Good thread and it shows we STILL CARE.

They did shelve the campaign which started with New Jersey back in 2014:

"More 30th anniversary commemorative titles, including newly-compiled collections of studio and live recordings, will also be released this year. Until then, these deluxe editions of New Jersey are out on 1 July 2014."

WONDER what's been in the works for that.

But after ALL THESE years since the late 80s I'm actually given up hope they ever release anything from the golden era...

I hold tight to my precious bootlegs of:

Cincinnatti 1987
Rotterdam 1989
Hammersmith 1990

and those officially released b-side live tracks.

Oh my God... over these 20 years I was thinking I am alone with that...
Remember my first time when I discovered that not only setlist of Crush Tour VHS was shortened comparing to DVD, but engineering was made so bad, that tracks are shorter and even fragments of audio are placed in wrong position (so entire chorus of Livin' was replaced with something else...).

To this day I wonder "Why guys... why?". Why you are messing with live tracks on singles and cutting all Jon speeches? Why do you mess MSG 2008, so proper order is destroyed and missing tracks are available as... bonus? Really...?

A long, long time my decision was to stick SNB and PRO unofficial recordings. I am pretty happy with that, but I reached probably 95% available stuff... I still hope that someday BJ vaults will be really opened.

Sebastian, could you put some light on this? I am really surprised about Obie reaction and I was not aware of fans dissapointment on OWNL.

Aloha !

Obie had been bragging to fans how he'd been digging deep into the archives to find all these old recordings. Both on Backstage and Jovitalk people got excited, finally expecting the live release the band had never released.

Once One Wild Night was released there were 11 songs on there which had already been on previous releases. 4 songs were lifted from the Crush DVD, 2 off an official fanclub release and then there were 5 b-sides crammed on there. Then there's the insane amount of edits just to be able to fit all those songs on 1 disc. Prayer, Saturday Night, In & Out Of Love, Something For The Pain and Bad Medicine were all shortened. I think Something To Believe In was as well, but I'm not sure, it's been too long since I've heard the album. A casual listener won't hear it but someone who knows Bon Jovi live versions by heart does.

Back in 2001 Obie gave "hilarious" answers to fans asking questions. When someone asked "How do you feel the response to the live album has been" he said "Everyone likes it apart from a few snobs from that other messageboard". He mentioned this when talking to fans, saying "we" were impossible to please. Meanwhile, on Backstage every negative thread was immidiately deleted so it'd look like everyone loved it. Most of these supposed die hards on Backstage had no idea what was out there. Some people from Jovitalk posted there as well and said a lot was already out there. Backstage got light of this and eventually some people on there mentioned things like "Well I'm glad we got a live album but it could've been better". Obie talked to fans before shows as well and heard about the critisism and always dismissed this as needless. "Just be happy with what you got". But what we got really was only a fully unedited version of Just Older from Toronto. But Just Older had been released on the Crush DVD, as a b-side on the Crush bonus disc and as a b-side from New York City. There was nothing new on that album and Obie knew it too. He just expected to get away with it and looked like a ****ing moron. He'd just gotten used to all the adoration from fans and it turned out he couldn't deliver.

When he started work on the box set he did a lot more of investigating asking fans if they'd heard song this or song that to make sure it'd be full of songs that weren't in circulation already. It's how some song titles were eventually leaked to see if people would respond with "But we've already got that one!". It's also the major reason why there's no stuff from the eighties on there. Most of it is already out there.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

I got a promo copy of OWNL when I worked for the label a few weeks prior to release. I was so disappointed. I’ve heard it once since release.
As Seb says there was hardly anything new on there and the songs were shortened. It sounds like it was literally thrown together in 5 minutes.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

This shows that it was just an album for the newly gained fans after the success of Crush and It's My Life. To introduce some of the back catalogue and especially Bon Jovi as a live band.
When I became a real fan in 2002 (I already liked them since Crossroad but was just too young to become something like a fan) I absolutely loved this live album - because I had absolutely no idea. But with all those bootlegs being around I quickly lost interest in that album and haven't listened to it from start to finish for probably 12-15 years or something.

Yep, it was just following in the footsteps of what Crush had caused. A new generation of fans and the band selling out and catering more and more to something that hadn't been their core audience for the first 2 decades.

In the bands defense, Jon actually wanted a double disk but the record company shot that idea down due to money so yes, they needed to basically make a live greatest hits out of 1 CD.

This was part of that crazy 10 major releases in 10 years (or was it 15 in 15?).

Another reason for that 5 CD/DVD box set btw.

Also, everyone blamed Jon for the rushed 2013 What About Now album but I think Jon had no choice... 2000 to 2014 is 15 years and Burning Bridges was the last of that contract which again, was part of the record company demand...

You could maybe shift some blame for the lengthy tour but I think the album was a must.

Sent from my HTC6535LVW using Tapatalk

But that's no excuse for them releasing a cd with live tracks that have already been released one way or another. Even on one cd they could have put unreleased live versions.
And furthermore by 2001 Jon should have known better that the record company refuses double albums. They already did so with New Jersey, Keep The Faith and I think Crossroad, too.

Regarding Jon's contract - what is the source for all those information?

Even though I absolutely don't want to go deeper into the "Jon was forced to do WAN in 2013 discussion", here's why it wasn't intended that way:
- Jon talked about "the band taking a break" a few times near the end of the 2011 tour. Being the hands-on guy who wants to be in control of everything, he wouldn't have said that if he knew they'd have to be back in the studio the next spring.
- Tico's refusal to go back and play on tracks that early because Jon had promised them a break and he didn't feel ready to go back that early.
- Richie wouldn't have planned a solo album, had they known beforehand that there was one more album due to be delivered within about a year.
- Jon's talks about a possible solo album in that era.

The record company had been planning the big anniversary release of New Jersey for 2013, a band album in 2014 and some whatever-contractual release in 2015. This would've added up in the timeline since 2013 was the 25th anniversary of the New Jersey album, there would've been the room for proper solo endeavours or simply breaks and they could've re-gathered around 1.5 years later for the next album.

I'd even go as far as saying that if they had stuck to that schedule, we'd still roughly have a Bon Jovi of 2011 with only natural further decline in music and voice instead of the train wreck there is today.

I whole heartedly agree with this statement. I think it was WAN that broke the camels back when a decent break was really what everyone needed! If WAN had never happened I think the band would be in a very different place now.