Our look at the closing lines of new music reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to The Circle, the eleventh studio album by New Jersey arena-rock stalwarts Bon Jovi: More »
Clearly hoping that the power of one conglomerate-owned network will at least equal that of Oprah Winfrey, Jon Bon Jovi has signed an exclusive deal with NBC and its sister networks like Bravo to promote his band’s upcoming album, The Circle, which comes out on Nov. 10. And this frothy cross-promotion even has a lofty title! NBC Universal—which you may know as the television company that decided to decimate the scripted-television industry by thrusting Jay Leno into five days of prime time a week—has declared the wide-grinning singer its artist in residence. Take that, music critics who have long dismissed Bon Jovi and his namesake band’s big hooks and anthemic choruses! Dude is an artist—even James Lipton says so! More »
Raise your hand if you didn’t know that Jersey lifers Bon Jovi had a new single out and you live in the tri-state area. I know, right? It’s kind of amazing, given that any movement by the band would have sent tremors ’round the WWOR broadcast zone as recently as a few years back. “We Weren’t Born To Follow,” the first single from their forthcoming album The Circle, actually came out last week. The track, credited to Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, is pretty standard Bon Jovi fare with a few exceptions—first, there’s no guitar solo, and second, there’s a tremolo-ish guitar underneath the whole thing that sounds like it was lifted from U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name.” Well, at least Jon still sings the word “born” exactly the way he did on the New Jersey-era classic “Born To Be My Baby,” so as to soothe any fans who might be confused! (Clip of that track after the jump.) More »
New Jersey wannabe Bard Jon Bon Jovi is one of the majority owners of the Philadelphia Soul, the City Of Brotherly Love’s team in the high-scoring, low-regarded Arena Football League. Or was, anyway: Reports (including one from the Facebook wall of another AFL team’s president) are claiming that the league, which had already suspended its 2009 season, is shutting down for good. More »
Creation Records founder/Guardian music scribe Alan McGee thinks that Bon Jovi should be among New Jersey’s musical/cultural ambassadors to the world. Well, Bon Jovi is better than The Sopranos, by which I mean Bon Jovi has given us more emotional/historical signposts to cling to than Tony et al. But Bon Jovi is hardly the emblematic New Jersey band of the ’80s, let alone the one that should continue to represent the state into the new millennium. Because the greatest New Jersey bands of the last few decades have worked in an idiom laid down by the quartet that made art from the Garden State’s late 20th-century ability to turn anything into junk food: the Misfits. More »
A dead dolphin would not be the strangest thing ever found in the waters of New Jersey, but it is probably the strangest thing found outside Jon Bon Jovi’s house. The dolphin was part of a family that had been trapped in the Jersey waterways for several months, and Federal officials resisted moving the dolphins to the ocean despite the protests of rescue groups. And now they’re dead, or one of them is, anyway. Bon Jovi plans to record a country crossover hit entitled “Tuna Reminds Me of You (Dead Dolphin)” to commemorate the event. [WCBS] More »
Surprisingly, the New Jersey band’s book deal isn’t for a collection of poetry entitled You Lost More Than That In My Backseat, Baby: Reflections In Verse, but a 25th-anniversary celebration that will tell “the behind-the-scenes story” of the band, and that will be released in conjunction with a documentary. Yes, Bon Jovi‘s self-titled debut album came out in the wee days of 1984. Doesn’t it seem like they’ve been around longer than that? They’re a fixed object, like a star or a war memorial or something. (Plus I could have sworn that my friend had her Jon Bon Jovi poster on her wall when I was much younger.)
The numbers for the year’s biggest tours are in, and it looks like Bon Jovi’s country-tinged Lost Highway Tour is 2008’s top grosser, pulling in $210.6 million and two million fans. And they didn’t just drive back and forth in New Jersey! They totally left the state!* In fact, New Jersey kept on rocking at No. 2: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band’s Magic Tour conjured $204.5 million dollars (plus $31 million not counted from last year). That’s a lot of Camaros! Full list after the jump:
Jeff Beck, Chic, Wanda Jackson, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Metallica, Run-DMC, the Stooges, War, and Bobby Womack are this year’s nominees for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame; five of them will be inducted next April after balloting concludes in January. This year’s list of nominees is almost more notable for who isn’t on it than who is; the list of eligible artists who were snubbed by the dudes who want to codify their definition of “rock and roll” includes inarguably influential artists like Slayer, the Cure, and–once again–Rush. Click through for our list of the six highest-profile acts who didn’t make the ballot, and vote for who you think was the most robbed. Once the votes are tallied, we can march on the Rolling Stone offices and plead for justice!
Tireless arena-rock outfit Bon Jovi is playing another free concert, this time in Philadelphia. It’s in honor of the ArenaBowl XXII win of the Jon Bon Jovi-owned Philadelphia Soul, which raises two questions for me. First: The Arena Football League has been around for 22 years? More »
