[Supersonic]

Aloha !

This is a topic I will refer to from now on every time someone asks me why I am still a fan after I post a negative opinion. I also think that this goes for many people on this board who have been a fan for over 10 years now. This will be a long read, but anyone who's ever wondered about why I am still a fan (and there have been many, many like that over the past 5 years) will get their answer now.

It all started back in 1997. They were promoting Destination Anywhere a lot here on the radio, and Midnight In Chelsea was a hit in Holland. Janie and Queen Of New Orleans both tanked but that didn’t stop MTV from playing the video’s day after day; there were loads of requests from fans who wanted to see the video. Back then there was no youtube so all fans did was videotaping the songs so they could play them over and over again. I remember one of the bigger radio stations in Holland having a Bon Jovi week, resulting in lots of airplay for both Jon Bon Jovi songs and Bon Jovi songs. I had always loved Keep The Faith and Always when they were on the radio, just never cared for what artist they were from. At the same time I had a physics practic which I did for me and a bunch of other students from my class as well. One of them had a CD burner and when he asked what I wanted for my services I told them that a copy of any Bon Jovi CD would be nice. I got Cross Roads and played it a lot. Then my dad told me that one of my nephews was a hard rock fan, so he might have a bit of Bon Jovi as well. I lended his entire collection, recorded my favourite songs on one cassette tape (I only had money for one cassette back then) and played the tape to death. 2 years later I owned half of the back catalogue , had heard stories about what Bon Jovi were live, and started following the news on the internet about a possible new Bon Jovi album. This was in 1999, and was when I found out about drycounty.com. A friend of mine was a big fan of the These Days record so we were both wondering what the new album would sound like. And then came Crush.

I will not go into detail for every song now and rip it apart, but this was just such a disappointment for every die hard out there, and I’m not talking about myself now. I didn’t consider myself a die hard fan back then, just someone with a very strong interest in the band Bon Jovi. There were only 2 songs that’d fit on that cassette tape I had made when I first got interested. One Wild Night and Just Older. Back then I wasn’t into going to concerts as I am now (I was only 16 years old back then) so I didn’t bother about the Crush Tour. After I had bought all the singles coming from Crush (which were 6 in Europe, 2 for every song), Bon Jovi released the live album. My nephew told me that it was such a disappointment, and he showed me live tracks from the bootlegs he had, which were so much better indeed. I had also met Thierry and another guy called Kevin at either bonjovi.nl or drycounty.com, who occasionally send me some recordings that were also a lot, lot better. And then Bon Jovi visited Holland again, and I got a ticket. It’d be my first big concert and when it was finished I had loved it from start to finish, apart from the Crush songs. Capt. Crash and Say It Isn’t so were dreadful, but we also got Hey God, Something To Believe In and the best version of Keep The Faith I had ever heard before. It was a great show, and from that moment I knew I had become a fan. I started to browse eBay (had made a little bit of money in the holidays with my first job) and started to buy older CD singles, promo’s, bonus disc editions etc.

By the time the Bounce Era started, me and Thierry had met quit a few times and had decided that we’d go to multiple shows. I spend all the money I had on Bon Jovi, which was an awful lot at that time. By now I’ve got roughly 90 official CD’s, which means an average of €15,- per disc. And with me only making about €3,- per hour that was a lot of money for me. But it was worth it. Every new copy got me something new, and while I bought the bonus disc editions, Thierry got into bootlegs and gave me the live recordings I had previously only heard at my nephew’s house. Me and Thierry did an acoustic jam at a Dutch forum meeting and we played 5 hours straight. I remember Thierry’s hands bleeding but we knew every single song on guitar. It was awesome. Then the Bounce tour started, and Jon’s voice was dreadful. This was also the time that more fans started to complain on how Bounce wasn’t as good as it should be, and how the tour was very boring. I wasn’t just alone in this, and more fans that had been visiting Jovitalk since 1999 started to complain on how it’d all became very static and on auto-pilot. Many said that if it wouldn’t improve they’d stop caring. And they did (Late, Johannes are names that pop up into my head). While Crush had given drycounty.com an immense boost when it came to visitors, Bounce made it obvious that every fan who had renewed his/her interest in Bon Jovi thought it was a pretty weak tour and album. However, for me and Thierry it was an amazing time. We both were meeting up at gigs, chatting for hours with people in their 40’s and baffling them with our knowledge “They don’t play Shout at every show…” “Yes they do, they only didn’t do it at…” and we could name the show, city and spot in the setlist. Little geeks we were. When we got I Believe in Amsterdam due to our request it was fantastic and the joy we had was awesome. Peter and Mike had joined us in Amsterdam and we were all incredibly happy how the show turned out.

[Supersonic]

I remember seeing a gig on Thursday, needing to go to work on Friday very early in the morning but because we breathed Bon Jovi we were in such a rush that none of that mattered. We ended the tour in Hyde Park, had a holiday of 3 days together, both had a girlfriend at that time who went with us, it was all brilliant. Apart from Bon Jovi, who performed a terrible show in front of 120.000 people. Sure, it had been a wonderful experience, but this was mostly due to it being such a big event. When we got home, we both lost a bit of interest in Bon Jovi, the shows in America weren’t as fantastic as our last great show in Amsterdam, and there weren’t any exciting things happening in Bon Jovi land either. Later the release of TLFR followed, me and Thierry still had a lot to talk about, but I started to get my kicks from another band; Oasis. They were actually fun to follow because of all the great interviews they did, and they showed me a side of being in a band I really missed when seeing Bon Jovi; fun.

Then came the HAND album. Another disappointment and with the Norht American leg of the HAND tour being absolutely terrible I didn’t expect much of the tour in Europe either. I hadn’t saved any money for Bon Jovi (it was going to my soon to be girlfriend) and I just went to Dusseldorf with the hope that at least the first show in Europe would be great. And it was, as many of you know. Dry County was played and Jon was on fire the entire show. Richie was half drunk though, but still. The show was ace and it restored a lot of faith in “my” band. I still remember phoning my love interest and saying “you’re missing so much, they play Dry County now” and even though I was in Germany and she was at home we both knew that we had that same feeling of getting something special. After Dusseldorf I was broke and my brother and my girlfriend both payed a part of my ticket for the show in Holland, which turned out to be the worst Bon Jovi show I had ever heard or seen. As much as they repaired about my faith in them during the show in Dusseldorf, they all threw it away in Nijmegen with Jon’s attitude of not giving a **** about the entire show. I even stopped buying CD singles, I just didn’t care anymore, and when tickets went on sale for their country project I thought it was all garbage. I bought a ticket for Gelsenkirchen and that was it. Gelsenkirchen was alright, nothing special, but then the band started to shake things up. Living In Sin in Stuttgart, Wild Is The Wind in Hamburg, and they convinced me to buy a ticket for the show in Frankfurt. Once again I got on the road with Thierry, asked another friend of mine to join me again and we did not regret this at all. This was the band I had fallen in love with back in 2001. This was what I loved about Bon Jovi, and this was what convinced me to do another show because one show like this wasn’t enough. The next show was Amsterdam, which got us on an even bigger high. I remember having a sports tournament the next day and getting home at 4 in the morning, but because once again we were on such a high me and a friend did the sports tournament without any trouble. The thing with Bon Jovi nowadays is that they more often do not deliver than they actually do deliver. I can live with not finding The Circle as good as you think it is, I can live with that. What I have trouble with accepting, and what I always have trouble with is that this band can do so much better, yet we always have to settle for less because they can get away with it. Like Tom (letitrock) said recently, I think many have lowered their standards so much after every release that they fail to see how it really isn’t that good. I don’t want Bon Jovi to release an album that you can play just for fun. I want Bon Jovi to release an album that you can feel, with guitar solo’s that mean something, with vocals that rip through the song and with a band that’s actually feeling the song while playing it instead of coming across as a bunch of session musicians. The same goes when playing a show. I want them to be into the show, and for this Jon is mostly to blame. When I became a fan of Bon Jovi back in 1998 there was nothing but talk of how good this band was. After the Crush tour there was mostly talk like “they’re no longer as good as they used to be”. The Lost Highway tour proved that they actually can be as good as they used to be. They, and mostly Jon, most of the time just doesn’t care. And if a singer doesn’t care, why should a fan care?

When Bon Jovi plays a good show, they’re untouchable for me. They deliver something I can’t do myself and I look up to them. However, I’ve become a better guitar player ever since I became a fan, I’ve started composing my own songs and I just know that if I could tweak their songs a bit they’d be so much better. Yet it all feels like “yeah, that’s good enough, that’ll do”. The same goes with the guitar solo’s, I can do better now, and would Bon Jovi release The Circle as their first album it would tank, so yes, I can do better when given the opportunity. It’s not a matter off bluff or big talk, I just know it, and I’m sure there’s other people on this board who also know that they could create better stuff than what Bon Jovi has released the past few years.

