An Evening with Bon Jovi: Because We Can Tour Concert Review

We definitely lived up to the blog name on this one.  We had cheap seats.

We saw Bon Jovi on their (yes, their, not his, this is a band, not a solo act......more on that later) Because We Can tour.  Aptly named.  Sold millions of records.  Sold out arenas and stadiums worldwide for years.  Have more money than they can spend.  Why do it?  Because they can.

The four core members of the band are most decidedly a band.  The bass player has been with them for years, but never appears on album covers and such as a member of the band.  The second guitarist was just that, a second guitarist, although they did allow him a couple of solos and proper acknowledgement.  But the four guys who have been in the band since the inception are the band.

Tico Torres played flawless thundering drums.  The kick drum could be felt in the gut, as it should  be.

David Bryan is the pop metal generation's Jon Lord.  He plays keyboards as a lead instrument and not as a layeing instrument.

Richie Sambora's playing was at times inspired and when needed was flawlessly true to the original recording.

Jon Bon Jovi stills knows how to make the girls scream, although now the screaming girls are middle-aged housewives.  His pipes are still excellent and he delivered in every way fathomable.

What was interesting to us, as Bon Jovi fans since their debut album, was the crowd.  There were many families there, obvious attempts by the parents to expose the offspring to music that they loved.  There were many, many people there of our age (middle class and middle age).  There were some younger college and high school-aged kids in attendance.

Fortunately, the majority of the crowd was like us - grew up on the Bon Jovi hits of the late '80's/early '90's. When those classic songs were played, the fans like us were up, singing and dancing and reliving our youth.  The younger generation just seemed bored.  Sad.

Bon Jovi opened the show with the '80's classic "You Give Love a Bad Name".  Not a bad start.

They have a new album out, so, of course they played four songs from that album.  Not bad songs, but since the album just came out this week, nobody knew them.

But for people our age, every song you wanted to hear, they delivered.

Highlights?  While there were many, out favorite was what they closed the regular set with.  "Bad Medicine" with "Old Time Rock N Roll" thrown in towards the end.  The entire song, not just a passing tidbit.  That had  the crowd on its feet and singing along.

Another highlight was the performance of  "I'll Be There For You".  If there was any doubt that this a band (or at the very least a two-man show) this was it.  This was the first time they performed this song this tour. Richie Sambora sang lead on the song.  Jon Bon Jovi was not on stage.

The only critcism we have with the show is they did not do anything from 7800 Farhenheit.  Granted, not many people know the songs from that album and, admittedly, it was not one of their stronger offerings.  This is just us, but we first saw Bon Jovi in support of that album, so it kind of holds a special place in our hearts. Would have loved to have heard "Tokyo Road" or "In and Out of Love".  But that is minor.

However, they did do the song that first turned us on to  Bon Jovi back in the day - "Runaway".  We were pleased.

Speaking of, the first time we saw Bon Jovi was, we think, 1985.  Opening for Ratt.  The first concert we attended.  So this kind of closes the circle for us.

Are We Moving Towards One Macro-Genre of Music?

Update: We have recently become aware of a website that we really enjoy reading. As a bonus this article was a little over 2 years ahead of us coming to this conclusion, though through different means.

Here in the Cheap Seats, we are fans of good music.  Or at least our definition of good music.  You know the premise, we can't explain it, but know it when we hear it.

With the exception of rap, we are generally not opposed to any type of music, so long as it appeals to us.

Country? Check.
Pop? Check.
Rock? Check.
And on and on.

Which brings us to this.  Why are we still putting music into a specific genre?  That only limits the audience.  If you take a look at the music you like, surely there is some common vein that runs through all of it.  Even if your tastes are eclectic.

Let us explain.

We are going to post two songs below.  One belongs to a current country music darling, one to a an up-and-coming hard rock/heavy metal act.  With a few tweaks in production and instrumentation without changing the integrity of either song, just changing the artists name would move the song from one genre to the other.

To get the full effect of what we are talking about, we'll give you a step-by-step on how we arrived at our conclusion.  First listen to the Carrie Underwood song "Good Girl".  Preferably with you eyes closed.  Just concentrate on the music. Ignore the video.

Now that you have that song on your brain, which is in fact a rock song, listen to the following Halestorm song "I Miss the Misery", again just listening, the images tend to convolute the mind.

While listening, imagine Carrie Underwood singing.  The guitars pulled back in the mix. Some keyboard layers.  A thinner drum mix.  And we can hear places where a banjo would be apropos.

Now go back and listen to the Carrie Underwood song while thinking about more up front guitars, a heavier drum sound and more bottom end.

