The Richie Sambora & Orianthi album

But it's those covers that are a big big big big big reason why people are there. I totally agree they should stand behind their own material but at a festival? Festivals are greatest hits, lowest common denominator fanbase and a good chunk of the people are there because of who Richie used to play for. He's going to have some fans of his own there, sure, but if the numbers were high enough to warrant him doing original songs their shows would still be on. Joe Q.Public doesn't have a problem with Living on a Prayer by the guy who originally played it, and an original song won't go over as well. But that's the rub. How do you promote your own material while also pleasing the crowd that doesn't know it.

To sum up my ramble: at a festival show a mix of BJ songs, Ori songs, originals and covers is acceptable. A show on their own should tip those ratios hugely.

Very valid point - but "for Me" it was the "Church of Orianthi", for a BJ song.........

A scheduled post by the promoter, which was published 19 hours ago and is still up.

"In between Under The Southern Stars, Richie Sambora and orianthi are on their official RSO Australian tour!

Grab your tickets below!"

https://www.facebook.com/1worldenter...25238974179824

That is poor social media promotion - all it does is invite, as it did people to comment their upset about all the cancellations. It may look to the general world that the shows are a go so maybe it saves face somehow to those who don't click comments. People are blaming the promoter - that is not entirely true. The artist sets a price point and if the tickets don't support the cost - yes it's the promoter who officially cancels. Some people will play a gig for the promotion, others expect a significant pay check. Some venues will satisfy with parking cost and what the bar/food tab brings in, but again they know from experience how many tickets need to sell to make it worth turning on the lights.

of course the artist has a set price to charge for putting on a show. It's expensive to bring their band, crew, gear all the way from the USA to Aus for a tour, hence the reason bands have to charge a high price to tour Australia, and hence the reason a lot of smaller shows there end up getting cancelled. It is both band and promoters (the clue is in the name) responsibility that they sell enough tickets to cover that cost. So many promoters just rely on the artists to sell tickets through social media and do zero local promotion these days. It's just lazy and cheap. Even printing up a few flyers to hand out at other shows or to post around town would help, but I expect that there has been nothing....

In a nutshell......

I don't know. What I've seen in the video is just plain horrible IMHO. Richie seems to have lost his voice as well, as someone else pointed out, there's no harmonizing with Orianthi (and when they try, they fail miserably for the most part), LYHOM sounded like a bad cover, and Making History sounded like a noisy mess (I kind of like it on the EP, but that was not a good rendition by any means).

That, combined with the show cancellation/missing promo is really, really bad PR. Richie, while I still don't "like" some of the things you did (and seemingly continue to do), I thought you could at least have done better...

Richie's voice is fine and certainly in better shape than it was a few years ago.

IMHO unless you have both Jon and Richie together, any performance of an old school Bon Jovi song sounds like a cover. I do wish he'd drop Lay Your Hand On Me tho.

The performance of Making History was solid. Apart from the fact it was recorded through a mobile phone it sounded great to me.

THIS. Which is why I can enjoy hearing the current lineup do songs from THINFS; but when they attempt the classic hits I think they sound like a bar band covering Bon Jovi.

The way you phrased that raises another interesting question, too. I may have missed it somewhere along the way, but I can't recall anyone ever questioning why Jon does so many covers of Bon Jovi songs in his solo shows. Would that be because it's more acceptable for him to do them? Or is it because if he does them, they're not considered "covers"?

That aside, I also agree about Richie's voice. I think he sounds very strong vocally.

Has anybody seen any more video from either of the shows? Heard about any setlists?

Well he's the original singer and in a lot of cases writer of them, so it's not a cover regardless of the backing band imo. I don't class Richie singing BJ songs as a cover either, although I do for RSO as Orianthi has nothing to do with the originals and RSO is a different kettle of fish to a Richie solo show.