As you have read by now, Bon Jovi has been of influence for a large part of my life. Travelling, meeting people abroad, growing up, jamming together, Bon Jovi often played a part in that, and for that reason alone I like this band. I don’t love this band, they’re not in my blood (anymore). Me and Thierry still meet a few times per year, both of our lives have become different yet when we’re talking about Bon Jovi we’re always on the same page. I think that they’re like a sports team that loses more than they win. You talk about the loss of the game with your friends, complain a lot about the trainer, yet you go see the next match with the hope they’ll do better. And when doing so you see a lot of the world. This tour I’ll be seeing New York and maybe even South America in 2011 if my finances allow me to. Sure, I can go visit both countries without seeing Bon Jovi but everyone here who’s been to another country and has seen Bon Jovi there knows that it’s the icing on the cake. With all the money I’ve spend on this band, with all the travelling I’ve done, with all the copies of CD’s I’ve bought and with all the shit shows I’ve seen you can say I’m a bigger supporter of this band than any of the people who tell me to go to hell every time I post a rather negative opinion about this band. When I play any album before Crush, and especially Keep The Faith, it reminds me of a hungry band. As as long as I see that band perform at least once on a tour there’s a reason for me to keep believing in Bon Jovi. If the passion is completely gone, my passion for this band is over.

So that’s why I am a fan.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

[San_jovi]

I enjoyed that, its always interesting to read how much a band means to people.

I started properly following the band as a Richie fan in 2001/2002 ... you are a bit older than me, I got tickets to the Manchester Bounce show in 2003 but haven't seen them since as finances have been quite tight. Its only now I can begin to afford to go, and they charge so much.

I thought they were amazing on the bounce tour, I'm kind of glad I didnt go in 2006 and 2008, as Richie's playing was pretty bad from everything I've heard and seen, but he appears to be back now!

Thanx for writing that anyway.

[Matrix15]

I see Tictoc's post was deleted I guess the powers that be are secretly censoring away behind the scenes.

[ellie]

I thought that was an interesting story and enjoyed reading it. Thanks.

There were a couple of your points I agreed with completely. The comparison to being a fan of a sports team is one that's occurred to me in the past. No matter how many times you've seen them play, I still want to be at all the others. I still want to hear bootlegs and read about what people thought and be in a stadium where it feels like 70,000 people feel the same way I do. (It's fanciful but it's there). If you'll forgive me for stretching the analogy, I want to discuss who's playing in the team (Bobby, Lorenza), I want to hear live commentary (play by play discussions online), I want to see how they progress through the season/tour...

The second was the fact that people lower their expectations with every passing album. Much as I love the songs, I have to admit that it's probably partly because I am sentimental about the band. And it's the strength of this sentimentality that keeps me coming back. If any other band had released The Circle I don't know if I'd give a shit. But it's Bon Jovi, it's the next part of the story. So I knew I'd buy it whatever you guys said. (The only thing I won't buy is TLFR, I've listened to it and can't bring myself to spend anything on it). I give these albums much more of my time than other records, apart from the ones that click instantly (Emmy the Great's album, for instance)

So yes, I recognise I'm guilty of both of these daft vices. These aren't the only reason I call myself a fan. They're just the easiest to explain.

[mrleaf]

Originally Posted by Matrix15

I see Tictoc's post was deleted I guess the powers that be are secretly censoring away behind the scenes.

Ya that was funny,(tictoc)
Good read seb never knew you were only a fan since 1998 you truly missed the Band at their hight so.

[Panda]

Good read, makes it mote understandable why you like the band still.


Ad for mateix, maybe the mods didn't want an argument started on this thread like so many others tictoc had started.., I'm glad they deleted it.

[dcj28]

Originally Posted by Bang A Drum

Good read, makes it mote understandable why you like the band still.


Ad for mateix, maybe the mods didn't want an argument started on this thread like so many others tictoc had started.., I'm glad they deleted it.

Didnt see the post but does that mean we have to bow down and agree with everything Seb says now?

[Bleeding Purist]

It means shut the **** up about it already and get back to the discussion.

[C'monFeet]

Originally Posted by Bang A Drum

like so many others tictoc had started.., I'm glad they deleted it.

The 9000 odd posts where he called anyone who disagreed with him gay?