Jovitalk - Bon Jovi Fan Community - review of Ostend show in Belgian newspaper: translated

Since letitrock asked me for the review in the Belgian newspaper, I asked my "future mother-in-law" if she could lay her hands on Het Nieuwsblad (the Belgian paper I had been talking about) to copy it and send it to him.

So letitrock, if you want the copy with pics and everything, just e-mail me or send me a pm with your home adress and I'll send it to you straightaway. Now I think a lot of other people are curious about what was said in the review, so here goes: I'm gonna spend my evening translating the whole thing for you! Enjoy!

"MA, YOU GOTTA LISTEN TO THIS"
30.000 Bon Jovi fans stand the cold in Ostend. (by Dirk Musschoot)

"Are you a bit tired or something", Jon Bon Jovi screamed Sunday evenening halfway his Ostend trip to the crowd of 30,000. And the crowd went even more nuts than the hour before. It was cold there, at the Wellington track, but most will have only felt the day after. Bon Jovi and his mates rocked, accompanied by a magnificent show of light and video, in a tight set of two hours, and conquered the venue. If they wanted, they could have gone on for another hour.

It was exactly two years ago that Bon Jovi had been on a stage in our country. That was on the festival areo of Werchter. This Sunday it was in Ostend, with support act Arid, that invited the Kolacny brothers every now and then for a song with frontman Jasper Steverlinck. There was also an astonishingly well performing Peter Evrard, unknown just months ago, now as Idol 2003 accompanied by the Eric Melaerts-band in front of an audience that went to about 30,000 people in the late afternoon.

But the Belgian stop in Bon Jovi's Bounce Tour, that's what we came for. Jon Bon Jovi (guitar), Richie Sambora (guitar), David Bryan (keyboards) and Tico Torres (drums) started off straight away in high speed. The blonde Jon, every now and then in close-up on the videoscreen, is besides singer and guitarist also the handsome guy in Ally McBeal.

"He is in there for 9 episodes. He falls in love with her", was what suntanned beauty told me, she was freezing in the cold. Of course you have to watch television to find that out.

Every now and then there got a handful of young girls on stage to cheer the singer just a bit closer. Not that there wasn't not enough cheering. Just in front of the stage there were thousands of fans jumping and screaming together with the songs. It was Sunday, Whitsunday (I'm not sure if that is the correct translation - Matthias) even. so Bon Jovi invited them to sing "Lay your hands on me" with him. And just before and just after: It's my life, I'd die for you, I'll be there for you, Keep the faith, You give love a bad name, Show me your heart,... (I think the journalist probably meant Bad Name again with that last title, they can't know everything hehe - Matthias). Loud and perfectly straight forward, no one who regretted that.

Network overoccupied
Proximus, Mobistar and Base (the Belgian mobile phone providers - Matthias) won't have regretted the Bon Jovi concert. At times the sms'ing was so frequent, that even a journalist who wanted to phone his photographer couldn't get through. Dammit, network occupied! Especially when Mr. Bon Jovi threw one of his FM-hits through the boxes, half the audience called his home.

We had seen it just a week before too, during the goodbye-concert of Paul McCartney in Liverpool. "Ma, I'm at Bon Jovi! You really have to hear this!" And then the mobile phone went in the air and mother, sitting at home in her chair, got a bit of Bon Jovi blown in her ear. Curious about what Sabam thinks of that. (SABAM is the company that controls the copyrights on music in Belgium - Matthias)

But for a real Bon Jovi bath you had to be in Ostend personally, where the band - that celebrates its 20th birthday this year - delivered a perfect setlist. After a race of two hours it was over and the Queen of Bath Towns could start struggling with the traffic. Because it was a sunny weekend, and it was Witsunday, and it was Bon Jovi. There couldn't have been more traffic... (end of article)

Well personally I agree on most of what the guy wrote. But I didn't really understand one thing. In my opinion, the 2000 concert was one of the best ever in Belgium, a lot better than this latest one. Still I remember that in 2000, and also in 2001, the same newspaper found everything so bad, I remember that they dissed Bon Jovi because they had done covers like Shout, Twist and Shout and Tequila. And now it's suddenly extremely good!

Well, guess the guy was in the mood for it!