this forum, my first thread was asking about bands that sound similar to Bon Jovi's post-2K sound and a lot of people were very helpful in suggesting bands and I really appreciated it. I listed down some of the bands I'd tried out and got a lot of sh*t for them and I tried to justify it but someone pointed out that I didn't need to. I'm sure a lot of you have gotten more than your fair share of jovial banter when you mention that you listen to Bon Jovi.

I've told this story three times but what the hell: I was 11 when HAND came out and I remember seeing half of an aisle at Wal-Mart full of HAND smirks. It was my first CD and I took the physical album everywhere with my blue and green Sony CD Walkman that I spent ages saving up my allowance for. I didn't really appreciate the lyrics until much later. I now have a notebook where i jot down lyrics that I love, the first few pages are full of lyrics from HAND (none from WAN though).

Last July, I went with my girlfriend to the Chicago concert at Soldier Field. We got tickets for the 6th row right next to the catwalk, on the outside. Both of us had never seen the band before and we both really enjoyed it. She doesn't care for my obsession with Bon Jovi but she had an amazing time. Maybe the band isn't what it used to be during the Circle Tour or 10 years ago, I dunno, but they can certainly still do a good show, maybe not by Seb's standards and that's fine, he has a neat perspective and I find his posts informative but I don't take criticism against the band personally. Even though Richie was off the tour and people on this forum were talking about how Jon sounds like a constipated cat, all of that went out the window.

You might feel I'm easily impressed, these are the bands I've seen live prior to Bon Jovi:
Matchbox Twenty (x2)
Train (x5)
Gavin DeGraw
The Script (x2)
Matt Nathanson
The Rolling Stones
Aerosmith


At that time I'd never have thought Jon was even thinking about calling it quits. WAN was definitely not their best effort, I really liked HAND, LH and The Circle. I still listen to I'm With You, What About Now, Water, Beautiful World and Room very often which is about the same amount of songs from the earlier albums. I like to think of this album as just another Bounce, hastily recorded and assembled with no real direction. If this isn't the end, and I hope it isn't, I think (just hope) that Jon will take this as a wake-up call, keep writing and just take more time and care into putting out a new record.

What bugged me a bit initially after the tour was the KOS shows he does. I was watching that "Corporate Event" gig on YouTube and it wasn't how he sounded, it was how he was acting, it seemed like genuinely wanted to be that washed up, old, has been. The only positive I can take out of this is that the energy he puts into Bon Jovi live must be driven by something, I'd like to think it's still the adrenaline from the crowd or being on stage but it's most likely just that he can't get away with embarrassing Dad dance moves in front of 40,000 at Soldier Field.

Reminded me of this gem:

I absolutely agree united17. Being a young Jovi fan I also share similar sentiments regarding their most recent releases. There's still hope yet...

This band are my absolute favs. Been there for me from 13 to now (39)
but all things do come to an end. If its the end then so be it.

The people who missed BJs real golden era (86-90) and again in (94/95) wow did you miss out.

I hope they take 4 years off - then all get together and go from there deciding whats best and what they all want. If 1 dont want it any more then pull the plug and move on.

Look what I found:

http://youtu.be/z8DiIqJQNCw

Am I the only one hearing "I could write a torch" and "Light a grain of sand" during With These Two Hands

I think you should read Captain_jovi's sig because he quotes the "Iceman" who makes the most sense out of all this.

Nice that he finally played a DA song again, but a whole set of these slow-paced, low-key-sung songs would most likely put me to sleep...

It might be slow-paced and sung in lower-keys but at least he sounds decent and the songs are somewhat enjoyable.

I'm listening to both of these songs as I type here and Jon sounds surprisingly good. Yea, I get that they low-keyed and slow but his tone is actually enjoyable. I think Jon might be working with a coach and even more so, on something new.

I have this gut feeling that something new will be introduced at the KOS show this Wed. BTY, the Stream tickets sold out as well.

Question to all: Which type of show would you prefer? This acoustic type of show which one might say is boring or a full energetic KOS show?

90% of Jbjs solo stuff will send me to sleep

Acoustic. When Jon was promoting Destination Anywhere by doing acoustic shows on radio stations, I was in heaven. Those are among my favorite shows in my collection. I prefer them to most full on electric band shows too.