Jovitalk - Bon Jovi Fan Community - Shepherds Bush, Hyde Park & Jon at MacDonalds!!!! Review

Right now it's all still one big pile of great memories in my mind, hopefully I can think a bit more organized next week ;). Anyway here's my review of the past three days!

June 27th, LIVE Shepherd's Bush Empire (if you can't be bothered by a LIVE review - just skip this one)
Kevin and I didn't go to London just to see the Hyde Park gig, but we had our tickets for the LIVE show at Shepherd's Bush as well! We arrived at the venue just 20 minutes before the doors would open (due to a massive delay from the London Underground), but quite to our suprise there weren't that many ppl in the queues at all! We met these two Austrian (?) girls who we knew from BJ's show in Bremen over there as well. They're one a many examples of BJ fans that got into LIVE after seeing them supporting on a BJ gig! It's really good to see all these new LIVE fans among BJ fans, maybe LIVE finally gets the fame they deserve!

Anyway, around 7 the doors opened... after a very thorough security check we could walk almost straight to the 5th row, not a bad place! We found SBE much smaller than what it looked like when Bon Jovi was playing there. It sort of reminded me of Paradiso in Amsterdam, a beautiful place with a great history I bet! After a while Adam Kowalczyk, the brother of Ed (singer of LIVE), started playing a small acoustic set. Not really as a support act, but more a background music kind of thing, while ppl were walking in and having their drinks. That was a really nice starter for the evening!

Unfortunately I had been deeling with a bit of sickness the whole day & I felt that I wouldn't be able to stand up there on the 5th row for the whole night, not with that heat in the venue. After a long discussion we made the sad decision to leave our great spots and go up the stairs to the first balcony. Still a good sight on the stage anyway! After a long wait the real support act started to play... I have no idea what the band's called; a guitarist, basist, drummer and a female singer and I didn't like it at all. So I'll just leave it with that.

Again another long wait... It must've been past 9 when we finally heard the intro of Like I Do! Always an amazing song to start with! I don't feel like reviewing the show completely, so I'll just say that it was an amazing show! The band was in an amazing mood, smiling, having a great time; certainly enjoying themselves. The crowd (with A LOT of Dutch ppl, I was almost feeling home lol) was brilliant as well, I've never seen such an active crowd from a first balcony, but it's great to witness ;). A few highlights for me were first of all Run To The Water, which is among my favourite 3 songs of all time. It was the first time I heard it live, just amazing - it's a weird feeling that comes over you when you hear a song you wanted to hear so badly live for the first time... and I got that feeling twice this weekend (read my Hyde Park review and you'll know what I'm talking about) ;). Highlight #2 to me was Lightning Crashes, which always sounds great, but the athmosphere inside the venue was just beyond words... wonderful! Also we witnessed the premiere of Sanctity Of Dreams (and 92000 BJ fans were lucky enough to hear it the second time it was played live ever ;)). Ahh... it was a brilliant concert! It lasted for about 1 hour and 50 minutes, which is pretty much standard for a LIVE show. Probably due to me not feeling so well, I couldn't really be bothered that it didn't last longer... But still I think that they should be able to do longer setlists, they have a great number of songs after all! But I'm not complaining too much, as long as it sounds great - which it certainly did!

June 28th, Bon Jovi Hyde Park
I won't write a very detailed review here, cause there must be 100s of them out there now. So I'll just post my personal highlights - that should be enough! We (Kevin and I) had normal GA tickets, no Gold Circle, so we already knew that we would end up somewhere halfway the field. But we just couldn't have imagined that it would be *that* big and we ended up a long way from the stage & watched the whole concert on the video screens... I never saw the band for real :?. But to me this is the prove that a concert can be great as well, even though you're not in the front ;). Anyway... things started pretty standard, at first I was kinda afraid that it would be another standard show/setlist again, but thankfully it wasn't :)! Anyway... my highlights: the long KTF-version with the jungle screams and the BOOMs. I'm actually not sure if I heard the full version before yet just on a bootleg or live as well - but it was great anyway in London! Lay Your Hands was a great to hear again as well, same goes for Blood On Blood! Born To Be My Baby was stretched pretty long with a lot of nanananana's - I liked that! The guest performance of Ray Davies with Lola was amazing! I expected beforehand that someone would play a song with BJ already - this was a great suprise! It's a good song and it sounded perfect on Hyde park! This song was my second highest highlight, cause my highest highlight was of course... THESE DAYS!!! Finally!!! It took me 5 concerts to hear this song, the chance to hear this one live was actually one of the many reasons for me to go to London as well. This was like the Run To The Water-moment I had with LIVE. AMAZING!!!! Even Captain Crash that followed after These Days couldn't ruin my night anymore after this ;). The night ended with Never Say Goodbye, which was probably the most emotional ending there is for the European tour - it was beautiful! The fireworks at the end made it all more than perfect, a wonderful way to end an amazing show!

