My review of night 1 O2

Ok so had mixed feelings about night 1 :

Positives :

1. Band in a great mood
2. Stage show fun and well thought out.
3. Jons voice strong - sang well and smiled a lot
4. 24 songs not a bad effort
5. 4 song walkway segment very engaging
6. Jon singing 'working man' in a less irritating way!
7. Rooftop gig was fun
8. Crowd loud and really up for it
9. In these arms as first encore just rocked!

Negatives

1. Setlist. No getting away from it, for such a loud crowd we deserved a rarity, surely?
2. 3 lost highway songs!
3. Sleep when I'm dead. I never escape this song.
4. Crowd - was loud but full of 'casual fans' - during LTOR and SFTP most around me sat down or went to the toilet.

The band were really up for it and there is no doubt they put in a great show. I have to give jon credit in that he gauged the crowd spot on last night. He engineered an up tempo, party setlist that suited 90 percent of the people there. It was a party show to announce their arrival and the setlist reflected that.

If you took out sleep when I'm dead and whole lotta leavin and replaced them with only lonely and hey god or dry county the balance would have been much better for those of us who aren't casual fans :
However : the casual fans got their way again!

Jon did say in the encore that all bets are off for the rest of the shows. 'bring your banners and we'll learn them' he said. I guess it's up to us now!

I agree with your review.

I did not imagine I will have such a great time. Our seats behind the stage did not end up being as bad as I thought, maybe even better than some back seats on the floor. Also thought the band was in a great mood and even though I really hoped for a rarity given it was the 1st show and the press was there, it was going to be pretty standard. I thoroughly hate Crash and Who Says and would have loved something different but well, they work well with the crowds and they have to please the casual fans too.

Band looked great and thought Jon sounded really good. I actually enjoyed it more than Twickenham.

I now have to wait a few days for #2.

I'll third this review but with a caveat - my wife who has probably seen more shows than most of us on here but doesn't post or pore over every set list thought the set was great, cause she heard SFTP for the 1st time since These Days tour. So it's our own fault that we knew what was coming.

But the band were fantastic last night. Highlights for me:

LTOR (just ****ing brilliant)
LYHOM (yeah, I hope Rich does HT tonight but he really nailed this)
Hallelujah (Like most of us, I'd rather he didn't play this anymore but then O hear it live and it gives me chills)

A point about the fans. Yeah there are a lot of casuals - I think the O2 residency will attract them more than other shows. But I was lucky last night -we were mostly surrounded by ppl at their very 1st jovi show but had been fans of the band for ages (one Australian girl had waited 11 years to see them) and I loved that because you could see them just being blown away completely.

I really enjoyed last night even though i was sat on the top tier and at one point was the only person standing in my block! Thank god jon told everyone to get out there seats. My only dissapointment were the screens, just thought they were way too small and thought that made the intro look pretty unimpressive which is a shame as it looked awesome at giants.

Last night was an amazing show, yeah the setlist was totally vanilla, you could tell that as soon as whole lotta leaving started, but that was the band on as good a form as i've seen..and jons mood almost outdid any mood i've seen him in on dvd..this cant be the same band that played twickenham can it? loved blood on blood as an opener and pain/sat night were amazing as was richies version of LYHOM

good show

8/10...would be 10 if we had got a rarity or two ...but hey i just bought some nosebleed seats for tonight so heres to round two.....wow this band have made me broke...you better change it up tonight boys!

couldn't agree more!!! Not a fan of Something For The Pain but loved it. And to hear Richie sing something other than I'll Be There For You, I was over the moon... Finally after 22 shows!!!!!

LOL!

I wonder how many more people will add onto the shows they're going to!

lol was quite funny really...i was with my mate who's kinda a casual fan and before we were even out the arena we were like...hmmm get tickets for tomorrow haha ...not like i have exams at the end of the week or anything....

ah well....i'll blame it on the love of...well you know

So you gave the explanation by yourself.