Very true, and I don't think I'd heard those two albums at that point. I was still familiarising myself with the band albums. Which probably explains why Crush sounded quite jarring following on from These Days.

Plus Real Life sort of bridged the gap a little and gave a sneak peak of the sort of sound to come, as the song is definitely closer to Crush than a These Days sound

Again, I probably hadn't heard "Real Life" at that point either! It all makes sense now of course. Plus there are quite a few songs from the box set that were recorded during the late 90's which help blur the lines a bit.

I would say that Crush is the middle point - can't be placed neither with TD nor with post-Bounce era. (Bounce itself is a special case - rather disjoint from the rest).

Crush although with very blatant poppish intentions, still retains an organic sound. I am sure they made bad choices about which songs to build upon and put in the album. And they tried to sound as happy/shiny as possible. But there was still a great "band" sound then, like they were really playin music - I mean a sense of spontaneity in their playing, and each song sounding differently. Also with the b sides and demos from that era, you can see they had many interesting ideas.

After Bounce, everything seemed much more calculated. Even if there were some good songs. The liveliness was gone. Maybe LH has some songs with a bit more - - spirit - I mean in the way they are performed-produced. I dont know.

Agreed with that. Bounce was the last, documented at least, record that the whole band was there for whole process up until This House...as well. I'm not sure how This left...was recorded.

I remember that they had a Volkswagen Golf named "Golf Bon Jovi" in These Days era. Dude, that's a Rolling Stones thing. In South America absolutely their peak too and I guess we can count Asia in.

The Drop D tunning is a Goo Goo Dolls influenced move.

Jon mentioned at Bounce release that Goo Goo Dolls influenced him (along with John Mayer and Matchbox Twenty). Having The Goo Goo Dolls as "Special Guests" was not a coincidence.

Funny, Gutterflower is my favorite GGD album but it only got Gold certification (if I'm not wrong, Bounce went Gold as well). I guess the 09/11 events affected the music business a bit, mainly because - if you pay attention - both bands came from huge recent success with Dizzy Up The Girl and Crush.

Yeah, but there were also Volkswagen Gold models for Europe, Genesis and Pink Floyd during that era ;)

Well, I think it's a huge achievement for an american band have their name on a very popular european car, right?

While Goo Goo Dolls use a lot of alternate tunings I wholeheartedly disagree with that. The more pop rock songs with a rootsy twist, absolutely, I could see a GGD sound but songs like The Distance, Love me back to Life, Hook me Up...I mean just put on The Distance and Creed's My Sacrifice back to back. That was clearly the sound they were after.