Outside the Circle Part 1

I guess I should write about my experience in the circle.

One of the most amazing things about Bon Jovi is the diversification of their fan base. Two rows in front of me was this 12 year old girl with her mother, the 12 YO looked more excited than her mother, and her mother was damned excited.

I was talking with the couple in front of me, and they were shocked when I told them I had been listening to Bon Jovi since I was 10.  (In my best Sophia Petrillio impersonation) Picture it, September 1986, Stokes State Forest, Sussex County New Jersey.  20 6th grade girls shoved into a log cabin with no TV and supposedly no radio.  But wait.  Tracy brought a radio, and when those 15 words emanated from the speakers, my life was changed forever.

"SHOT THROUGH THE HEART AND YOU'RE TO BLAME DARLIN, YOU GIVE LOVE A BAD NAME..."

Every other girl in the cabin but me squealed like piglets, I just kind of stood there.  I'd never heard anything like it, and I was seriously hardcore into another New Jersey rocker, The Boss who at that time was king of the Music world.  We heard Bad Name several times while we were up there.  I begged for Christmas that year, since I had turned 11 in the mean time and through myself quite the grown up with my dual tape deck, for Slippery When Wet.  And I got it.   I listened to it all the time.

My parents were really into making sure my brother and I were raised correctly so they had this lock on the cable box and MTV was blocked, HBO was blocked, anything where we would be exposed to cursing an violence was blocked.  But since we went to Public school in New Jersey we were exposed to a lot of cursing, even in middle school.  Or as I tell people part of your education in NJ is how to use the word Fuck as a second language.  So honestly here I had no idea what Bon Jovi looked like, besides what the inner pictures of slippery showed.

My obsession really took off in 1988 when NJ came out.  The cable lock box had been unlocked and I had a 10 inch color TV in my room.  And MTV.  And when Bad Medicine came out Oh Boy was I hooked....

TBC...