Bon Jovi: 22 Years Ago Today....

Today is the 22 year Anniversary of the first time Bon Jovi played in Giants Stadium.

Feel free to revist memories of that show here:

Giants Stadium Anniversary Post.

Bon Jovi: Just a Singer in a long hair rock and roll band...

OMG best headline ever (not from me) from a Gossip website.

Jon Bon Jovi Takes A Breather, Let’s His Junk Do The Singing

I wonder if he lets it sing K7's hit back in the day "Come Baby Come"?

Bon Jovi: Pictures from Dresden

Source

Bon Jovi: Watch the Live Stream Right here!!!

Awesome! Can't wait to watch another kick ass European show.




Video streaming by Ustream

Bon Jovi: Playing Eastern Europe

I really have nothing to say after seeing the set list from today.

Anything I would say would be directed towards Jon Bon Jovi and would be profane. 

Oh and congratulations Bon Jovi, today you have played on the combined Circle/Live/Open Air Tour 2010 - 2011 101 different songs.  You can confirm this with the PBP abbreviations.

Anyway here's an article on Bon Jovi's swing through Croatia and Romania.

Bon Jovi will play concerts in Croatia and Romania

American rock singer Jon Bon Jovi during his tour The Circle Tour will visit Croatia and Romania. Its first-ever concert in Croatia Bon Jovi will organize in Zagreb. The Croatian public will be able to see the rock idol on June 8, 2011 at Maksimir Stadium.

Bon Jovi’s concert in Zagreb promises to cause additional public interest, as here along with Bon Jovi on stage will play his longtime band mate guitarist Richie Sambora, who had left the band to make a solo career.

Almost all of the 30,000 tickets for the concert in Zagreb are already sold. Bon Jovi companions planned to stay on holiday in the Croatian capital for 5 days. The star will stay in one of the most luxurious hotels in Zagreb - Esplanade.

Another country of the region, which will host the legend of the rock 'n' roll, will be Romania. Bon Jovi plans to play a concert in Bucharest on July 10, 2011.

The Circle Tour is another massive tour of Jon Bon Jovi after successful last year, when the group gave concerts in Spain, New Zealand, Australia and Japan. This time The Circle Tour will cover the USA, Europe and Canada. The European stage of the tour in addition to Croatia and Bulgaria also includes Denmark, Germany, Norway, Spain, Finland and the UK.

After the concert in Zagreb Bon Jovi will play at the Olympic Stadium in Munich, where organizers expect to collect 80,000 fans of the musician. This concert will be unique in its kind since the first half hour of its broadcast will be available on the Internet.

To date Bon Jovi is one of the most popular rock musicians in the world. During the career Bon Jovi’s band managed to sell over 120 million records and play for 34 million fans.

Non Jovi: These people are the reason all the good seats are gone.

The thing that pisses me off is, their lawyer doesn't seem to really think they did anything wrong.  But I guess that's his job. 

Oh well the secondary ticket market is thriving, of course it is you dumb ass because clients like yours take those tickets out of the primary market and force buyers into either less desirable seats or the secondary (or sometimes tertiary) market. 

The fact they only got slapped with 'attempted wire fraud' is ridiculous considering they made $25 million. 

As a member of the concert going public these guys should fry, or at least suffer through 500 Barry Manilow shows.

‘Wiseguy’ Owners Avoid U.S. Prison in Music, Sports Ticket-Scalping Case

By David Voreacos - Jun 9, 2011

Two men avoided prison after pleading guilty earlier to conspiring to evade computer security by buying and reselling more than 1 million seats for events such as Bruce Springsteen concerts and the Rose Bowl football game.

Kenneth Lowson, 41, and Kristofer Kirsch, 38, were sentenced today in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, to two years of probation and 300 hours of community service. They admitted making more than $25 million by illegally cutting ahead of the public to buy premium seats through vendors including Live Nation Entertainment Inc. (LYV)’s Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc.

Lowson and Kirsch, two Los Angeles men who co-owned Wiseguy Tickets Inc., pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and gain unauthorized access to protected computers.

A Wiseguy computer programmer, Joel Stevenson, 38, of Alameda, California, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor computer crime. U.S. District Judge Katharine Hayden sentenced him to one year of probation.

“I’m pleased,” said Lowson’s attorney Mark Rush after the hearing. “The facts here straddled criminal and civil law. There was no amount of loss here. The secondary ticket market is legal and thriving in this country.”

Hayden also ordered Lowson to forfeit $1.225 million.

Under a plea deal last November, Lowson and Kirsch faced as long as two years in prison. Stevenson faced as long as one year. Hayden said prison was too severe a punishment, and the law was too unsettled.

One Fugitive

The three men were initially charged in February 2010 with a fourth man, Faisal Nahdi, who remains a fugitive.

They pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in a 43-count indictment, admitting that they fraudulently bought prime seats to concerts by Springsteen, Miley Cyrus, Bon Jovi, Barbra Streisand, Billy Joel and Kenny Chesney.

They admitted fraudulently buying tickets to the 2006 Rose Bowl and the 2007 Major League Baseball playoffs at Yankee Stadium. They admitted buying almost half of the 440 best general admission floor seats to a July 2008 concert by Springsteen at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Lowson and Kirsch admitted they defeated computer systems that barred automated programs from buying tickets sold on a first-come, first-served basis.

By working with programmers in Bulgaria, California-based Wiseguy Tickets sidestepped technology known as CAPTCHA, which required users to read, then retype, distorted images of letters and numbers to buy tickets, Lowson and Kirsch admitted. They also evaded audio CAPTCHA challenges for the visually impaired.

Tenths of Seconds

By getting around CAPTCHA challenges in tenths of a second, the defendants sped up the purchasing process when other consumers were locked out of the primary ticket market, according to prosecutors.

Rush said that Lowson recently completed a four-month residential alcohol treatment program. He works now for a manager of employee benefits for small and midsize companies, Rush said.

Ticketmaster issued a statement thanking the authorities “for bringing these criminals to justice.”

“Ticket-scalping has moved from back-alley transactions into a multibillion-dollar industry,” a company spokesman, Trevor Francis, said by e-mail. “Prosecuting the Wiseguys represents a victory for fans, especially those fans that have paid the astronomical price every time scalpers have used their sophisticated tools or bots to game the system.”

The case is U.S. v. Lowson, 10-cr-114, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey (Newark).

Non Jovi: Google Salutes Les Paul on what would have been his 96th Birthday

Sometimes the Google logo's make me go WTF?  But this one today is pretty damned cool.

Today would have been Les Paul's 96th Birthday.  Les Paul was one of the if not the key innovator in creating the elecrtic guitar.

Paul was dissatisfied with acoustic-electric guitars and began experimenting at his apartment in Queens, NY with a few designs of his own. Famously, he created several versions of "The Log", which was nothing more than a length of common 4x4 lumber with a bridge, guitar neck and pickup attached. For the sake of appearance, he attached the body of an Epiphone hollow-body guitar, sawn lengthwise with The Log in the middle. This solved his two main problems: feedback, as the acoustic body no longer resonated with the amplified sound, and sustain, as the energy of the strings was not dissipated in generating sound through the guitar body. These instruments were constantly being improved and modified over the years, and Paul continued to use them in his recordings long after the development of his eponymous Gibson model.

Wikipedia

He lived for a long time in Mahwah, NJ and played regularly at the Iridium Jazz Club in NYC where different people would join him, including Richie.

If you watch Access All Areas during the Giants Stadium portion Richie is standing with Les over a birthday cake (Giants Stadium was June 11, 1989).

Here's google's header image.

Go Play it!!!!  It's awesome.

Here are some pictures:

Bon Jovi: It doesn't get any better than this baby...

Bon Jovi arriving in Croatia yesterday.

I have no clue what she's saying at the beginning my Croatian is actually worse than my English.





Danke to Lisa (@blazeofglory2)

Bon Jovi: Damn Straight Skippy

In case you missed this photo with the very appropriate caption:

From tonight's show in Zagreb, Croatia! A picture's worth 1,000 words.... :)

Thank you David Bergman.  God Bless your hard working cameras.

Bon Jovi: Remember when Jon was a fashion model?

I can't find a single bad photo in this group.

Happy Wednesday!

Bon Jovi: Obie is keeping busy

Everyone's favorite sound engineer (William) Obie O'Brien is keeping busy, in a good way.

Bon Jovi engineer helps film

Music will be an instrumental part of the film, and Bon Jovi’s sound engineer, Obie O’Brien, will supervise the film’s music, live recordings and soundtrack, said Donahue.

“He’s a huge catch,” Donahue said. “We have incredible music in this film.”

Hot rods, sound engineering, amateur videographer, is there anything Obie can't do?

Oh yeah, Date girls under age 18! I forgot.

Bon Jovi: Before you watch the livestream from Munich watch them build the stage

So there's going to be a 30 minute live stream on Sunday live from Germany.  I'll post the details at the bottom of this from the e-mail from Bon Jovi in case you didn't get it.

But in the mean time, if you want to watch them build the stage in Olympic Park in Munich you can watch via web cam from this site:  Munich, Olympic Stadium

As I write this I see flatbed trucks and a few cranes to the left.

Here are the deets in case you missed them on the live stream:

DON'T MISS THE LIVE STREAM FROM

MUNICH ON SUNDAY, JUNE 12TH!

Bon Jovi rocked out sold out shows throughout North America and are now coming to Europe! Make sure to tune in as Bon Jovi takes over Munich, Germany on Sunday, June 12th at Olympic Stadium! Fans worldwide can tune in and watch the first 30 minutes of the show live in Europe!

