My impression of the Belgian concert

I really enjoyed the Oostende show, although I was f***ing freezing!!!! That wind was terrible!! It also played tricks with the sound and that was also a shame. The crowd was crap, where I was standing no one was singing along or even moving for that matter (that might have been because it was soooo muddy!!) The setlist was amazing though, I was so happy with Blood on blood, that made up for how cold I was!! I hope next time it isn't at the hippodrome though.. there must be a better choice of venue in Belgium??
I thought Jon's voice was very good. I can understand why he doesn't sing or scream the high notes.. his got a few more concerts to go and I guess he doesn't want to ruin his voice and let's face it, he's isn't as young as he used to be!!!
All in all, it was a great night, the boys did great and once again I think there shoudn't be a suport act!!!

Tash

it was okay, but nothing special

he had an ok voice i suppose but he was too cliched in his stage actions, and also the chorus lacked any intensity... and he was trying to scream and failing

it was just shouting

Arrid of course were superb though!

Some quick reactions:

First and most important goes to Vallie. I'm really sorry about my behaviour yesterday. I think I still had some frustrations about the concert, and I worked them out on you. I'm very sorry because I don't want to have fights with anyone. When you started out on this forum I liked you right away so I wuoldn't forgive myself if I didn't try and have the best of contact with you in the future. Now maybe you don't own as much Bon Jovi stuff as me yet, but hey, why not make it a deal and try to meet up, I might share bootlegs and other stuff with you. I've been thinking of organising something that would bring all Belgian fans and maybe other fans together, might be a good idea. So Vallie, sorry for yesterday, I hope we can stay friends!

Then, the audience thing. Well a lot of you seem to find that the people were very enthousiastic, but I think all of you were in the front. I was a bit further away, just about 10 m behind the large plate that said UITGANG, somewhat facing the middle of the stage. I wasn't in the front row because I just don't like being there at large concerts. I've been in the front row at a Catatonia concert, but that was very small and then I was actually so close I could grab the singer's feet if I wanted. But at Bon Jovi concerts I try to be somewhat in front but not too close. The view is excellent there and you can see a lot of the crowd as well.
And that's what the problem is! All the noisy, enthusiastic people were in the front. I noticed that. But where I was it seemed like the living dead. Now it's always been like that in the beginning of a concert. What I always do is just mind my own thing, do whatever I want, so I sing all the words (even the intro's that people don't know, like the bit before Prayer) and I try to get the people around me do a bit of the same. All the years before, it seemed to work. A lot of people seemed to shy or embarrassed to sing or get their hands up, but when they saw me they would try it and finally enjoy it. Now it didn't happen. I have no idea why!

Someone replied here that they haven't done fireworks the last 3 years. Well I've been to Ostend 96, Ostend 2000 and Werchter 2001 and they always had fireworks during and after the show. So what you are telling there doesn't seem to be true. I've seen a lot of people around me wait for the fireworks to come. It gave me really a feeling that I had missed something this time (----> probably the main reason for my frustrations).

Now I'm happy to find out they didn't do any more encores because they weren't allowed. I really thought they thought the Belgian crowd was just too crappy so they decided to call it a day.

And yes there is a much better venue than Ostend. I saw them play in Werchter and it was much much better. The setting is beautiful with all the trees around, now we just had flats and buildings, and that terrible freezing wind. I really hope they come to Werchter next year, also because the traffic there isn't so bad as it was in Ostend... my God, I've been in my car for hours, just to get out of Ostend.

I think that's about it for what I wanted to say. Now get back to work.