Yeah Crush songs and I think some off Bounce were still played on rotation on the likes of Radio 1 and Capital which seems laughable today but yeah up until then they were massive over here. They did Party In The Park too for Crush. Then it sort of dwindled down to Virgin/Absolute and Radio 2 only. The good times when Bon Jovi were pretty much everywhere!

Another one of Bon Jovi's "infamous" Belgian shows. The band came from an absolute high after having played Amsterdam the night before where the band and the ecstatic crowd had pushed each other to one of the best post-2000 shows. Either being hungover or taken aback by the rather poor crowd response, Jon went into being quite a moody frontman that night, much like 20 years prior in 1988. Even though Wanted Dead Or Alive didn't get dropped this time around, Jon changed the line to "I've seen a million faces and ONCE rocked them all". If you look up videos of Dry County from the show, you can see Jon yelling to Bobby before the solo as well.

Setlist:
01. Intro [0:00]
02. Lost Highway [0:44]
03. Born To Be My Baby [4:49]
04. You Give Love A Bad Name [10:37]
05. Raise Your Hands [14:19]
06. One Wild Night [19:46]
07. I'll sleep When I'm Dead [24:11]
~ Rockin' All Over The World [28:36]
~ Start Me Up [31:30]
08. Story Of My Life [35:07]
09. Any Other Day [39:20]
10. In These Arms [45:53]
11. Captain Crash & The Beauty Queen From Mars [51:53]
12. Have A Nice Day [57:44]
13. It's My Life [1:01:55]
14. Keep The Faith [1:05:42]
15. Blaze Of Glory [1:12:37]
16. Blood On Blood [1:18:28]
17. I'll Be There For You (Richie Sambora on lead vocals) [1:24:48]
18. Dry County [1:33:16]
19. Last Man Standing [1:43:33]
20. Who Says You Can't Go Home [1:48:47]
21. Livin' On A Prayer [1:54:38]

Encore:
22. Living In Sin [2:02:30]
~ Chapel Of Love [2:07:49]
23. Wanted Dead Or Alive [2:08:37]
24. Bad Medicine [2:14:18]
~ Shout [2:18:57]

It's remarkable that an "off-night" by those standards would still get such a strong setlist in 2008. I'm sure any of us would pay a double price for seeing this exact show (with Richie and with Jon sounding like he did) on their next tour.

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Aloha !

This show takes me back! I contemplated going to this show but couldn't get a ride home. I went to Amsterdam, had to go to work the next day at 6 while coming home at 3 and then decided I'd be royally ****ed by the time this show was done. I had to work in the morning, do a sports event in the afternoon and still didn't feel tired by the time I got home because Amsterdam had been that great. After seeing the setlist for this show I initially felt bad but after hearing the performance I was glad I opted for Amsterdam. There's really not many shows that came close to Amsterdam 2008. I've never seen Jon that happy on stage and seeing him in Brussels would really have put a damper on things even though, like Walleris says, this is a great show compared to what the band offers nowadays. I've seen fantastic shows since Amsterdam 2008 but it's the last show I've seen Jon do where he was genuinely happy on stage from start to finish and willing to go the extra mile for every song.

As for Jon's mood; It's the poor crowd response. I've seen several acts in Belgium and have yet to witness a crowd that actually responds to what's going on on stage. They're a good crowd if you need to listen to a performance as there's little chatter going on but everything else is disastrous as there's little interaction between the band and a crowd there, whether it's a festival, arena or stadium show. And the yelling to Bobby was because the band went off the rails during the performance of Dry County because either Tico or David messed up. That guitar solo of Richie is great though, a lot better than Twickenham a few weeks later.

So yeah, this is a bit of a weird show. There's a few surprises, the band plays pretty well, Jon is singing great and yet compared to what the band had done in the weeks before it's still a bit of a disappointment. Yet when comparing this to the shows in Scandinavia and the U.K. it's one of the better ones. I reckon that if this crowd would've been as good as the German, Dutch or Spanish crowds this would've been a knock-out. Would I have known how poor both shows at Twickenham would've been I'd definitely have gone to see this show instead.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

The setlist is a bit shorter for those times but it's a killer one. I'm just skipping through it and I'd love that Jon over the current one any day :D
The way the band sounded and the killer setlist. I mean Dry County and Livng In Sin alone make it special.

That's the only thing the Belgium show may have had as an advantage. The nearby talking on the Amsterdam recording next to Thierry was awful at times. But Amsterdam, for me, was THE show of the tour and ranks in my top-3 post-2000 concerts together with Munich 2003 and Sydney 2010. I had gone to Frankfurt prior to it and thought that was as good as it got, but then I read reviews from Amsterdam and realized I was wrong :D

That's actually a bit of a misconception. The general setlists in 2008 weren't really much longer, that was more the case of some nights in 2010 and 2011. But the overall pacing and amount of rediscovered rarities was better. With regards to the gems on the setlist, 2008 was actually much more exciting than three years later. Only some nights at the O2 had a similar feeling (in terms of the surprises) for me.

I know I'm repeating myself, but Jesus Christ, what a great voice Jon had in the summer of 2008! I'm so glad I got to see the band live for the first time back then :)

Are there any Twickenham videos about? I was at the first night and it seemed OK to me. Not their best but By no means their worst.


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