We think slight adjustments in the instrumentation and production could make the songs practically interchangeable.  Put "I Miss the Misery" on a Carrie Underwood album and suddenly it's a country song.  Let Halestorm record "Good Girl" and it's a hard rock song.

Uniforms gone bad

Apologies to those who have been missing missives from the cheap seats.  We kind of took February off.  Not much going on in the sports world.

OK.  So they had that little thing known as the Super Bowl, but it happened early in the month.  After that?  Well, not much happening.

The end of February is when pitchers and catchers report.  Full squads are also there before the month ends.  Spring Training is in full force.  March Madness is almost upon us.  Which brings us to:

This.........

We love making fun of the various CFB uni bloopers.  But now we feel bad.  Because this is just.......hideous.

OK, to be fair, the Louisville uni is not atrocious.  But the Kansas, Notre Dame and UCLA unis are beyound belief.  And not in a good way.

Super Bowl: Game Thoughts and More

The NFL season is officially in the books.  Congratulations to the Baltimore Ravens and all their fans.  Condolences to the San Francisco 49ers and their fans.

But the big winner in all of this?  Us.  With no rooting interest, we were rooting for a good game.  Got that and more.

About the game

Colin Kaepernick finally looked like a QB in only his tenth start.  Bound to happen.  But what a season he had.

Ray Lewis was a mere shell of himself on the field.  Good for him for going out with a championship.

The failed fourth down attempt for the 'Niners late in the game, with the game on the line?  Sure, there was illegal contact, holding and (maybe) pass interference.  But the refs had been letting that kind of stuff go on all  game long.  Credit the DB for knowing this.  We're not sure even if Michael Crabtree had not been impeded that a TD was a sure thing.  That was an awful pass by Kaepernick.

Joe Flacco is a stud.  But not as much of a stud as Anquan Boldin.  Need a first down?  Throw it in the general vicinity of Boldin.  He'll catch it.  Trust.

Phil Simms (the television analyst for the game) seemed to watching a totally different game than the other 400 bajillion people.  Not his best performance......by far.  Probably the most accurate thing he said all night was in reference to the non-call on the above mentioned play: "The more angles I see, the more confused I get."  And the veiwers were more confused every time he opened his mouth.  About anything.

About things other than the game

We are pretty sure this guy is behind the power outage

Some things can never be unseen, such as that GoDaddy commerical.  We refuse to put a link here to spare some poor soul.

Beyonce's S & M lingerie show set to music at halftime was, well, interesting.  Interesting if you were pining for a Destiny's Child reunion.  Otherwise it was just meh.

Now, pitchers and catchers report when?

PED's or Should They Now be Referred to PE's

Ok the most recent round of athletes being accused or outed as users of performance enhancing drugs (PED's) or in the case of S.W.A.T.S., performance enhancers (PE's?,  because really negatively charged water and hologram stickers cannot be called drugs) really has us thinking:  What's the big deal?

It is pretty much a given that athletes striving to become the best at their profession will go to great lengths to improve their performance.  It should not really surpise us that this would include, well, just about anything.

Deer antler spray?  Does it work?  Possibly?  Sure give me some.

There are millions at dollars at stake here.  If you don't think a player is going to try to gain every possible advantage, you're delusional.

What is most comical to us is the voters for the Baseball Hall of Fame who will never, ever, ever, ever, never.  Ever.  Vote for a player who used PED's

Why?

Because we wish every player currently enshrined who ever used any typed of PED would come out tomorrow.  We think the results would bathe the sanctimonious in hypocrisy.

But that's just speculation.

Professional sport entertains us.  Nothing less, nothing more.  And quite frankly, we are entertained by dudes hitting 500-foot blasts and 6'4", 280 pounders running a 4.4 laying out someone.  To be disgusted at how they achieved this level of performance while at the same time marveling at  every home run and big they make is very hypocritcal.

Super Bowl XLVII

There seems to be some sort of big football game coming up this weekend that involves Roman numerals and is supposedly a huge deal.

There are some great story lines to go along with this Super Bowl.  The Harbaugh brothers coaching against each other.  The Colin Kaepernick thing.  Ray Lewis' last game. Randy Moss looking for his first ring.

That's all great.  But for some reason this game does not intrigue us.

Will we watch?  Of course.  It is the Super Bowl, for crying out loud.

Super Bowl Sunday has become an unoffical national holiday.  Second biggest day of avocado/guacamole consumption and all.

But the game itself?  Not excited.  That can all change once the ball is kicked off and it turns into a nail biter.  Then we're all in.