June 29th, Jonspotting at a MacDonalds :)
This is probably the weirdest day of my threeday trip to London. When we (Ruth and I) woke up we were just completely sad cause it was all over and all we wanted was to get some breakfast and go home... Unfortunately our plane left at 18:15, so we had half of a day to spend in London. That's just too short to do some sightseeing, so we had no idea how to spend this time. Anyway, we went for a breakfast in a cafe with Mike; talking a bit about last nights show, feeling sorry cause it was all over. After breakfast Mike went to his train, we said our goodbye's and see-you-next-tour's and Ruth and I decided to walk to the stage, to see if they were still taking it down.

Apparently it was completely removed already, all there was left from the concert were a couple of abandoned food-cars and a group with ppl removing the rubbish from the field. That sight made us even more sad... We must've been there for like 1.5 hours... talking about concerts in general, memories... and feeling sad. After a while we got bored from sitting in front of an empty concert ground and left to get an ice cream (hell, it was beautiful weather! who would've expected that!). We just wandered a bit through the streets and in one street we saw all these ppl waiting in front of this huge expensive hotel. We kinda thought this could be BJ's hotel - we asked and yes, apparently Jon still had to come out, while the other bandmembers had left already; most of them through the backdoor anyway, so nobody had seen them. We decided to wait there until we had to leave to catch our flight. Another 1.5 hours of waiting without any luck... Jon didn't come out. And we just really had to leave, otherwise we would miss our plane... So we said our final goodbyes to the other BJ-fans we met so many times last month and went to Heathrow.

At the airport we wanted to grab some food before we had to board our plane... we went almost straight to the MacDonald's after we checked in. When we saw the McD's in the departure hall I said to Ruth: 'hey, a Jon look-a-like' when I saw the back of the head of this blonde guy. Ruth: 'yeah, you're right, he really looks like Jon'. We got closer & closer... Both: 'OMG!!!! it IS Jon!!!!!'. WOW!! Needless to say that our minds just went completely blank - all we could say were some 'what now?'s and 'oh f*ck's, our heartbeat went to a 200bpm and we had no idea how to act ;). You just don't run into Jon Bon Jovi with his kids at a MacDonald's everyday! We just didn't have the guts at all to walk on to him & ask for his signature or a photo, with having in mind these occasions where bandmembers got really mad when their families were with them. So we were just freaking out & watching, ensuring ourselves that it was not a dream. I took a paparazzi-like-picture, just cause I needed some prove ;). After Jon made his orders he walked away (towards the direction of our gate - what made us think if he going to Amsterdam as well lol), leaving a trail of ppl who thought they just walked in a dream. But it certainly wasn't a dream!

What a great ending of a Bon Jovi tour!!! In November 2002 I thought 2 Bon Jovi concerts would be enough for me - how wrong was I! I ended up with 5 shows and I'm glad that I didn't just leave it with the Gelsenkirchen and Amsterdam shows. Next time I'll make sure to plan those concerts way in advance... those last-minute trips are a bit too hectic :P. Ahhh... 5 times BJ and after tomorrow 5 times LIVE, my two favourite bands, almost in one month. Too bad it's all over after tomorrownights LIVE concert! But I can look back at a wonderful time and it's definitely something I will do again next tour! So both LIVE and Bon Jovi come back to Europe soon ;)!