Bon Jovi has taken a ton of flak on their last couple of releases. One of the biggest gripes from crazed fans was that their live release contained too many of the safe hits mostly recorded on the ‘Crush’ tour. Why, fans asked, given the mountains of live stuff in the vaults wouldn’t the band release some older recordings of their hits or even better, some of the less known songs that had to be laying around just waiting to be grabbed up by ‘real fans’. Rest assured fans of Bon Jovi, with their latest box set, the rare, unreleased,
and alternate versions of your favorites are totally worth the price and the wait.
Disc 1
The first disc concentrates mainly on unreleased and alternative versions of songs released from ‘Keep The Faith’ and beyond. The first two tracks kick off the disc in fine form with the uptempo ‘Why Aren’t You Dead’ and it’s clever chorus lyric. It’s totally catchy and though written for ‘Keep the Faith’ should have been included on a later record. Track 2 has mega-hit written all over it. ‘The Radio Saved My Life Tonight’ is as good as anything Bon Jovi put on ‘Keep the Faith’. Another treat is the alternate version of ‘Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night’. As a fan of certain band’s music, I like hearing how a song turns out differently than it’s inception, and when you hear this version, you realize what a producers job really is in the studio as the final product is much catchier and has become a favorite live. The remainder of disc 1 contains some pretty mellow stuff. Considering how mellow Bon Jovi releases have become in recent years, it’s probably best that most of this stuff has gone unreleased, but that doesn’t make them bad songs.-- johnk5150