Studio demos (most likely from Century Productions) showing the band rehearsing the songs for the their record-breaking Slippery When Wet album. If you want to follow the process of each song's evolution, start with the basment demos:
And listen to the final album after this one.

Very interesting on here is that Richie actually takes over the lead vocals on Never Say Goodbye and the fact that all songs that made the final album cut were already written at this stage. With New Jersey it is known that some tracks were added very late, like Born To Be My Baby or Bad Medicine. Lay Your Hands On Me was even written in Vancouver.

When coming from the Basement demos it's obvious that the verses of Take Me Home merged into I'd Die For You. In the end the verses would be replaced again, so that the final I'd Die For You and Take Me Home ended up being completely different songs. It's interesting to see that transition though.

I'd Die For You came from a different tape and hence the sound is quite different. I only cleaned these and since the frequency response was rather low I shied away from screwing on the sound too much. Would've only made it worse in my book.

Here's the full gig from Philadelphia 2011:

https://youtu.be/gTYFtDHPKQw

I was just reading through some discussions from the Circle/GH tours and came across many interesting remarks, views and opinions. Many of them were complaints about how boring and predictable the set lists the band were playing used to be back then. But... man... look at THIS now:

1. Just Older (with Jon playing the first half of the first solo)
2. You Give Love A Bad Name
3. Born To Be My Baby
4. We Weren't Born To Follow
5. Lost Highway
6. When We Were Beautiful (with an extra long outro)
7. It's My Life
8. Runaway
9. The More Things Change
10. We Got It Going On
11. Bad Medicine/Hot Legs/Shout (teaser)
12. Lay Your Hands On Me (sung by Ricardo Stefano Samborino)
13. What Do You Got?
14. Diamond Ring
15. I'll Be There For You (with Jon effortlessly belting out a clean, sustained B4 on the "when you were down" part - and, actually, being able to pronounce the words clearly!)
16. Love For Sale
17. Squeeze Box (The Who cover)
18. Who Says You Can't Go Home (with about 50,000 "it's alright's" - after all, Jon REALLY appreciates the feedback he gets from the Philly crowds, and it was his birthday!)
19. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
20. No Apollo Cheese (also known as "No Apologies")
21. Have A Nice Day (with Jon delivering the whole f***ing song in a way that's been EXTREMELY rarely seen after the 90's, let alone after 2010-11)
22. Keep The Faith (with Jon giving his f***ing all throughout the song, roaring, screaming, improvising, ad-libbing... easily one of the most energetic and impressive post-2k JBJ performances I've ever seen/heard, no matter where or when!)

Encore 1:

23. In These Arms (with Bobby f***ing Bandiera butchering the solo once again)
24. Wanted Dead Or "Hallaeeve"
25. I Love This Town (with an extra long outro)
26. Someday I'll Be Saturday Night (with Jon going absolutely apeshit after the bridge)
27. Livin' On A Prayer

Encore 2:

28. Blood On Blood

And that's what you called a "not great" set list back then! Damn, I miss those times - Jon was still able to do about 90% of the BJ catalogue justice live on a regular basis (and probably could've done nearly all of them so, but we know he's always been more or less lazy), Richie was still there (on fire, BTW), the set lists varied greatly (at least compared to today)... *sobs uncontrollably*... what the f***ing hell happened to THIS band?

https://youtu.be/o2hhP76RlKI (IBTFY from Washington '11 - check it out especially from 3:25 onwards)

And to think it wasn't even THAT long ago...

And to think many of us back then were lamenting how bad his voice was. Funny how time changes your perspective.. comparatively he sounded amazing vs now. He's actually *gasp* listenable. Amazing what a little confidence and energy will do not only for the quality of the show but for your vocals.

Whoa, did he actually try the scream?? Is that the first time since like the OWN tour?

But then look back 7 years prior to that and see how great the sets were and how the band sounded

That was a huge discussion on there at the time of the show, but in fact, he didn't. The screaming came from the audience and Jon just sang that "aaaaaaahhhh" part in a lower register which made it seem like he was the one going for the scream.

Haha, had a good laugh on that one, never heard it before, great stuff! :-D

And yeah, what a gig/band!

In the vid around 1:00 Jon says how he tried to bribe Richie to include the Frankie verse in It's my life. He said he tried with food and some other things but then the rest is just blur for me. Anybody has any idea what Jon actually said? The whole discussion is so damn funny, too bad I can't find the complete vid :D

Ah damn - I got the full video of that night with good audio and just keep forgetting to upload it :D

... well, maybe it's high time you did it, PLEASE :D

and THANK YOU in advance <3 I don't know how I could 'bribe' you in return, though xD

I'd love to see that too!

Someone be kind enough to remind me around next Thursday when I get back home (feel free to drop a PM) :cool:

Got it on my calendar! Thanks!! :D

Can't wait! :D

For years and years I've tried over and over to somehow get rid of this strange noise that has plagued this great song on all versions that are available. Now I've at least found some sort of stopgap solution to reduce it and emphasize the instruments more. I had to cut in on the stereo width since that's where most of the noise seemed to be.
Still, I hope that one day a clean studio recording will be released by the band!

Thank you! I love the song:)

It's almost impossible to clean anything when it's on one track... Even a professional with top equipment couldn't do it...

Prior to releasing Love Never Felt So Good by Michael Jackson, I watched something on YouTube that explained how they couldn't remove the piano because it was on the same track as the vocal... They had to use other instruments to drown it out...

It was cool to watch considering all the work we try to do to improve tracks like The Soul Truth, Cadillac Man, Life's Too Short, some of the demos, etc...

On some of those original basement demos, I also wanted someone to lay down some instrumental tracks and then overlay Jon's vocals on top of them... Someone did that with a few Elvis Home recordings and it came out fantastic...


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Do you have the semi-official pre-release? Listening to mine and don't hear a problem. Looks as if you cancelled a bunch of the frequencies at 3kHz.

I've always wondered about that. I kind of thought there was the leak that a small portion of people have and then the bootleg of the leak that is more widely circulated, the version of Nothing that most people have. Is that correct?

That is probably what occurred. That pre-release album was shared with a few people in the business and DJs - that sort of thing. Then Jon decided to dump some tracks and write some new ones.

Eventually those copies that were originally sent out made their way into wider circulation. Someone who was a member of Seb's board at the time shared his original copy with us. So there may be a difference between a copy of the original - and a 15th generation copy LOL

Maybe it's my dodgy ears, but I always found the quality of Nothing perfectly listenable

Mine has a little radio type static going on in the background but nothing intolerable... or maybe I just got used to it as part of the song

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Mine was always a little grainy too. If someone has an audio they think is decent, I'd really appreciate it in a PM please? (Am I allowed to ask for stuff to be sent by PM) apologies mods if not.

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That's the thing that has always bothered me - that background noise that isn't so present in the other songs from the pre-release. It definitely isn't intolerable, but I always strive for the best possible quality and hence I worked on cutting that noise a bit out.

Yes a PM please

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I Agree!!! Striving for the best quality is always the priority!!!

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Full show from Prague '13:

https://youtu.be/NVVGew_-Ze8

Bloody hell, that version of LTOR is amazing!

At that point they had done it on three consecutive nights - I witnessed it Friday in Stuttgart (where it was okay) and Saturday in Cologne where he was killing it! Prague was on Sunday, so he probably still was on a high from the night before :)

Prague was on Monday :) but yeah, the Cologne version was amazing, as was the whole show. Radio, I'd Die For You, Last Man Standing, Living In Sin, Wild Is The Wind, Love's The Only Rule and This Ain't A Love Song during the same gig - epic!

David Bryan and Rick Nielsen joined Little Steven and his band (feat. Everett Bradley on percussion) today in Pistoia, Italy.
https://www.facebook.com/giacomo.bor...3480883096923/

JBJ was in Greece since last week, so there was a possibility that he will attend the show as well.

The idea for this video came when I was listening to Outtakes/B-sides and imagined how they might've worked on stage in case the band had ever performed them. I actually started doing these videos back in 2012 and just revisited that work after years and decided that it was time to let the first batch of them go.
If you like this one, I'd be happy to work on a Volume II sometime in the future!

The songs in this montage are: These Open Arms, Starting All Over Again, Growin' Up The Hard Way and Borderline.

Awesome, nice job. More please! Perhaps with Bitter Wine?


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Nice Job... Not necessarily my thing but overall, nice edits...

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Nice work. I think it would be pretty cool if you added some audience noice in the background to get the feel of a live show.

Good idea. I'll try to incorporate that on the next video (if I ever got another one done) :D

Not available in my country :(

It seems to have something to do with Growin' Up The Hard Way being in there. Back in 2012 when I made the video I didn't think anyone would care (especially because I used the bootleg of it that was around then), but the 2014 release seems to have gotten some countries into trouble.
However, did you try to watch it from your PC? Youtube shows me that it's not available through some mobile devices, but it should work from your PC.

Upon multiple repeated requests... :D

Yay!! Thank you!

OMG the quality is absolutely AMAZING thank you!!! *returns to watching*
:mrgreen: