Soraia: The Road Not Taken

Soraia is an up-and-coming rock band from Philadelphia that opened for Bon Jovi at Summerfest last year. Obie O'Brien also produced their album Shed the Skin.

Anthony Kuzminski has written a riveting feature on antiMusic, detailing lead singer Sue Mansour's truly incredible story... Read all about it here.

You can also check out Tony's other articles/reviews of Soraia at The Screen Door.

The Screen Door reviews Bon Jovi: When We Were Beautiful

Check out Anthony Kuzminski's review of the new Bon Jovi book on The Screen Door and antiMusic:

Many of the quotes and stories can be heard in the documentary, but the book houses dozens of stories and quotes not found in the film. We get some interesting anecdotes from Jon about how he keeps his voice in shape, some minor reflections on the These Days record and individual reflections from all four main members of Bon Jovi. While there are no earth shattering revelations in the book, but there is enough here to hold one's interest amidst the stunning photos.

The full review can be read here and here.

Bon Jovi sued for... a hell of a lot more than Tommy & Gina will ever see!

The famous Bart Steele is now suing Bon Jovi and a bunch of other parties for $400 billion for copyright infringement. This is the guy who claims "I Love This Town" is a ripoff of his Red Sox tribute song "Man I Really Love This Team". I'd prefer not to reproduce the whole antiMusic article in a blog post about alleged copyright breaches, so you can read the story here.
http://www.antimusic.com/news/08/oct/10Exclusive-_Bon_Jovi_Facing_$400_Billion_Dollar_Lawsuit.shtml

Bart also sent antiMusic a copy of the lawsuit: Steele v Turner Broadcasting System Inc. et al

And his Myspace page, where you can hear the song in question and read his blogs: http://www.myspace.com/chelseacitycouncil
I was a little amused to find that Bart has put Joel Ellis, who accused Bon Jovi of stealing "I'll Be There For You" from him, in his top friends. :P

Bart says his song was used as a temp track. The main query I have about that is, while "I Love This Town" has been used to promote Major League Baseball, the song itself is about Nashville. I don't think the songs sound alike and can't really stand Bart's song enough to listen to it again while playing the MLB video on mute. But use your own ears.

In defense of Anthony Kuzminski and antiMusic

This is sort of a follow-up to my previous post about Bon Jovi being accused of plagiarism. Well, it seems Anthony Kuzminski from The Screen Door was flamed because antiMUSIC, a website he happens to write for, picked up on those stories. This is an extract from his blog on the matter:

antiMusic is not anti-Bon Jovi, in fact, we report all aspects of all genres of music. There is a reason RollingStone.com likes to steal stories from us, because my editor puts together the most comprehensive music news found anywhere on the net. He gathers stories, posts links to them and ultimately it’s why the site has huge traction and a few million visitors every month. What really amazes me is that if you added up all of the emails I got combined for my reviews of their shows from last summer (link here), Chicago this past February (links here and here) and recently about “Whole Lot of Leavin'” (link here) it would still be less than the hate mail I received today for an article I did not write or have any part of.

Click here to read his full post.

Now I don't know who specifically decided to flame Tony over this, and I don't wish to offend any of my readers (most of whom are here because I keep spamming the blog on the Bon Jovi website with my shameless advertising). And perhaps being a media student makes me more inclined to defend my fellow journalists and industry. But remember: Just because you don't like the news, doesn't mean it's not the news. The news was that some people ACCUSED Bon Jovi of plagiarism. antiMusic didn't say that Bon Jovi HAD plagiarised anything. As for Tony Kuzminski, he's a rare breed: a music writer who's also a Bon Jovi fan. He will criticise the band when it is justified and praise them when they deserve it, and that's what makes him good. Don't make people like him suffer just because you're angry at Bart Steele or Joel Ellis or all those other critics and hard rock fans who refuse to afford Bon Jovi any music cred.

Anyway, stay tuned for more of my Lost Highway Tour Magic Memories, coming soon. ;)