Aloha !

Most of us want them gone and wonder why they're in there anyway. I think the answer comes down to a few things. First, they're easy on Jon's vocals. Lost Highway is easy, Whole Lot Of Leavin' is easy, Memory is easy and We Got It Goin' On is easy. It doesn't require much effort from Jon and we all know that he rather takes the easy way out when it comes to his vocals. One thing is because he needs to save his voice, the other part is just lazyness.

However, what I think is the reason is that because Jon has this obsession with being relevant. Jon always seems to think that if your album is doing well, this means you're relevant. This is obviously not true, but in Jon's world it is. However, The Circle wasn't the success he (and most fans) thought and hoped it would be, so playing songs of an album no one knows isn't something Jon is too fond of. And no matter how much some fans love the songs of The Circle, many of them just don't work live.

So what do you do when your last album tanked? You play songs of the most recent album that in your eyes was a succes. So we end up with this many Lost Highway songs in the setlist. Were they hits? Apart from Memory, no. Do they work? Yeah, to a certain extent. Lost Highway goes over much better than When We Were Beautiful. Whole Lot Of Leavin' has Jon's "I need people cheering for me, do I got it?" moment in there, We Got It Goin' On is another one of the easy applause songs, and Memory is their most recent hit. Compare this to Superman Tonight where they completely lose the crowd once the song is done, or Work For The Working Man which is just one long dragging disappointment that no matter how much choreography they put in there, eventually leads to people just being confused, not knowing what to do with the song.

This is what I think is the reason as to why there are so many songs from Lost Highway in the set. Sadly, a large part of the set seems to be constructed around that album. Two of the first 6 songs are often of Lost Highway, then another one in the first 10, then one in the set on the catwalk. Instead of those songs being the songs that are swapped around for any other song, you end up with a setlist focussed on songs that never really achieved anything apart from some airplay here and there.

Another thing is though that it's not working the way Jon hopes it does. After all, what happens when you play a bunch of wannabe hits of the last 5 years of your career followed by your big hits from the eighties? People will still say that you were at your best in the eighties. Now I know many people agree with this and it's true to a certain extent, but it's not what Jon wants. By putting so many songs in there from the last 10 years you get a setlist that shows you pretty much released nothing too fancy the past 20 years. We all know there have been a lot of gems in the past 20 years, and some even worked live as well. And when performed with the right energy they could work still and convince the crowd there's more than just Prayer, Bad Name and Bad Medicine.

If only Jon would realize this though, and would focus more on what a live show could be, instead of what he wants the people's perception on the band to be. And if he wants people to stop ignoring the stuff he knows is good enough for a show, he should stop ignoring it himself as well. You can't expect people to come to your show being fully prepared, but there's nothing wrong with training them, and educating them as to what you've done the past 27 years, as opposed to those 3 years in the eighties and the last 4 years in the 00's.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan