Supersonic's all mattering Bon Jovi in Amsterdam review.
 

Aloha !

Monday evening. I’m in de subway listening to Holland – Italy on my mobile phone and I’m missing the first Dutch goal because I’m underground. While my mum drives me to the bus station where I parked my bike (bus drivers are on strike here) I hear about a second goal. I have to turn up the volume because, according to my mum “she doesn’t care and they’ll lose anyway”, and she isn’t listening. When I’m on my bike cycling home I listen to the radio and there’s the third goal. Holland wins the match and Seb starts to think about going to Amsterdam because this just might become a very interesting show. He just doesn’t have the money yet, but I still got a big tax refund that could be transferred to my bank account any day, so who knows…

The next morning I wake up and I find out that all money has been transferred and all of a sudden Seb is a filthy rich bastard again. For a short while, because some bills need to be paid, but he starts to look on auction sites for tickets under face value. A day later he finds one, buys it and hopes it arrives on time. And it did.

With bus drivers still being on strike he needed to find a way to get there. None of my friends live close to me so I had to find another way of getting there. The only solution was to go cycling 8 kilometers to the bus station where our beloved Thunderstrucker would pick me up and drive me to Rotterdam. From there it was 15 minutes with the subway to Rotterdam Central Station, and 1 hour with the train to get myself to Amsterdam. Keep in mind that when going to Amsterdam by car it’s a 1,5 hour drive. When going there by public transportation it would take me at least 2,5 hours.

Anyway, I got there pretty much on time, started queuing for the General Admission entrance and met one of my old friends I hadn’t seen for some time now, which was nice. While queuing I got a text message from Seem, the woman who went with me and Thierry to Gelsenkirchen, saying that Backstage was ****ing up the tickets and told people to leave with a certain ticket saying “Entrance B”. Now this Gold Circle had two entrances. Entrance A (on the left), and, you guessed it, entrance B (on the right). Backstage was letting people in at Entrance A, so every Backstager with a ticket saying Entrance B was told to leave. Many people tried again later on when the general admission was let in and succeeded though. Well done guys, you again made it obvious that you can’t organize shit.

This Dutch audience was one big party of Seb recognizing familiar faces he once knew, he liked, loved and hated. I met Carli and Yvonne for the first time which was nice. She recognized me while talking to Thierry and shook hands with me while saying “you must be Seb” after I thought “oh well, 2 British girls with a beer in their hands must be Carli and Yvonne.” Seriously though, I did recognize her, had a brief chat, talked to Thierry again and he pointed out that my ex girlfriend was here too. I asked him how he knew this, and he gave me a look like “it’s a bit obvious, look over there” and she passed me by without saying hello at all. Some of you again will know who I’m talking about, the one the song in the music forum is about. Not really a great start for great evening and I felt a bit shit for a short while but went off to meet my friends, talked about it for a short while and soon the feeling went away and the great evening finally took off.

But first, we had to hear a rubbish DJ from the Dutch radio station Veronica doing a lot of banter about “are you ready for a party?”… “I said, are you ready for a party?”…”Are you ready for Bon Jovi?”…”Are you ready for Bon Jovi?”. Embarrassing, really, and it reminded me again why I do not listen to that radio station at all anymore. Bunch of talentless ****ers. The idiot tried to start a wave but couldn’t even do that. “You, the guy with the orange shirt, you start, and then everybody follows”. Now when a wave in a stadium, it’s the seated area’s first, and then the standing area. No, this brilliant DJ thought it had to go criss cross through the stadium, and we misunderstood, according to him. For ****’s sake what a moron it was. And when he finally went off, he came back again after 15 minutes to ask exactly the same questions. “Are we ready for a party?”… “I said, are you ready for a party?”… Well yeah, I’m ready for a party so go **** yourself and **** off. But no, they had to give away 4 on stage tickets, for which you had to send a text message that would cost you 60 Eurocents again. And again, after he explained the whole story, there was the question of the evening again. “Were we ready for a party???” Yeah I’m ****ing ready for a party. Some of us had been waiting in the cold and in the rain outside, some of us were already there at 10 in the morning you ****head. There’s a stadium filled with people waiting for a match and a gig, and you’re wondering if we’re ready for a party? **** off. And he finally did.

Van Velzen came on. To be honest, I didn’t really expect much of him. He’s been given the award for best Dutch live act but I think all his songs are shit and overplayed. But he was nice. The first song sounded an awful lot like Wild In The Streets which got me and my friends singing the verses of Wild In The Streets over the original melody. Some people picked it up, others wondered if Van Velzen was covering Wild In The Streets. And then there were those who were wondering who those clowns were who were singing the wrong song. Van Velzen had quite a lot of crowd interaction, even involved the fans from Germany and whatever country into a sing along fest, and when the last song came on he got most of the stadium singing with him.


This is him. Anybody else who recognizes a certain Bon Jovi song in this?

Anyway, he went off, and guess who came back? Exactly, that brilliant DJ again. A bunch of well known questions followed and when he went off the match was about to start. It was great fun singing and hearing a stadium singing the Dutch anthem because of a match that was shown on the big screens. When the match started, most people eventually stood up anyway and when Holland scored it’s first goal the tone was set for most of the evening. At first I thought that watching soccer would be shit (I’m not a soccer fan at all, don’t hate it either though) but this was a Dutch audience that was actually really ready to make a party of it. During the match the audience was loud, and when Holland made 2-0 it was actually just as loud as the audience in Frankfurt was during the Bon Jovi show. When the match was over (4-1) the show finally started.

And that’s it. Hope you enjoyed it. I’m off to have some diner. More on this later. :D

So, it’s 15 minutes past 8, I’ve just eaten my home cooked meal of Thai Curry with white rise and will now finally start finishing my review of Amsterdam. Sorry for the delays, but school became first priority after the weekend. I didn’t really expect that many people to look forward to my review, if I would’ve known I would’ve posted the review before the show.

Anyway. The match was done and the intro music started. This time there was no building up the anticipation, no, the band just entered the stage right away and on the video screens they showed the 4 goals from Holland again while the band was waving. They put a blow up ball on stage and when Jon entered the stage he kicked it into the audience. Normally I don’t give a **** about what he wears but seeing him enter the stage with an orange shirt after the match was very, very cool and only made the crowd louder than usual. Besides that, he had his Telecaster with him so we’d get another opener. When he started strumming the chords I thought it was I Believe but couldn’t hear a single thing because of the crowd. I’ll probably mention the crowd about a thousand times again in this review so you’ll just going to have to live with the fact that this Dutch crowd once again showed that it’s the best crowd a band could have. It turned out that it wasn’t I Believe but Rockin’ All Over The World but that didn’t really matter. This was the first time I saw Bon Jovi open with a cover song and normally I don’t really like that (not even when they open with Free World or Helter Skelter) but tonight it just worked. From the first words Jon had the crowd eating out of his hands. Hearing so many people just sing the “I like it” thing showed that it wasn’t just Bon Jovi and their die hards who knew this song, but that there were many people there who were familiar with other classic rock acts as well. This wasn’t the teeny bopper audience Bon Jovi played for in 2003, this was a bunch of die hards who went to see Bon Jovi anyway, no matter if they’d just had a hit or not, which was nice for a change.

This is what the band saw when they went onstage. Brilliant.
http://www.bonjovi-archives.com/Dutchcrowd.jpg

Lost Highway followed, he took the shirt off and for a short moment I thought that he’d threw it into the crowd but he didn’t. Born To Be My Baby was next and this song has never been a hit in Holland, it’s never charted either and with it not being on Cross Road I thought that we again did pretty good with our sing along fest. Bad Name followed which resulted in a lot of crowd anticipation that it was so loud that Seb’s ears started ringing. I expected Raise Your Hands next as they had dropped Summertime for some shows now and just hoped it wouldn’t be Complicated coming up next. It wasn’t, it was Raise Your Hands and during the song it became obvious that Richie was on fire this night, his fingers were fast and there was no going through the motions during this song. Runaway followed which was the first song that didn’t go over as well as the others did, and Jon got a tiny bit upset because his Telecaster didn’t work when he got it. He strummed anyway and I’m glad it started working when he started singing or I think Jon would’ve been a bit more than just a tiny bit pissed off. Runaway was nice and Jon was happy again and smiled to Richie saying “it works”. They got together in the end for the song, did many rock poses and Jon did his brilliant two note guitar solo.

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead again was one of the highlights of the show. We all know Jon does his “who’s got a song for me now? I need some jukebox music tonight” but tonight was different. Richie wanted to start Mercy but Jon already said “no, not tonight, tonight I’ve got one!” Or something like that, and started Jumpin’ Jack Flash. After the song, Jon wanted another song, looked around in the band and nobody started one. Richie didn’t start Mercy again but commanded someone else from the band to start one, and it was Hugh who kicked off a cover song instead! Gimme Some Lovin’ was done for the first time in Europe and again this audience surprised me by being so loud and chanting the “Gimme Some Lovin!” and the band loved it, you could just see it. So far I thought that they decided which cover songs would be played in Sleep, but tonight it felt unrehearsed, which made it cool to watch the band just jam along and having fun together.

Jumpin' Jack Flash + Gimme Some Lovin': http://www.megavideo.com/?v=SXNV9Y6E

Whole Lot Of Leavin’ again didn’t really go over well compared to other songs and I wondered if the band would continue keep playing this song because of the personal meaning the song has or if they’d drop it sooner or later. I just mentioned how I saw one of my ex girlfriends in the audience and if there was one song that me and her listened to a lot last summer it was this song because her mum died last year. I zoned out a bit during the song but was sure she thought about the same things I did during the song. It’s odd how life goes on but music can still connect 2 people even though they never speak to each other again. I wasn’t sure if I’d type this out anyway, but I guess it’s part of the experience and with many fans having their memories attached to songs I thought I’d give some insight into my memories here.

Right, enough about this. The intro of In These Arms started and right away someone held up a banner saying “Let David sing”. When Jon was saying “Is he ready? On the keys blablabla…” David didn’t really realize he was up to sing a bit of In These Arms until Richie pointed out that he should sing the first verse. He did, crowd cheered and Jon followed. Jon went for the song, gave everything he had and the song went over rather well. I still don’t understand why Bobby can’t come up with a better guitar solo. It’s slightly different every time but it’s shit over and over again, but I won’t go into detail about it in this review, enough has been said about his skills as far as I’m concerned.

In These Arms:
Jon went on and got his acoustic guitar, Richie got together with an acoustic as well and I thought Can’t Help Falling In Love would be next. But no, instead Jon started talking. “I don’t know how many of you have seen us before, but every now and then we play these request from banners held up in the crowd. This is a song from the These Days album and is called Diamond Ring”. I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and when he started singing the song the entire stadium just went quiet. And I don’t mean quiet in a way like “let’s chat ourselves through this song” like what happened in Germany during Memory in Gelsenkirchen, but quiet in a way like “let’s appreciate this”. The full band joined in and during the second verse we had an entire stadium singing the lyrics in a way like they did with Memory in America. It was very cool to hear and see a stadium know such an obscure album track, and when Always came on it felt like a reward for our singing and cheering for the song. It was the second time I heard Always this tour but it was miles and miles better than the way Jon sung the song in Gelsenkirchen. And when the song almost finished Jon did an attempt at the “don’t you do me no wrong” parts, failed, but did a scream in the end, which was very cool. So far, Richie had been on auto pilot every time they played the song, but not tonight. The man was on fire and tore the ****ing roof of the place. This was the way Always is supposed to be played, with a Jon that sung his ass off and Richie giving everything he had. They also extended the outro a bit, every time I thought he’d finish his solo he gave just a little more. Absolutely stunning guitar work.

Crash followed. Shit song. Time to send Emil some text messages about how badly I needed to take a leak (I drank a little too much Taxi during the soccer match) but how I couldn’t leave my spot as I was standing there 8th row. These sort of updates must’ve been what Emil loved to hear, so I told him twice how much I needed a bathroom break. Yes, people, texting with Seb is one big pleasure. During this song some people tried to make it to the front by pretending to bringing beer to the front (as if that was ever going to work). One of my friends didn’t let them pass which resulted into them pushing my friend which resulted into a glass of beer spilled over the Kraut in front of her and over my friend. I didn’t mind the Kraut getting the beer over her hair and all that, but it made the boyfriend of the Kraut getting himself involved into this as well. They all started yelling to each other (2 in German, 3 in Dutch), it made absolutely no sense at all until another friend of mine said “so, time to go back to where you came from, right?” She pretended not to understand what my friend was talking about and pretended like she was from Mojo (the Dutch concert organizer) and we fell for that. Obviously not, we couldn’t give a **** even if she’d been the Queen but she pretended not to understand what they were on about and just stood there with a thought like “I’m not going anywhere, I made it here and I’m not going back”. Seem, my incredible Dutch friend got the brilliant idea to hold up a banner right in front of her face, and she went off realizing that she was not going to win this fight with Seb’s cohorts.
Just Older was next, and by now I started to wonder if this show was really going to be just 2 hours long like they advertized in the papers and on the internet. Just Older was nice, and there was no long silent break like they usual do. Tonight Jon was in a hurry and wanted to play as many songs as possible, and when Older had finished Jon started Sat. Night right away. I was hoping for an extended version of the song and I got one. Finally Jon didn’t just rip through the song like had done so far this tour, but made the song special again. Tonight Jon was into the song as well, which made the improvisations better as well. The entire band worked their way around Jon’s improvisations which made it better too, and there was a proper build up to the chorus again as well with Tico’s drums pounding the beat long before the chorus was about to start. Very, very cool, and this was how it’s supposed to done. Picture the versions of the song they did on the Bounce Tour, but with better vocals and you’ll get the idea.

We Got It Goin’ On followed, and by now Seb was so into the show that he didn’t really care about the shit song anyway. Jon completely ****ed up the “I came all the way to Amsterdam to hear you scream part” which lead to confusion in the crowd as they didn’t know how to respond to him. I couldn’t understand what he said anyway, but I’ll hear it soon enough when I’ve got the bootleg. And again, I can’t share it with you, but I’m just saying this to make you all jealous. When the intro of It’s My Life started the crowd were back on their feet again and again Seb’s ears were ringing and I wondered when they’d start to bleed because of so much crowd noise.

Keep The Faith got the show back on it’s feet in my opinion. Keep The Faith is. Jon struggled with the first time he did the chorus but fought his way back into the song, and after the chorus the pit started chanting the “ooh ooh’s” from Sympathy For The Devil. It didn’t take long before Jon picked it up and he started teasing the crowd by waving his hand like “give me more, c’mon, I’m waiting”, to which the pit started to chant along and people started to realize that the ooh’s might lead to something interesting. More people joined in, which was great fun and then Jon gave Hugh finally the signal to start the bass loop. At this point I screamed “Yeah!!!” what apparently not that many people understood, until Jon started the words of Sympathy For The Devil, which resulted into the people around me giving me a nod like “oooh I understand why you like it!” Some jungle screams followed while many people were still chanting the “ooh ooh’s” which made Keep The Faith a very, very special song tonight.

I’ll Be There For You followed, it was great again, but at this point Seb was so high from Keep The Faith that this song passed him by while texting Emil about how spectacular Faith just had been. After Jon returned he looked a bit upset according to my friend, but I didn’t notice. I was still as high as a kite because of that spectacular version. Blaze Of Glory was done very well again with Jon going for it and after the song had finished there were some problems with the Tamagotchi guitar so Richie did the intro of Blood On Blood on the Fender he had just played during Blaze. It sounded very different was it was played without any distortion and for the first time ever I could hear every note during the intro. Nice one. Richie changed guitars when the song had started and overall Blood On Blood was a very nice surprise and Jon was on fire during the song. He held back a bit during the first chorus and relied a bit on the backing vocals but went for it the second time, realizing that his voice still not had been shot. Have A Nice Day followed, very loud guitars, a lot louder than how it’s normally mixed and this is how the riff is supposed to sound in a stadium. It didn’t sound muffed but actually very powerful and it got the crowd on the back of their feet. Who Says followed and well, I’m not a fan of the song but the song went over rather well. It’s alright, I guess. Huhu.

When Prayer started and the drums kicked in it was the first time I could feel the floor moving because of all the bouncing that was done. Really everybody was into the song at this point. Keep in mind that at this point the show had already lasted about 2 hours and 25 minutes, so the build up to this song was pretty much done and I think literally everybody was waiting for it. In Amsterdam 2003 the crowd was loud, and that was with 45.000 people in the venue. This was 30.000 people, but 2003 was no match to this crowd. Absolutely stunning, Jon could just sat down and let the crowd sing the entire song and it would’ve worked.

