Jovitalk - Bon Jovi Fan Community - ~Official Buffalo Thread 1/20/06~

Bon Jovi Comes to Buffalo As A Survivor of the '80s Hair-Metal Craze

By JEFF MIERS, The Buffalo News
News Pop Music Critic
1/20/2006

WHO: Bon Jovi
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. today
WHERE: HSBC Arena
TICKETS: $49.50 to $75 (box office, Tickets.com)
INFO: 855-4444

They came from across the country in the early '80s, but they congregated in Los Angeles, at clubs like the Whiskey, the Roxy and the Rainbow, where a few too many drinks might make it tough for you to tell the boys from the girls. They dressed androgynously, but fostered a macho attitude that involved enthusiastic womanizing fueled by prodigious amounts of alcohol and cocaine.

Perhaps anticipating the language-twisting that would mark hip-hop's explosion a few years hence, they reveled in phonetic abuse, and came up with band names like Ratt, Kix, Britny Fox, Trixter, Motley Crue, and the like. (This passed for cleverness.)

They wore their hair piled high, sending Aqua Net stock through the roof in their quest for the ultimate, perfect rooster plumage. In the process, they birthed a movement melding glam-rock looks with candy-apple pop hooks and plenty of near-metal guitar aerobics. This movement came to be known as "hair metal," or less kindly, "poodle rock." And by the mid-'80s, it was the predominant commercial force in rock music.

Hair-metal had its day; the arrival of Nirvana and "grunge" in 1991 signaled that day's end. Today, bands like White Lion, Firehouse, Dokken, Tora Tora, Cinderella, Winger, Faster Pussycat and Whitesnake have either broken up or accepted a far less flashy lot in life, playing in clubs instead of the world's arenas.

But one band from that era has survived, even flourished, in the years since poodle rock's heyday: Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi dominated the hair-metal scene, principally on the strength of the 1986 album "Slippery When Wet" - very hair-metal title, that - and its mega-hit singles "You Give Love a Bad Name," "Wanted Dead or Alive" and "Livin' on a Prayer." The band members all had big hair, the songs had big hooks, the guitar solos were bigger than life, the stage shows were over-the-top. And it didn't hurt that the band's namesake, singer Jon Bon Jovi, was widely held to be the best-looking man in '80s rock.

"They have staying power, and it's because they write great songs and perform them perfectly in concert," says Kim Mecca of Buffalo. Mecca has been a Bon Jovi fan since her teens and a devotee of the group's live concerts since she caught its Buffalo Memorial Auditorium stop on the "Slippery When Wet" tour in 1986.

An all-ages show - - Seated inside Drifters Sports Bar and Grill, a sports and live music bar in Kenmore where they both work, Mecca and her friend Katie Dowling can barely contain their excitement about tonight's Bon Jovi gig inside HSBC Arena. They are visibly psyched, as the bar's jukebox blasts the ample selection of Bon Jovi tunes Dowling has programmed into it. "I saw the band earlier on this tour, in Ohio," Dowling says. "They are absolutely incredible live. They've never sounded better."

Dowling and Mecca offer tangible proof of Bon Jovi's inter-generational appeal. Dowling is in her early 20s, and though she likes "some hip-hop, and some modern rock," she favors music from the '80s, particularly the stuff that might be considered hair-metal, "because back then, every song on an album was great, whereas these new bands, you'll like one song, and the rest of the album will be throwaway stuff."

Mecca is in her 30s, but she has lost none of the passion for Bon Jovi she felt as a high-schooler. "They are just as good today as they were back then, if not better," she insists. So why has Bon Jovi endured, while so many of the group's hair-metal brethren have fallen off the radar, at least in the commercial sense? Compare the numbers. Bon Jovi has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, more of them after the '80s than during that decade. Its most recent effort, "Have a Nice Day," debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard charts upon its release this past September, ratcheting up a career-high first-week sales figure in excess of 200,000 copies.

Bon Jovi's current tour kicked off in November with two sold-out shows in Chicago, and has been proceeded with sell-outs close to every stop on the tour so far. "Have a Nice Day" charted in the upper reaches the world over, and it sold particularly well in Asia, Europe, Australia, Canada and South America.

By contrast, a package tour of several hair-metal bands headlined by Cinderella and Ratt failed to sell out Shea's Performing Arts Center's 3,000 seats when it stopped there this past summer. What gives? "Bon Jovi always updated their look, as well as their sound," says Mecca. "That's why they've continued to matter to people. And that's why new generations like them. They aren't stuck in hair-metal. They keep writing great songs. And you'll see all ages at their concerts." Dowling agrees. "They've changed their sound to make it modern, but they really didn't have to change that much. The new record is a little bit different than, say, "Slippery When Wet,' but it still definitely sounds like Bon Jovi."

Survival of the fittest - - It could be that Bon Jovi has survived and prospered in the Darwinian sense: because the group was the fittest of its bunch. Critics - including, on occasion, this one - might find some of the group's fare a bit light, but Bon Jovi's pop-metal has a timeless appeal that lands it somewhere between heavier Elton John and lighter Motley Crue. The band also has an image that is smoother than that of its booze-guzzling former classmates - the guys in Crue and Guns 'n' Roses, say.

Though Jon Bon Jovi concentrates principally on love songs and anthemic, self-empowerment rock ballads, he has made it clear - quietly, and outside of the spotlight - that he feels compelled to employ his fame to do some good, particularly in the New Jersey community from whence he came. In 2001, the singer was given the "Humanitarian of the Year" award by the Monmouth and Ocean Counties Food Bank for charitable work on behalf of the people of New Jersey. If he's not at all like his hero Bruce Springsteen musically, he has certainly taken a page from the Springsteen book, which suggests civic responsibility as part of the successful rock star's job description.

Quite notably, there have been no public scandals, no reported drug problems, no steamy home-movies, no appearances on has-been reality TV shows. Bon Jovi remains a class act, and a band in the present tense. One longtime fan, April Ezzell of Buffalo, a self-described "Bon Jovi fanatic" for 20 years, believes that it's the message, and the enthusiastic delivery of that message, that makes Bon Jovi a band apart.

"When the "Crush' album was released in 2000, and people heard "It's My Life,' it became a new anthem for the younger generation, and garnered a large audience of new fans," says Ezzell. "Bon Jovi's lyrics talk about real issues, and so many people can relate to that, whether they are 15 or 50.

I mean, where else can you get 2 1/2 hours of nonstop, adrenaline-rush hits at a live concert, where the band really plays, and gets you, the fan, involved?"