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Thursday 9 February 
The soundtrack for today is:

Bon Jovi
8 February 1993
Quebec City, Canada
🏟️ Keep the Faith/ Sleep When I’m Dead/ I Believe Tour

A show that is a must see!
Because of several reasons.
One: All bootlegs available with a video stream should be regarded with great reverence!
Reverence I never seem to be able to put in, because I can only JUST fit in listening to one Bon Jovi concert about 5 days a week (which I round of as “daily”);
But I never have two hours spare to sit down and enjoy the video.

Which is a shame, and Mea Culpa, but that’s just the way it is.

But another reason this show is a must see, at least for me, is because there are no photos or tickets available from the Quebec show. So the only option I have is coming up with a screenshot! 
See below.

And there are even more reasons for listening to this show, than for watching it. Because it is the first show of The Keep The Faith Tour!
A.k.a their comeback tour, after a three year hiatus, where Jon and Richie made their first solo albums, and the rest of the world held their breath if the band would ever get back together again.

And, well, because it’s an amazing show!

So pop on your headphones, listen to 8 February 1993, and let’s dive in the story behind this one.

I was never a quitter

👩🏼‍💻 the story 9 February

.

It was not even the first time Jon Bon Jovi mentioned Generation X, a brand new term at the time.
I have also heard him mentioning it five weeks prior, December 1992.

Which means he knew about Generation X before the 1994 Douglas Coupland novel, which is regarded as its name bearer.

Originally, as you can hear in Jon’s speech, Generation X referred to people born 1962 and up, and in 1994 
Douglas would pull it back even further.

But in 1999 cohort 1955-1965 was dubbed Generation Jones (robbing Douglas Coupland himself of the X-label he made big) and Generation X was locked in at 1965 to 1980, pretty unanimously. 
Which is where it has been ever since.

However, in the earliest beginning, when things still seemed simple, a select few among whom The New York Times and Jon Bon Jovi, were already using the term Generation X to define a new generation, that felt they were setback from the start.
They felt that they could better give up, because it wasn’t worth fighting for.

Something that worked like a red flag on a bull, to Jon “We’ve got to hold on” Bon Jovi, which could explain why he was such an early user of the term.
He immediately understood that the nihilism went against everything Bon Jovi stood for, and in December 1992, and on 8 February 1993 [ timestamped at 29:28 ] , you can here him addressing them specifically.

After explaining the term, and the pessimistic mindset this group of people suffered from, thinking that it, life, is not worth fighting for, he says:

“Now, I might not be the wisest man, I might not be a scholar or a saint, but one thing I’ll never be, is a quitter.”

Little did the audience know, that Jon Bon Jovi had every bit of reason to not settle for the complacency of this next generation.
He had a task and it wasn’t decades from now, in some unknown future where he would be “over 30”, which is an age the youngest generation refers to as “old”.

Not only was Jon Bon Jovi turning 30 in the upcoming month;
But he was also at the opening concert of a tour that had done the worst in terms of disappointing ticketsales and the subsequent cancelling and rescheduling that followed.
Jon Bon Jovi did not have the luxury of an uncertain future;
He had the urgency of someone who knew how stark it would look, if he did not find a way to make this tour, this band work.
This revived Bon Jovi that had cleared out all 80s management and that had become an organization where Jon Bon Jovi was the one who determined how things went.
A new Bon Jovi, whose innovative 1992 record had made them the designated survivor of all the metal and hardrock bands, was now halfway there to joining the fate of their peers, who had been forgotten in the 80s.

Unless, he pushed through and pulled through, and somehow magically would turn this ship around….

So when he was talking about Gen X wanting to give in before the fight, he wasn’t just talking about them. He was talking about himself, and about the band.

And what followed after Quebec, were the most full-on, most intense months Bon Jovi had ever seen.

If they ever make a motion picture about the band Bon Jovi, they will cap it after those earliest months of 1993! After what is known in fandom as “The Holy Month of April,” where Jon Bon Jovi gave all he had and gave the best concerts of his life.
They had to carry him off stage.

These earliest months of the Keep the Faith Tour, is when Bon Jovi became Bon Jovi.
Where they not just earned their place in the new decade, but lay the foundation of all the decades to come.
Decades they would share, side by side, with Generation X.