Now the encore was really something special. I had seen the text sheets for Stick To Your Guns and no way I would’ve thought that it would work, but Jon and Richie got together and it looked like they were figuring out what they play. All of a sudden Jon said “alright, let’s give it a try then” and he and Richie went straight into the acoustic part of Stick To Your Guns. The pit was pretty quiet for a change when they did so and there I was screaming again. “Yeaaaah”. My friend who was no longer standing beside me heard me and wondered, and I screamed at her “Stick To Your Guuuuns!”. She was like “oooh yeaaaah”, and I texted Emil. It looked like Jon wouldn’t sing the song but there he went into the first lines of the sung to which the pit went absolutely crazy. When the drums and bass kicked in it felt like the band had must’ve rehearsed the song sometime this tour because it sounded too good to be true, to be honest. However, for a song they had not played live since 1988 the band and especially Jon did an incredible job. There was no struggling at all and although he lost the words when some of the people at the front row dropped the lyrics, he gave them the finger (right on) and went on with the song. The stadium again was pretty quiet just like they were Diamond Ring but they sung the chorus again, and when the song was about to go into a solo Richie wanted to but Jon commanded him to stop, and the band went into Wanted instead. This was just like when I heard Dry County in Dusseldorf one of those moments why I became a fan, and why I’m still a fan. I was shaking like I was having Parkinson and texting someone had never been so difficult but I nailed it. The text message, that is. I could only imagine what the reactions on Jovitalk would be like, but I was there and didn’t have to read it from a ****ing message board.

After Wanted was finished I was expecting to get Bad Medicine and I’m sure it was planned but there was no more time left. The curfew was officially set at half past 12, I think it really was 1 at night they were supposed to stop but the show stopped at 10 past 1. It was absolutely brilliant, I’ve got no other words for it. Back in Frankfurt I told Thierry they’d have a tough job beating that show in London but Amsterdam actually just was a much better show. Sure, it didn’t have Damned and These Days, but the overall quality of the show was so much better. Before the show started many people expected a show that would run just over 2 hours, but it was a 2 hour and 40 minutes long show that literally blew every die hard away. Thierry came to me with a look on his face like “I can’t believe what I just witnessed” and in fact neither could we. I wonder what Twickenham will bring, but this really is the best concert I’ve ever seen any band do. There were no real downers, only a few **** ups and a rarity in the end that nobody expected. I could go on and on about this, but you just had to be there that night and I’m glad me and my friends were there.

It was a bitch to get back home. Back in the train again (that was loaded with soccer fans) and I had to endure an epilogue from a Portugese soccer fan to a Dutch student who explained his theories about how Holland was going to be playing against Portugal in the finals. The funny thing about it was how some French soccer fan was sitting beside him, all dressed with French crosissants on his belt, not looking too happy. When I made it to Rotterdam, dad picked me up with the car, drove me to the bus station again and from there I had to cycle 8 km home again. Keep in mind that by now it was half past 4 in the morning but still Seb was psyched about the Bon Jovi show he just saw. When I finally went to bed it was 6 o’ clock in the morning but I still couldn’t get some sleep. I put on some X-Files episode, 10 minutes later I turned it off, the DVD had made me tired and finally Seb was dreaming about beautiful girls with big tits again. 5 hours later he had to play a volleyball tournament with the family again though, so it wasn’t really a long dream, and one of my BJ buddies (I just had to mention this word in one of my reviews) would be playing with me, she picked me up, we played the match and still weren’t tired. After the tournament we went home, had some Chinese food and I had promised her we’d be recording some songs because that in fact was her ultimate dream. To be recording some Bon Jovi songs with Seb. My brother and niece came along, and here’s the special thing I promised you.

Our version of Sat. Night. Just for you.

http://www.bonjovi-archives.com/SatNight.mp3

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!

Hope you enjoyed my review. Cheers to my friends again. This again has been one big ****ing pleasure.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

Bastard.:p

And that's Raise Your Hands.:eek::p

You gonna quit ****in around and finish this review now :p

Yeah thanks brother for taking me with you to rubbish shows and go to the good ones when i am low on money and time :P rubb it in some more will ya

Poised and waiting for the rest, you shitbag!:p:p

Are you ready for the Seb's all mattering review!?? I said, are you ready for the review??!!

LOL

YES! (But evidently Seb isn't!)

Oh he was there alright. You can hear him scream "Yeah" & "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" on my vids.
You can even hear him 'sing' :mrgreen:

Seb you're such a shitbag, finnish that review man! :p