To watch the band at Olympic Stadium LIVE, click BonJovi.com and Facebook.com/BonJovi.

You don't want to miss out on this legendary performance so make sure to tune in Sunday, June 12th. Join us online at 7:00PM (CEST). The live stream will start at 7:45PM CEST.

US/CANADA: 1:00PM EST, 12:00PM CST, 11:00AM MST, 10:00AM PST

SAO PAULO: 2:00PM BRST

LONDON: 6:00PM GMT

MUNICH: 7:00PM CEST

SYDNEY: 3:00AM EDT (June 13th)

JAPAN: 2:00AM (June 13th)

30 minutes that usually means an hour or so. 

It sounds like a good Saturday to have a Mimosa around 1 PM.  :)

Bon Jovi: Countdown to Croatia

So at sound check today in Croatia they played the following:

• WWBTF  (We Weren't Born to Follow)
• WLOL      (Whole Lot of Leaving)
• HN            (Happy Now)
• LTOR        (Love's the Only Rule)
• HG             (Hey God)
• SFTP         (Something for the Pain)
• SIBSN        (Someday I'll be Saturday Night)
• WFTWM  (Work for the Working Man)

I wonder if Jon has heard that G6 song?

 Here are some David Bergman photos the NY Post ran (Hi Richie nice to see your smiling face again.)

Bon Jovi: Jon selling the SOHO Penthouse?

Interesting. It takes a lot of money to buy a football team.

Art attack pains SoHo realty sellers

Real-estate deals in SoHo and NoHo could come to a standstill unless a decades-old -- but only recently enforced -- city law is overturned, say worried residents.

The Artists-in-Residence law says that about 200 buildings that were converted from commercial to residential use are only for "artists" as defined by the city's Department of Cultural Affairs.

Artists are "certified" by a department committee that determines if they're actively working in painting, sculpting, choreography, music or other artistic endeavors.

But not every artist is able to afford the luxury homes, and it could hurt potential sellers -- such as Jon Bon Jovi, who quietly put his penthouse on the market and is asking more than $30 million.

The city has already denied certificates of occupancy to 10 buildings in the area -- including Bon Jovi's at 158 Mercer St., said Margaret Baisley, a real-estate lawyer.

Apartment building put up in the past few years are exempt from the "artists-only" rule, Baisley said.

The SoHo/NoHo Action Committee will meet tonight at St. Anthony's Church to push to make SoHo safe for artful dodgers.

It was formed "in response to the increased enforcement of the archaic AIR statute," Baisley said.

A broker added, "Ninety percent of the people here are living illegally."

Bon Jovi: Jon listens in Newark (w/extra pictures)

Youth Rock Newark, and Jon Bon Jovi Listens

Bon Jovi's other life--trying to help youth 

By Brian Thompson 

|  Monday, Jun 6, 2011  |  Updated 4:21 PM EDTBrian Thompson
Bon Jovi and Cory Booker in Newark Monday

New Jersey superstar rocker Jon Bon Jovi was in Newark Monday, not to perform, but to listen to a dozen or so youth who know all too well the streets of New Jersey's largest city.

Bon Jovi, who was joined by Newark Mayor Cory Booker, was on a listening tour with two other members of the White House Council for Community Solutions as they seek ways to help young people finish their education and then find work.

"They're looking for mentors, they're looking for a second chance," Bon Jovi said after meeting with the group in downtown Newark's Yes Center.

Fellow Council member Michael Kempner, a New Jersey businessman, added, "They need life skills, soft skills (like) how do you interview for a job, how do you keep a job."

"Kids, they screaming for help," Robert Barr, 23, said after participating in the session, and then added "When you come from broken homes it's like a toss-up."

Bon Jovi seemed well received by the group, including Tashon Little, 18, who will be attending Winston-Salem State University this fall.

"He has an opportunity to reach out to the world and let them know the problems of the inner cities," said Little, adding "I think he will do something about it."

Bon Jovi and Mayor Booker agreed that more government money is not necessarily the answer.

Booker noted there is a lot of philanthropic money available.

"And the great thing about philanthropy now is it's smart money," Booker said while explaining "There are venture philanthropists that want to invest in the high impact organizations."

The most obvious of those is the $100 million that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently pledged to Newark for reform of its schools at the urging of Mayor Booker.

As for Bon Jovi, the White House Council he is a part of still has a year and a half to issue a final report.

But he made it clear he expects it to do more than end up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere.

"I really feel at 50 years old I should do other things than sing in a rock and roll band," Bon Jovi said and then added, "I take great pride out of seeing change."

And here are some more photos of the event.

I must say in a few of them Jon looks every day of his 49 years. Which is bad and good at the same time.