“When I wrote this song, I realized it was a bit timeless.” Jon finishes his speech on Generation X. “Because even if against the odds, I’m going out; It’s gonna be in a blaze of glory.”

Therefor:

8 February 1993, Quebec City, Canada🇨🇦
Bon Jovi | Live at Colisée de Quebec | First Show of the Keep The Faith Tour | Quebec City 1993
is the soundtrack for today

.
The show has been added to the playlist 
“Part II: Bon Jovi concerts on this day 6 Dec- and up (before 1997)”
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiGoDE3C06ScbVI_oPZcf77OtrO_935JD
on February 8th.

.
 ~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🥳 PayPalMe 
🇳🇱Tikkie van de week 

Friday 20 January
The soundtrack for today is:

Bon Jovi
24 July 1993
Tinley Park, Illinois
🏟️ Keep the Faith/ Sleep When I’m Dead/ I Believe Tour

Brand new upload on YouTube’s hAnD90 channel.

And a concert recording described by hAnD90 as:
“It’s not solely bad, but you need to be ready to adjust to ever-changing sounds [ .. ] If you manage that, you’re in for one hell of a ride! 

Adjust to the ever-changing, and you’re in for one hell of a ride?
No way my writing is going to top that life advice.
And because there are no photos of this show, not even a proper photo of the tour schedule or concert ticket, and because the show itself is 2 hours and 20 minutes of absolute Bon Jovi GOLD!
– I chose to let myself be inspired by a coincidental aspect of this show;
It’s the very first <1997 concert upload, that took place on my birthday.

And for this post I looked back on the 6 months that have passed since.

If you want to read about the Tinley Park concert itself, you can check this page on this legendary concert:
https://bjtours.jimdofree.com/the-tours/1993-keep-the-faith-i-ll-sleep-when-i-m-dead-i-believe/100-1993-07-24-world-music-theatre-tinley-park-illinois-usa/
BJ Tours website is a collaboration with hAnD90,  and the page is already updated with this stunning concert.

Give it all for your giant squid

👩🏼‍💻 the story 20 january

.

To say the first 6 months of this year of my life, needed “adjusting to ever-changing” would be an understatement.
Except I acknowledge that the most important factor in the ever changing bit were not external factors but something else:
Me.

After basically (you can cover your eyes at this point) throwing away everything from March 2020 and up;
Perhaps summer 2018 and up;
Possibly even late 20th century and up;
I was absolutely, thoroughly, and may I say violently, done with what my life had become, and more importantly, who I had become.

A combination of circumstances explains why I’ve hardly written since late October, made no videos for either one of my channels, and even my Soundtrack of the day series with Bon Jovi concerts and the photo collages I make- both series that are daily-ish- have been very inconsistent.
I can cover for the past 2.5 month of barely being visible, and in my opinion those are not the biggest problem.

But the reason I lost all those years, perhaps dating back to late 20th century, was because I “just start”-ed and “just do it”-ed my ass off after graduation, without understanding how horribly off-path I was.
And that even if I had succeeded, it would only  have accelerated my demise.

I was like how Elizabeth Gilbert described in her book Eat Pray Love, when she thought she wanted to start a family, while every time she got her period she said:
“Thank you God for letting me live another month.”

That’s how clear my signs were I was living the wrong life.
But only clear in retrospect, because just like Gilbert, I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was on the right path, because just like her attempt to start a family, my path too was normal, and desired by so many people.
And I took it without any difficulty really.
I had jobs, careers, and had a wonderful partner with whom I had such a good life and could have started a family if I had wanted to;
It all looked really good on the outside.

But ultimately the things that all came crashing down 2018 and up, and that are taking me the last 2.5 months to unpack – where at times I am almost frozen in my anxiety to choose right this time – all gave off red flags decades ago.
Their own versions of letting me live another month, prayers.
I didn’t want the future I was supposedly building anymore than Gilbert wanted a family.

And although I changed aspects of it, for sure- important aspects too, in particular my love life  – I did not change other aspects.
There, I still showed up as Elizabeth wanting a family, yet secretly praying it wouldn’t happen.

And that is what these past 2.5 months have been about. Because I’m figuring out what it is I need to change, which aspects are still me pretending.
And they’re often very, very subtle.
For instance, last Wednesday after seeing the Leonard Cohen documentary,  I wrote a piece about that I don’t want to be a yoga teacher, but if I am a storyteller and part of the story is told on the yoga mat?
Great!
So that’s what my YouTube channels in 2023 will be rebooted like.

For my English YouTube this means I will make a video, Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs, which is my existing series.
For example: “Wanted Dead or Alive”
And then another video “Wanted Dead or Alive, part 2. Bring your mat.”
The word yoga is entirely taken out of it!

And after years and years of struggling with this yoga teacher thing, that felt so constricting I have ended my yoga career countless times-
I now can’t wait to get this started!
I’m a storyteller and part of the story is on the mat. 
Riddle solved.

I think that was the biggie really, the thing I have wrestled with the most, these last few years in particular.
If you want to know the entire journey that lead to this epiphany, you can read it in last Wednesday’s post, on my Rock Star Writer blog:
A revelation, unprepared and overthrown. The birth of a storyteller. | Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen documentary

Do you know the first moment realized Elizabeth she was onto something?
The first moment she understood something was off here?
When she encountered a friend who had been trying to get pregnant for years, and she was now pregnant and glowing with happiness.
Elizabeth listened to the stories she told, about wanting a baby for so long, and how happy she was, and she couldn’t stop staring at the radiating glow on her friends face.
She knew she had looked like that too, just recently, and searched her memory, frantically, trying to remember when it had been that she had looked this happy.
And then she remembered!

The editor in chief from GQ magazine had called her and asked if she wanted to go on an expedition on a boat, on the pacific ocean, that was looking for the mythical giant squid. A creature ultimately caught on camera in 2006, so it can very well be linked to the offer Elizabeth received.

Receiving that phone call, was when Elizabeth had looked this radiantly happy.
What was a pregnancy and the promise of starting a family for her friend, was looking for an undiscovered giant squid to her.

At the concert in Tinley Park, on the 24th of July 1993, the band kept playing encore after encore. Jon was clearly thankful for the enthusiasm of the crowd, but he must have also remembered their other Illinois concert earlier that year.
Rosemont, 5 March 1993.

A concert in their messiest months, haunted by a poorly organized first leg of their tour and disappointing ticket sales, when it was supposed to have been a comeback tour for their Keep the Faith album.
The first album of the band in four years.

That first 1993 Illinois concert had been a tough time, when the renewed bond between the bandmembers was tested, and the name of their tour and album, Keep the Faith, became a life imitating art conundrum.

The aforementioned BJ Tours website says of this first Illinois concert in Rosemont:
“The show Jon later on referred to as “THE TURNING POINT OF THE TOUR!”
Apparently, someone had said to him backstage that this would be the last time he’d be able to play such a venue because of Keep The Faith not having been the big success after its release.
The band [ .. ] went on to play as if it was the last time they’d ever be able to take a stage.”

They say Jon had to be carried of stage, that’s how close he came to exhaustion. He literally gave all he had, and the rest is history.

Four months later, they were back in Illinois and it all seemed to be so easy now.
But they remembered they had to fight for this.
They had to push through, when nothing worked, and the show could have been their last.

Bon Jovi had recognized the seriousness, of getting one last chance.
Just like I do now.

Therefor their victory concert, 4,5 months later

24 July1993, Tinley Park, Illinois 🇺🇸
Bon Jovi | Stunning Concert at World Music Theatre | Tinley Park 1993
is the soundtrack for today

.
The show has been added in to the first playlist 
“Part I: Bon Jovi concerts on this day 10 June – 5 Dec (before 1997)”
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiGoDE3C06ScAo9UN4GyhtQWYfl3d6jMT
on July 24.

.
 ~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🥳 PayPalMe 
🇳🇱Tikkie van de week 

Wednesday 12 October 
The soundtrack for today is:

Bon Jovi
12 October 1992
Fast Lane, Asbury Park
New Jersey 🇺🇸
🏟️ first promo concert Keep the Faith

If it had not been for the continuous female screaming during the opener “With a little help from my friends”, one may indeed have mistaken Bon Jovi’s debut performance to promote their Keep the Faith album, for a run-of-the-New-Jersey-mill bar band.
As several newspapers implied.

But as much as that might have been true, musically speaking, there was one aspect to Bon Jovi playing there, at the Fast Lane venue in Asbury Park, New Jersey’s holy ground for anyone who is anything in the New Jersey music scene, an aspect that was the theme of the whole night, and that aspect was;
They had been away.

Unlike local bands, Bon Jovi had been from New Jersey, not in New Jersey.

The audience to this under-cover club gig, consisted largely of family, friends, people from the music industry, and then there were the few lucky fans who managed to get a ticket.
None of them knew what to expect.

The upcoming album Keep the Faith, had not been released yet.
And what Bon Jovi knew, was that they had a big acoustic production in the wings, coming up in two weeks time; An Evening With Bon Jovi for MTV.
Bon Jovi needed to get their head around their set, including the 60s covers they intended to blend in.
But they didn’t want to lose the connection with the audience either.

To make matters one could say “worse”;
The band were not just transitioning into a new musical style, but they were out of practice and even out of touch, of playing together live.
When in the first months of 1990, touring had finally come to a stop –
Bon Jovi needed to clean house.
For a while they were literally out of touch, and did not even speak to each other. Many, including the band, did not know if there was a future for Bon Jovi.

In October 1992, that was all put behind them and the band had been on the west and in Canada for over half a year, recording Keep the Faith, before they came back to New Jersey and played Asbury Park.

What do you play when after all that time, you are finally home?

Not sure what to play

👩🏼‍💻 the story October 12

.

In the second half of 1986, Bon Jovi went from being a struggling band, who had been fighting to make their mark in music with two albums whose biggest achievement had been that the record company had allowed them to make another one.
Another one, that would be big.

In 1986, Bon Jovi’s third album needed to go big- or the band needed to go home. It was released in August, and before the year was over, Bon Jovi had attained super stardom.

Yet up until the late 80s, few music journalists bothered to pay attention to any hardrock band who carried Elnett hairspray. There were so many bands behind the veil of MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball and Europe’s music festivals for hardrock and heavy metal, that the hardrock bands who did manage to get their songs played on radio, and who did have hits (such as Scorpions, Europe and Whitesnake, and of course Bon Jovi) were still not given attention.
As if they could drop back in line with the other dime-in-a-dozen bands, at any moment.

In particular in The Netherlands, and I believe Europe at large, few hardrock bands were known, and Bon Jovi was scrutinized and made fun of.
In particular after their 1986 breakthrough.
I never dug into it, but I can imagine someone who had seen them opening for KISS, who had been in Tilburg in 1985, and even the November 1986 concert in Arnhem, with Bad Name and Prayer both high up in he charts-the newspaper press would have been positive.

But the music press, the journalists who wrote long articles about bands?
That was a different story.
To this day, I have not found or read or seen, even one interviewer or journalist, who in the 80s was able to hear that Bon Jovi’s albums and their live performances, contained a depth, complexity, and musical richness, that made it blatantly obvious this band was here to stay.

That Bon Jovi would survive not just the decades, not just all the other bands, but that like the Stones before them;
Bon Jovi would go down in history as the biggest band of their generation.

Listening to Bon Jovi albums, and even to their earliest recordings, it is impossible to not know the difference between Bon Jovi playing Asbury Park’s Fast Lane in 1992, cracking jokes with the audience, reminiscing about the past, and all those times the band played there and there was almost no one in the audience-
and a professional local bar band.

So did Bon Jovi struggle, to come up with a proper setlist?
They did.
Were they unsure what to play?
Probably, yes.

But after opening with an XL rendition of Joe Cocker’s version of “Little help from my friends”; 
Cutting straight into a staccato drum intro – 
“Are you ready? Are you willing? Are you able to rock n roll?”
blasting into Wild in the Streets.

Jon Bon Jovi greeting the audience with a “Good evening Asbury Park, New Jersey”, that is satisfying at an almost visceral level, and turning the audience on and the mood up, with casual conversation about reasons to celebrate today.
The crowd, understandably, goes wild! 

They make momentum with a string of three hits, back to back:
You Give Love a Bad Name, Born to be my Baby, and I’d Die For You, which indeed does sound like a bar band has taken the stage!
In the most wonderful, we-all-wish-we-there kind of way.

Jon cracks open the memory box, giving a lively description of New Jersey 1978, the music scene and how he met Tico Torres.
And how Jon played the Stone Pony every Wednesday and almost nobody showed up!