But as for the all the hype and buildup?  We can leave it.

The game?  Oh, yeah.  There's that.  The Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers.

We would normally be pulling for the underdog and/or upstarts, in this case the 'Niners.  But being Dallas Cowboy fans (yeah, it's brutal right now), we just can't root for San Fran.

Baltimore?  Nothing about them is likable to us.

So, without any kind of rooting interest, we go to our fallback and just root for a good game.

Music Find: Corey Smith

One of the joys of life is discovering new (or at least new to us) music.  We had that joy recently.

While listening to our local Texas Country station, we heard the song "Twenty One" by Corey Smith.  Which was quite confusing as he is neither from Texas nor (in our opinion) country.

Corey is a native of Georgia.  His music is more of a Jim Croce/Billy Joel hybrid than anything resembling country music, even in its current state of Southern Rock and pop delusion (and that, my friends is a whole 'nother post).

Smith is a master storyteller. His delivery is very southern and his voice unique.

For  fans of good music, we suggest checking out the video below of  "Twenty One".  For fans of crappy music, we also suggest checking it out in hopes of changing minds.

Decidedly NON Sports Stories

Lance Armstrong.

Manti Te'o.

Two names known in the circle of sport.

Two stories not about sports that have taken the sports talk and twitterati worlds by storm.

The Armstrong thing is beyond sport at this point.  The Te'o thing is just beyond ridiculous.

There are conference championship games to be played this weekend in the NFL.  The Australian Open (which may now be known as the yellow slam) is in full force.  There's the whole Chip Kelly to the Eagles thing.  We believe basketball is being played on both the college and professional levels.  We think there's something going on with the NHL.

There's Oprah and TMZ for the other stuff.

Baseball Hall of Fame: How to get it wrong

Let's get one thing straight right out of the gate:  The latest MLB Hall of Fame vote was a travesty.

No one gets in?

NO ONE?

Really?

What a sanctimonious, self-righteous, Pharisee-like lot the BBWA is.

We can throw out all the known and suspected PED users and the result is still baffling.  There were no real right answers in this round of balloting, but they somehow managed to get it totally wrong.

Now we will address the issue of the "Steroid Era".

Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci, one the most respected national baseball writers on the planet has taken the Taylor Swift approach to those of the steroid era.  Never, ever, ever.  Never.  Ever.

While reading his stance on these players, you can't help but nod your head in agreement.  Verducci makes very valid points and states them eloquently.  We, however, tend to disagree.

Another respected voice, ESPN's Jayson Stark, asks whether the baseball HOF should be a shrine or a museum, while leaving the answer up for debate.

Here is our take.  How can you discount an entire decade of baseball?  No matter what happened, there were Hall of Fame caliber players playing the game during that time.  Sure, the numbers for baseball have been skewed for the rest of time because of that era.  But you know what?  In the words of Stark, it happened.

There are at least two no-doubt Hall of Famers in the current class, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, with or without steroids.

To be fair about our position, we don't have the highest regards for the Baseball Hall of Fame anyway.  Without "cheating the game" in any way during his playing career, Pete Rose is not in the Hall.

Explain this:  Well yes Joey, this is the Hall of Fame which pays tribute to the best baseball players of all time.  However, the all-time hits leader, all-time home run leader, pitcher with the most Cy Young awards are not honored here.  You're right.  Now, how far is Canton anyway?

Owning It

Recently we were picking up someone from DFW airport flying internationally.  All international passengers must go through customs and exit through the same door that enters into a common area where those waiting for the passengers are gathered.  The exit is lined with short fence-like barricades on both sides with people lined up waiting for their party to arrive.

This creates a kind of red carpet scenario.  Most people just look for their party or look down and proceed through.  But one individual owned the moment.

She walked through the doors and upon seeing all the people lined up began waving and blowing kisses in both directions.  We thought it was awesome.

This got us to thinking.  We really should all start owning more.  Not just moments.

You're a fan of wrestling?

"Wrestling is fake."

"Oh yeah?  Let me jump off the top rope and land on you.  Scripted?  Definitely.  Fake?  Let's find out."

Own it.

Your favorite TV show of all time is "Charles in Charge"?

"Worst show ever."

"Really?  Apparently you just didn't get it.  And the awesomeness of Jennifer Runyon was totally lost on you."

Own it.

You think mullets are cool?

"That was the stupidest look ever?"

"Business in front, party in back?  We'll see how well your faux hawk holds up 20 years down the road."

Own it.

Whatever it is.  Own it.  It is part of the sum.  It is what makes the whole.

Don't be sheepish.  Own it like a boss.  Detractors be damned.