Jovitalk - Bon Jovi Fan Community - Supersonic's all mattering Bon Jovi in Gelsenkirchen review.

Aloha !

A big part of doing a Bon Jovi show to me is pissing off as many fans as possible. Some might say I’m a wanker because I’m saying that, but when I’m saying this I also include my brother, my niece, my friends, basically everyone who has decided to go to the same show as me. And everyone has the right to do the same to me, I can handle that. And everyone I'm with knows this, sadly. :(

It all started with the fake report on Jovitalk where I stated that I had a Backstage Pass (obviously rubbish, it rolled right out of my printer here) and that I was organizing the numbering system. This didn’t go over very well at Backstage, and Rebekka tried to find out who I was and if it was really true. She contacted friend X (I won’t say his name, he’s got 40 shows to go) and asked him if it was true. It wasn’t, but he kept his mouth shut. And because friend X didn’t say anything, some Backstagers decided to go earlier with the chance of getting there before me.

No way I was leaving on Tuesday to see a show on Thursday. Not this tour, I’m a busy man nowadays with a life and since all those Backstagers are butt ugly, there’s no point in leaving early as I’m not planning on giving them some taste of my hot bratwurst throughout the cold nights on their self made camping sites. No ****ing way. I was leaving on Thursday morning after I had properly shaved myself (the Liam Gallagher sized sideburns were gone) and had given myself a fantastic meal (peanut butter always works well before a long ride). It was a quality drive in the car that had no CD player, so all we had was a 10 year old cassette tape that came from the time that Seb didn’t have a CD player in his room yet. There was a bonus though; a 10 year old cassette tape meant no songs from Crush, Bounce blablabla you’ll get the picture. We drove to the center of Holland to get picked up by some women from the Dutch board that haven’t completely lost track and do have some common sense, and finally we were on our way to Gelsenkirchen. The sun was shining, there was not enough room on the backseat for 3 persons and with all the singing they did they soon were soaking wet.

Anyway. We arrived in Gelsenkirchen, wondered where Thierry was and shock horror: we found him while he was buying fast-food. Of all places where you could find Thierry, we found him there. Absolutely mind-blowing. It was nice seeing him again though for a short while I think he disagreed with me because when I gave him a pat on the back he spilled ketchup all over his sleeve. Oh boy I have never seen someone looking so mad at me because of ketchup on his sleeve, but luckily he recovered and we started chatting a bit. He told me both Bed Of Roses and Always had been soundchecked and that some idiot told him that Seat Next To You had also been done, but because of the idiot telling him that, he didn't really believe it. He also told me some I hadn’t made friends with some of the Backstagers, but I wasn’t there to become friends with Backstagers anyway so I didn’t care and found it funny that people still believe all the crap I post on Jovitalk. I heard Rebekka wanted to know what I looked like, so here’s a couple of pictures of Me, my brother, Thierry & Tom. I'm not sure if the girls want me to post pictures of them so I'm not going to bother.

http://www.bonjovi-archives.com/Seb.jpg http://www.bonjovi-archives.com/Sebs-brother.jpg http://www.bonjovi-archives.com/Thierry.jpg http://www.bonjovi-archives.com/Tom.jpg

Now that that’s sorted, on to the next chapter of this brilliant story. Getting inside. Eventim absolutely didn’t have a clue of what sort of tickets they sold, so thanks to the brilliant organization close to 100 people with FOS tickets queued in the wrong line. Or snake, as Eventim think the English word for queue is (slänge apparently is queue in German, so Snake is English for queue. Brilliant). When the doors opened, all Backstagers were already inside and we were queuing for the wrong entrance. We had to put our ticket over some scanner that read the zipcode but soon found out that it didn’t work when some kraut started screaming and cursing in the face of a poor little girl that didn’t have a clue of what she did wrong. Right. Onto the next queue. We had asked several Germans if this was the right queue for the FOS tickets and they all said no, so now Seb + cohorts would not have been Seb + cohorts if he didn’t think he had the right for a better spot in the queue thanks to those morons that had send him away. So, after we parked ourselves right in front of their faces, we got in earlier than them, got into the pit and they didn’t, so all was well in the end. So far so good.

The support act was horrible, so we started singing some Dutch slagersongs instead. We were surrounded by other Dutch people and finally we found people that figured that it was cool to have fun during the waiting and didn’t give us a look of “ssssh, thou shall not talk when we wait”. We made it through the support act, she went off, goodbye, **** off and may you never return Giannananniin Nanninninanoooooni.

By the way, I haven’t mentioned yet in this review that I am cool as ****, so there and anyone who disagrees is wrong. Now that that’s sorted, you’ve just wasted some time to reading a lot of crap that’s completely unnecessary and doesn’t have anything to do with the show itself. But, Seb wouldn’t be Seb if he wouldn’t make it up to you, so I’ll start reviewing the show now.

When the lights go out the intro music starts to play but it’s too long. It gets the crowd excited but there was no action, just some cyber noise. Some light effects, but no build up apart from some booms here and there. The intro for the HAND tour was better, as was the intro for the Bounce tour.

The band came on stage, kicked into Lost Highway and I was wrong about that one (oooh Seb says he’s wrong, somebody quote me now and put it in his/her signature). Lost Highway as an opener works. I don’t know why, but it does. It’s miles better than Last Man Standing and it’s a fun song to hear. Born To Be My Baby sounds fresh again and I think it’s a little bit faster than on previous tours, let’s hope they’ll extend it again in Europe because singing nanananana for 2 minutes is a lot more fun than singing It’s Alright it’s alright for 2 minutes, but we’ll get to that later. Because Bad Name didn’t come second but third it finally changes things a bit in the start of the show. So all was well, but obviously Capt. Crash needed to be played or the ****ing Backstagers couldn’t throw around their confetti and couldn’t wave their arms. ****ing horrible crap shit song. Every person that likes Capt. Crash is gay, and now we got that sorted, we'll move on to Older, one of the better songs from Crush and Jon’s fish-faces were all over the place during the chorus. He nailed the song though and it again sounded like a fresh song.

Sleep followed, and although it’s still a bit too slow, it finally has back it’s groove. Yes, the song might be overplayed, but with the covers and “oh yeah’s” in the beginning it’s finally a fun song to hear again. The version they’re doing this tour is the best version they’re doing since 1995 I think. Rockin’ All Over The World really rocked, and Start Me Up was nice too. The crowd (which was ****ing loud actually!) enjoyed Rockin’ All Over The World a lot, they didn’t expect that one at all, and Start Me Up got them thinking what song it was, it took a few riffs before they recognized it. If the band plays Sleep the way they do now, I don’t mind it at all. Runaway followed which was a bit slow I think, it was lacking it’s punch and was the first song that didn’t go over as well as the others did.

In the end of Runaway, Jon started pointing out some things to every band member so there was going to be a change. Richie changed his guitar and on came the yellow Fender he so far only used for Hey God. Oooh…“So far about the setlist, I see requests everywhere and this is a song from an album called Cross Road, I think you’ll remember it” ****ing shit, no Hey God. But Always was very welcome though. In the Oasis topic I said that Oasis have written the story of my life, but Bon Jovi have written some songs that are part of Seb’s life too (Lie To Me, In These Arms, Keep The Faith) and Always is also one of those songs. It’s the song of which I expected never to hear live again in the original way, up until this tour when Jon nailed it again. Songs and performances like this keep my faith in Bon Jovi alive and are the reason why I’m still a fan. Jon needed to bring up everything he had and in the end his voice was shot to pieces but the whole performance of the song was absolutely fantastic, with Richie doing his bluesy licks in the end too. I just couldn’t see it anymore because I was all teary. Actually I wasn’t, but it was really, really good. And it wasn’t Bed Of Roses either.

Whole Lot Of Leavin’ took me back to the time I described some time ago in the music forum and meant a bit more to me than the average Bon Jovi song and although it’s a good song, it doesn’t really work live. It also included one of those Jon Bon Jovi wants an applause moments which lasted just a little too long. You know, a silence in a song and then Jon starts to look in the camera because he wants you to cheer because he’s looking at you. That said, the song was still great and it was a good performance, but I got the feeling that the crowd didn’t really knew what to do with it.

After Always though, something changed. Jon’s attitude changed. During the show, we put up our banners for requests, and he just smiled, or read them. Onwards from Always he absolutely ignored them on purpose. After Always, the show became slightly different. I got the feeling that Jon felt that one request was enough, and hoped I was wrong. Now before you all start like “Seb don’t whine because you didn’t get your request” it’s not really that. It’s the general feeling I got from Jon.

In These Arms followed and I couldn’t help but thinking about yomama, and how I got that song for erm, let me check my site, 8th time and how unfair the world is…Poor yomama. I just hoped for her that we wouldn’t get Blood On Blood, because that would’ve been really unfair. In These Arms was good, Jon went for it, but Bobby completely sucked again during the guitar solo. Still, Thierry told me he’d rather hear Complicated than In These Arms and I absolutely disagree with him. In These Arms is good, even with a rubbish guitar solo. Complicated is bad.

We Got It Goin’ On was the first absolutely rubbish song of the night. Yes, the crowd went mad during the song, lots of screaming involved, but it’s just not the way you should get a crowd going. Asking them to scream for you is what boybands do on shows at the MTV awards and all that. It’s My Life followed like it has done for about the entire tour and again the crowd went mad for it, but I think it’s time to speed it up a bit. It’s too slow. And then there was Bad Medicine. My brother went mad for it, I think it’s shit. Everything about it has become so predictable. It’s got everything that’s wrong about Bon Jovi, but again, the crowd loved it. Jon was on auto-pilot and after Shout he wanted to introduce Richie but he completely lost his voice after the usual “waaaaaaait a minute” thingy he does. It was all raspy and we were back to the Bounce Tour.

Richie did These Days, and the crowd was loud during that one! The verses were sung louder than the verses of Always, just to give an indication, which was good, because I don’t think Richie should do this song. He can’t deliver the goods, and when that Poncho joins him on the guitar solo the entire song is just ruined. I just talked with Carli about this and I agree with her. Only November Rain should have violins included. Other songs shouldn’t. The crowd ate the song though, and once again proved that it knew songs from These Days by the heart. If only Jon would finally start to understand this.

Summertime followed and Jon started doing the chorus of We Will Rock You, Richie joined him, and Jon did a verse too. The crowd didn’t really follow him though, and when Summertime started, they had lost the crowd for the first time during the show. It was a Jon song obviously with all the poses, acting and faces he pulled during the verses. After Summertime, Who Says You Can’t Go Home followed which didn’t work as well as it did last tour, and as soon as Who Says was started I started to worry that this could become a very short show. Jon alrighted himself through the song, and Have A Nice Day was the first proper rock song since Bad Medicine, which is why the flow of the setlist was completely gone. Have A Nice Day went over well, but wasn’t anything spectacular either and things didn’t live up until Faith. What I don’t understand is that Jon can do a 10 minute version of Bad Medicine but Faith has to be short every tour. Richie’s wah wah was immense though, should’ve lasted much longer, and him going wireless and playing in front of a big reminded me why it’s so sad that GnR are no longer together. Seeing a guitar player run is what a guitar player should do and seeing him rip through a guitar solo in front of big screen is just the right thing for Faith. Richie should improve the way he runs a bit though, he comes across as a duck at times. Faith was what brought the show back to life, and although the song was short, Jon sang it a lot better than he did on the HAND tour and didn’t skip the last chorus this time either. Prayer followed, yadayadayada crowd joins, Jon fails during the chorusses, band goes off and we started to wonder what would come up next. They still had 40 minutes left to play before the curfew so we wondered if there’d be a big surprise in the encore, but I had a bad feeling about it.

When Jon came on stage, we thought it had to be Sat. Night, but it wasn’t. The crowd was all pumped up and when Jon started to play Memory it was a major let down. I’ve heard it go over well in the US but it just didn’t work. They’ve added a bit of guitar in the end but it didn’t improve the song anyway. When the song was finished, the crowd was dead. Blood On Blood followed which lived things up again, but this is a song only die hards know so yes it was a welcome surprise (poor yomama), but should’ve been played after a big hit. The song went over well and it was a very good performance, but David Bryan and the Poncho ****ed up during the “long haired rock & roll band” by going completely off key. The usual "we're gonna play a lot of different stuff in Europe and want to thank you for sticking with us throughout the career" speech followed, rise for the playing of the anthem one liner was next, Wanted was played, no crowd singing involved this time, Jon sang the entire song, and as soon as the song was finished, Jon was all about leaving. Earplugs out, waving a bit, couldn’t wait to get the band together for their final bow, and he left. Even while they were leaving the stage the stadium was chanting the “we want more bit”, and Jon came back on stage and I’m pretty convinced that he knew he was leaving too early. He waved one more time and got off stage as quick as he can.

So. Was this a bad show? No. It was just alright and very much driven on the auto pilot. They started off brilliantly, a better start than Dusseldorf, but somewhere after Always Jon got on the auto pilot and the rest of the band followed. My 16 year old niece thought it was spectacular but it was her first stadium show, the first big act she ever witnessed so I am pretty sure she would’ve thought that it was excellent if the band would’ve played for 90 minutes too. It was fun seeing someone getting so excited over Bad Medicine, but still, something was lacking that night. I left with mixed feelings. Yes, it included highlights but they absolutely didn’t go out with a bang. I was thinking about buying tickets for more shows but I’m not going to do it. This has cost me 100E in total and the band again left me a bit with a bitter taste because they did not want to give their all.

Rating on the Supersonic’s all mattering Bon Jovi review index:
***** The ****ing bollocks!!!
**** Top show.
*** Yeah, well that was alright...
** Piss poor performance. Nnngg!!!
* Jon you cunt I hope you go bald within 1 day!

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan