Bon Jovi in Salt Lake City 16/03/18 + Phil X's real name

Bon Jovi took their This House Is Not For Sale Tour to Salt Lake City, where Hugh McDonald's stepson Jake was the opening act, performing with his band Jake J and the Killjoys.

Bon Jovi's set list was... exactly the same as that of the previous show in Denver. One key difference was John Shanks messing up the beginning of "We Weren't Born to Follow", which resulted in Jon restarting the first verse and chorus as an acoustic piece. (There's a video of it below.) Said acoustic version turned out to be way better than the original IMO, and I kind of wish he'd done the whole song like that.

Salt Lake City, UT, USA - Vivint Smart Home Arena - March 16, 2018

1. This House Is Not For Sale
2. Knockout
3. You Give Love a Bad Name
4. Whole Lot of Leavin'
5. Lost Highway
6. When We Were Us
7. Born to Be My Baby
8. Who Says You Can't Go Home
9. It's My Life
10. We Weren't Born to Follow
11. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
12. We Got It Going On
13. Keep the Faith
14. Amen
15. Bed of Roses
16. Lay Your Hands on Me
17. God Bless This Mess
18. Have a Nice Day
19. Bad Medicine
    
    Encore:
20. I Love This Town
21. Wanted Dead or Alive
22. Livin' on a Prayer

This show happened to take place on Everett Bradley's birthday, which the band acknowledged when he got on the plane.

The band surprised me with a Birfday on the Bon Jovi Jet!! pic.twitter.com/YXFeUNYWWs

— Everett Bradley (@everettbnyc) 17 March 2018

Videos from Salt Lake City

"We Weren't Born to Follow" (acoustic part):

"It's My Life". Probably one of the better performances of this in quite some time. Jon wasn't glued to one spot and he went for some high notes. I'm keeping the faith that the JBJ we know and love is on his way back:

UPDATE 18/03/18: "Bed of Roses":

If you'd like to share any videos from Salt Lake City, feel free to link to them in the comments. 🙂

I'm going to leave the final word on this post to Phil X. If you frequent Wikipedia, specifically the Phil X article, you may have seen his name listed as Philip Eric Xenidis. That isn't his name, however, as he confirmed earlier:

ok. listen up. regarding @Wikipedia , my middle name has NEVER EVER been Eric. i’ve had friends correct it. heck, my own brother even changed it last month but low & behold, it was Eric this morning. my full name is Phil Theofilos Xenidis. Theofilos. it means “friend of God”.

— Phil X (@TheRealPhilX) 16 March 2018

Happy birthday Tico!

Happy birthday to the hit man, Hector Samuel Juan Torres! :)

Tico channels Louis Armstrong as he sings "Only In My Dreams" at Borgata 2004.

As for Jon, I think we're lucky he became a singer and plays the guitar rather than the drums. :P

Bon Jovi book and documentary to be released this year

I remember Jon talking about writing a book then canning it because their "brotherhood" in-house policy rendered it boring. Still, HarperCollins has issued a press release so I guess it's happening again.

HarperCollins Publishers today announced a deal to publish the first ever official Bon Jovi book, Bon Jovi: When We Were Beautiful. Celebrating the band’s 25th anniversary, the book contains never-before-seen photographs and exclusive text from the band and will be published next October by the Collins Design imprint. Bon Jovi: When We Were Beautiful will also serve as a companion to a major documentary about the band being released at the same time.

Odd title. Presumably it's some kind of dig at the pretty boy hair band tag that's been following them around since the mid-80s.

The public face of Bon Jovi -- band of brothers, hitmakers, rock stars -- is well known, but in Bon Jovi: When We Were Beautiful, gorgeous, exclusive photographs and revealing text from Jon, Richie, David and Tico themselves tell the behind-the-scenes story. From intimate moments to basking in the limelight, the book offers fans an honest, unposed and unscripted portrait of this legendary band at work and at home.

No mention of Hugh McDonald. He deserves better; even if you don't believe Hugh "covered for" Alec John Such on the three albums before These Days, he has still played with Bon Jovi for longer than Alec ever did. And to highlight my point, they could only find room for two photos of Huey in the booklet for 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can't Be Wrong (which, off the top of my head, is 66 pages long). (One of these aforementioned photos is of the back of Hugh's head.) I can only hope Huey gets some input into this new book but I'm not holding my breath.

The book offers unprecedented insights into the members’ lives on stage, on the road, and at home, as well as intimate reflections on the highs and lows of their 25 years together.

As I alluded to earlier, Bon Jovi have always been very "in-house" so don't expect The Dirt. But this could still potentially be quite an interesting release. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

LH Magic Memory #23: Garageland in Anaheim

Magic Memory #23 from the Lost Highway tour takes us to the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. The date is April 5, 2008 when a gem from the 2004 box set 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can't Be Wrong is being played for only the fourth time.

To be honest, I was going to review the Toronto performance of "Garageland" from March 12 (the first time it was played this tour) but couldn't find a complete embeddable video of it. Jon's speech at the beginning of this Anaheim video is funnier though. ;)



"Garageland" is one of those songs that sounds better live than on the recording, particularly on the Lost Highway tour with Jon's superior vocals. It also has more energy live. That said, if it's an outtake from Crush -- Obie O'Brien and the band admit they didn't keep great records so we can't be sure when most of the box set material was written/recorded -- I wish it had made the album. It's a cool rocking song that segues beautifully into "Just Older".

Just two more Magic Memories to go... stay tuned!