Brave attempt to decide on what to play next through a democratic process with a yelling crowd.
A “New?” “Old?” poll, leads to a cut-short version of Runaway, with Jon saying it’s “not bad for guys who haven’t played together all year” and excusing himself he’s probably more excited about the new stuff.
“You too?” 

Three new songs from the Keep the Faith album, possibly the first time they are played;
Sleep When I m Dead with Jon effectively playing the dance-on-my-bar barman role from intro to outro!
A confession-filled introduction to Bed of Roses;
Going all in with Keep the Faith, and we can already hear the hallmark maracas!

Giving the people what they want, with Lay Your Hands On Me, plugging in anything electric within reach and providing ample sing along time;
The story of how Jon “fooled” David Bryan into playing in Bon Jovi instead of becoming a doctor;
Good Lovin’, best known in the 1966 version from The Young Rascals;  
An upbeat and prolonged Bad Medicine that will seldom have been belted along more enthusiastically; 

An acoustic set with Livin’ on a Prayer and a dressed-down version of the Allman Brothers “Midnight Rider”,  leading into “Wanted Dead or Alive”;
“Kansas City” with New Jersey icon Lance Larson, who gets thanked for letting Jon Bon Jovi play the clubs when he was still underage;
And closing with what was then their most recent hit, Jon Bon Jovi’s solo song, Blaze of Glory.

With all these things in place, everybody left knowing the difference between Bon Jovi and a New Jersey bar band.
Even a professional one.

Looking back, it is unmistakable that 1992 Bon Jovi had not just gone way further than all the New Jersey bands before them; 
And had not just survived an entire decade of hardrock bands, globally, that would get lost in history and never make it back on their feet again;
Had not just proved the critics wrong.

But that the state of New Jersey, a state they had brought into the light by naming their 1988 album after it;
That the state had become synonymous with Bon Jovi.

That yes, all those years touring from August 1986 to early 1990;
The silent years ’90-91 when Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora both made their highly acclaimed solo records, both recorded in California;
And in 1992, with the resurrection of Bon Jovi, and recording their new album Keep the Faith in Vancouver, Canada;
That although all that time, Bon Jovi the band, had indeed not been in New Jersey -Jon tells how he has not been home for eight months, before the show.

But that by that time, Bon Jovi had become synonymous with New Jersey.
And New Jersey would be known, worldwide, because Bon Jovi was from there.
Bon Jovi and New Jersey, had become inseparable. 

And when you’re that big brother that comes home from his travels, to a house filled with family, delighted to see you;
Then it really doesn’t really matter, what you play.

What matters, is you’re there.

Therefor

12 october 1992, New Jersey 🇺🇸
Bon Jovi – Live at Fast Lane | Audience Recording | Full Concert In Audio | Asbury Park 1992
is the soundtrack for today

.
The show is added to the playlist 
“Bon Jovi concerts on this day”
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiGoDE3C06ScAo9UN4GyhtQWYfl3d6jMT
at October 12.

 ~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🥳 PayPalMe 
🇳🇱Tikkie van de week 

Exciting news!
As already announced last Monday, this blog #dailybonjoviyoga has been renamed to

#dailybonjovilive
Bon Jovi history, for the world of today 

Where I will share these stories inspired by Bon Jovi concerts.
I really love that tag line! I hope you do too.

On Monday 10 October 2022 – and for reasons that do not have anything to do with how much I love you! – I cancelled all things yoga and business related. 
That is why I had to change the name of this site, to one without yoga.

This also means that Rock Star phase 2, as outlined below, has moved into phase 3. But there are so many moving parts!
I have to set it up in phases.

Today I bought a new domain name, dailybonjovilive.com, and it already refers to this site, the one you’re currently on.
But there is a 96 hour waiting period before I can make that url the main one, to this site.
Which is why you may still see dailybonjoviyoga.com, in the address bar.

All blogs and YouTube channels will be addressed personally, and redesigned or put on hold. 

Old yoga videos on YouTube will stay available, and the videos I still have on private (since a tech problem in 2020) will be updated and unlocked as was planned.
In general, old yoga content will not be removed, just no new ones created.

updated project list soon, this one was Phase 2: