i agree that during the bounce-hand day tour jon's vocals were below average, thats the reason imo we didnt get any dvd from these eras. in fact i believe jons voice started going downhill from 97-98...i dont like jons voice in crush/own because he goes for notes he clearly cant reach, without any real technique or anything, obviously the smoking and the fact that jon lost his interest in music(imo he concentrated to far too many different things in that period which worked as distractions).
in lh tour a new-lower registered-more confident less powerful voice appeared, and in 2010-2011 he delivers songs decently, sometimes even great. bj's songs are really demanding vocally, the studio performances are top notch most of the times so i think jon deserves more credit than he gets, especially for his performances in the last tour. he is older, some years back we couldnt imagine he would ever sing always-blaze, dry county these days etc etc...we were discussing in this forum that we wont get a another electric version of blaze or bed of roses, at least not a vocally decent one...and see how far he has come...he is been able to sing all these songs and more in the same night, and most of the nights really delivered.
the last tour made me realize why jon is the leader-boss-ceo...noone cares more than him about the band-the legacy-the evolution of their music-of being releavant as much as him. no disrespect to richie-david-tico but sometimes they act like "hired guns" or session musicians in my eyes, its logical for them to be tired, fed up or anything but jon carries on the show and the guys take energy from him most of the times. seen the guys twice in o2 last year, and as a guitarist i was trying to "spy" richie but jon constantly managed to take the spotlight. i am a huge richie fan, and always go mad when they refer to bj as jbj...but the rest of the guys maybe should renew(if thats a word...)their love to the band, just my opinion of course