Bon Jovi: There's a difference between being critical and just being nasty

Wow, this guy is so vicious I wonder if he went to the show, or just waited for the set list to show up.

Bon Jovi not as good as Take That? Really?  This guy was reaching to be insulting to garner attention.

Click on the link and read the comments, while sometimes in Jovination we all have our differences our love for the band remains constant.   The theme of the comments: "where you there?" "you're not a journalist!"

I wonder if the author of this article & Jon were to get in a 'How many hot chicks can you pick up' contest who would win?  Oh wait who wants to date a bitter, balding, thirty something Scotsman?  Jon wins hands down. 

It's like he went though the "Bad Cliche's written about Bon Jovi" dictionary and used every one of them in this article.

Bon Jovi: still around, still abysmal

Review: The ravages of time haven’t lessened the capacity of atrocious soft-rockers Bon Jovi to truly lower the tone, as they showed during their purported Greatest Hits set at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh last night.

By Michael MacLennan

As the all-too-American quartet blazed initially into You Give Love a Bad Name – sets of teeth glaring white and the tans emitting their own health warning – it’s almost easy to give Bon Jovi a pass for sheer vivacity. That, however, would be to entirely miss the point, as thousands upon thousands of fans did last night.

The grinning soft-rock troupe perform their Greatest Hits set with capricious ease, supposedly subject to the elements in this Open Air tour which last night visited Murrayfield Stadium, though most of them still under cover most of the time from any drizzly rain thanks to a closeted stage setting which never allows them too much space, gigantic video screens sometimes giving the impression of pyrotechnics in lieu of any actual fireworks. (Whether literal or metaphorical.)

Hands up: who remembers the likes of Nirvana all the way back in the early 90s, who managed to sweep away such pompous poodle-haired soft-rock nonsense as Bon Jovi? It was a greater good for society, yet somehow after semi-ironic adulation for the likes of It’s My Life and its anthemic bluster the band were welcomed back into the mainstream as though the reasons for their expulsion were no longer valid.

Well, to take an overly long look back at the group’s back catalogue (as I forced myself to last night), the lyrics are still clunking and obvious beyond belief, the chord changes are still as predictable as a pesky mouse running rampage in a cheese factory, and the guitar solos still carry about as much impact as tickling David Haye with a feather duster.

Axe-man Richie Sambora has during the course of the current tour apparently left to go to rehab and then already returned – watching this show you could fully understand why he entered the void but not exactly why or how he returned, except for the sort of lack of self-awareness that he and his fellow cohorts are responsible for the worst music this side of The Wombles. (Except that at least that group had the decent to tidy up their own rubbish afterwards, whereas I’m pretty sure Jon wasn’t on street-sweeping duties early this morning.)

Just because they’ve kept on going beyond the point of return, that’s no reason to give Bon Jovi a free pass, as though long service exonerates a truly vapid back catalogue wheeled out far too much in full on a night best forgotten both by the band and those in attendance who paid good money to prove they lack any musical taste whatsoever. Even Take That over in Glasgow would have been a step up compared to this.

Sure, fists were duly punched in the air at the right moments, choruses were hollered along to in good voice, leather was sported with requisite disdain for the animals which gave their lives for such horrific crimes against fashion: but just because it’s done en masse that doesn’t make it right.

Those who put up with and who will purport to have enjoyed the 15 minute to two-hour version of Bad Medicine are culpable for helping continue a band who rightly should have been put to sleep years back. Actually, that would have been too good a fate: a complete kicking into unconsciousness would surely have been more appopriate.

Jon Bon Jovi and his pals don’t deserve bonus points for endurance any more than Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards did for still loping off the ski-jump with predictable torpidity. As you’d expect they wheel out Livin' On A Prayer during almost the last of their umpteen encores – the subject matter really couldn’t be more appropriate if you tried. During another of the extra numbers they also perform Wanted Dead or Alive. I'll take the former, thank you.