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BON JOVI – 7800° Fahrenheit
Bon Jovi – 7800° Fahrenheit (1985, Mercury Records)
Track List:
1. “In and Out of Love” … 4:26
2. “The Price of Love” … 4:14
3. “Only Lonely” … 5:02
4. “King of the Mountain” … 3:54
5. “Silent Night” … 5:08
6. “Tokyo Road” … 5:42
7. “The Hardest Part Is the Night” … 4:25
8. “Always Run to You” … 5:00
9. “(I Don’t Wanna Fall) To the Fire” … 4:28
10. “Secret Dreams” … 4:54
Band:
Jon Bon Jovi – Vocals
Richie Sambora – Guitar, Backing Vocals
Alec John Such – Bass, Backing Vocals
Tico Torres – Drums
David Bryan – Keyboard, Backing Vocals
Additional Musicians:
Tom Mandel, Jim Salamone, and Randy Cantor – Synthesizer
Carol Brooks, Jeannie Brooks, Rick Valenti, and Phil Hoffer – Backing Vocals
Produced by: Lance Quinn
Total keyboard-heavy 1980s cheesefest. David Bryan really shined on this album. =)
This album is so much of a guilty pleasure. The songs are catchy, but you’re almost embarrassed to be singing along because they’re so bad they’re good. The band had yet to hook up with master rock/pop songwriter Desmond Child and had they not done that in time for 1986′s Slippery When Wet, I imagine one more album of this kind of somewhat generic keyboard-based hair metal and all members of Bon Jovi would’ve been back in Jersey working 9-5 factory jobs. I can’t help but imagine these songs as part of a music montage during some 80s movie.
“In and Out of Love” is the closest to what Slippery When Wet would bring (it also made it onto the band’s Cross Road greates hits release), but it’s easy to see why the rest has been forgotten over the years. I still like the album, but it’s definitely not the first album I would recommend to any potential Bon Jovi fan.
In fact, this album and the self-titled debut were actually the final Bon Jovi albums I purchased back around 2000 or so in order to complete my Bon Jovi collection. I picked’em up during one of my many great Columbia House raids for just a few dollars a piece.
Highlights: “In and Out of Love”, “The Price of Love”, “The Hardest Part Is the Night”, “(I Don’t Wanna Fall) To the Fire”, “Secret Dreams”
BON JOVI – Crush
Bon Jovi – Crush (2000, Island Records/Def Jam Music)
Track Listing:
1. “It’s My Life” … 3:44
2. “Say It Isn’t So” … 3:33
3. “Thank You for Loving Me” … 5:07
4. “Two Story Town” … 5:10
5. “Next 100 Years” … 6:19
6. “Just Older” … 4:28
7. “Mystery Train” … 5:16
8. “Save the World” … 5:31
9. “Captain Crash & the Beauty Queen From Mars” … 4:31
10. “She’s a Mystery” … 5:18
11. “I Got the Girl” … 4:35
12. “One Wild Night” … 4:18
Band:
Jon Bon Jovi – Lead Vocals
Richie Sambora – Guitar, Backing Vocals
Tico Torres – Drums, Percussion
David Bryan – Keyboard, Piano, Backing Vocals
Additional Musicians:
Hugh McDonald – Bass, Backing Vocals
Produced by: Luke Ebbin, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora
5 years after the dark, somber, melancholy These Days, Bon Jovi decided it was time to make music again and went in the complete opposite direction with the very bombastic, poppy, syrupy Crush.
Not that I’m complaining. I love both albums, but while These Days took some getting used to, I instantly embraced Crush because it’s not too far removed from the usual bombastic, poppy, syrupy sounds of Bon Jovi. The only difference is the band brought in “boy band” songwriter Max Martin (“It’s My Life”) but also balanced it out with a bit more of a mature sound (“She’s A Mystery”, “Just Older”, “Save the World”).
It’s not a hard rocking album for the most part (Bounce actually rocks harder than this), it’s very much a pop album, but I still love it. “It’s My Life” though somewhat boy bandish is an incredibly catchy song and I loved that in 2000 I was hearing brand new Bon Jovi on the radio. All three singles (the other two being “Say It Isn’t So” and “Thank You For Loving Me”) are my favorite songs from the album, but the slower moments like “Mystery Train” and “She’s A Mystery” are really enjoyable too.
Probably my only complaint with be the lack of originality. I remember an old review stating that “Say It Isn’t So” and “Two Story Town” ripped off Lit and Joan Osbourne, respectively, and it’s absolutely true. “Two Story Town” seems to be such a near carbon copy of “What If God Was One of Us” that I’m surprised Joan didn’t sue. Also, their use of two “Mystery” songs has always bothered me (even though I love both songs), just like GNR’s “The Garden” and “The Garden of Eden” on Use Your Illusion I, it’s always annoyed me.
The album has a great closer with “One Wild Night” which is the one song that reminds me most of the Bon Jovi of the 80s. This song could’ve easily been on New Jersey right alongside “99 in the Shade” and “Love For Sale”.
Highlights: “It’s My Life”, “Say It Isn’t So”, “Thank You For Loving Me”, “Just Older”, “Mystery Train”, “Save the World”, “She’s a Mystery”, “One Wild Night”
www.bonjovi.com
www.myspace.com/bonjovi
ALICE COOPER – Trash
Alice Cooper – Trash (1989, Epic Records)
Track Listing:
1. “Poison” … 4:30
2. “Spark in the Dark” .. 3:52
3. “House of Fire” … 3:47
4. “Why Trust You” … 3:12
5. “Only My Heart Talkin’” … 4:46
6. “Bed of Nails” … 4:20
7. “This Maniac’s in Love With You” … 3:48
8. “Trash” … 4:02
9. “Hell Is Living Without You” … 4:11
10. “I’m Your Gun” … 3:49
Band:
Alice Cooper – Vocals
And then an absolute bevy of session musicians and special guests including (but not limited to):
Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and former Cooper bandmates Kip Winger and Kane Roberts.
Produced by: Desmond Child
A lot of metal fans don’t care for producer Desmond Child. Any album he produces and writes on has a slick pop-metal style, but I personally have no problem with that. In fact, pop-metal is one my favorite genres of rock. Desmond has done some great work with bands like KISS, Bon Jovi (Slippery When Wet, anyone?), Vince Neil, Scorpions, Ratt and Aerosmith. So a Desmond Child-Alice Cooper effort makes for another great Desmond-helmed album in my opinion and “Poison” is my favorite Alice Cooper song. I’m almost in a trance whenever I hear it.
I don’t find a pop-metal album by Alice to feel out of place in his catalog at all. Most of the 80s hard rockers owed a little bit to Alice anyway as I’ve always considered the Coop and KISS to be the Godfathers of Shock Rock while those two groups plus Van Halen are the Godfathers of Hair Metal, IMO.
This easily is my favorite Alice album and I remember playing this album most of my junior year in high school, skipping lunch and sitting in my next class’ room waiting for it to begin. I’m sure most people would argue his early-mid 70s is his best, and while I enjoy certain tracks from those albums, they’re hard for me to digest as whole. There’s just some weird stuff there and garage rock isn’t really my style.
“Trash” is a fun tune sung with Jon Bon Jovi and sees Alice Cooper & Jon going totally hair metal on us with the innuendos (“If my love was like a lollipop, would you lick it?”). Steven Tyler shares vocal duties on the ballad “Only My Heart Talkin’”. It’s just a fun record, loaded with guest stars, and his next album, Hey Stoopid, makes for a great companion piece because it continued the sound heard here.
Highlights: “Poison”, “Spark in the Dark”, “Why Trust You”, “Only My Heart Talkin’”, “Bed of Nails”, “Trash”, “Hell Is Living Without You”, “I’m Your Gun”
www.alicecooper.com
www.myspace.com/officialalicecooper
BON JOVI – Bounce
Bon Jovi – Bounce (2002, Island Records)
Track Listing:
1. “Undivided” (3:53)
2. “Everyday” (3:00)
3. “The Distance” (4:48)
4. “Joey” (4:54)
5. “Misunderstood” (3:30)
6. “All About Lovin’ You” (3:46)
7. “Hook Me Up” (3:54)
8. “Right Side of Wrong” (5:50)
9. “Love Me Back to Life” (4:09)
10. “You Had Me From Hello” (3:49)
11. “Bounce” (3:11)
12. “Open All Night” (4:22)
Band:
Jon Bon Jovi – Vocals
Richie Sambora – Guitar
Hugh McDonald – Bass
Tico Torres – Drums
David Bryan – Keyboards
Produced by:
Luke Ebbin, Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, Andreas Carlsson, Desmond Child
Remember when I said in this entry that Bon Jovi had started to not rock? Well, that’s true, but something must’ve gotten in those Jersey boys and made them want to scratch that rock ‘n’ roll itch again in 2002. After the incredible mainstream success of the very poppy and syrupy sweet Crush from 2000, perhaps this was meant to quench the thirst of the fans who complained about Crush and just wanted Bon Jovi to rock out?
It would be, in my opinion, their last true rock & roll album as after this the band moved into the incredibly bland & safe territory of soccer mom rock & country/pop, no doubt trying to appeal to their now grown-up thirty-something female fan base that put them on the cover of so many teen magazines during the 80s, but I digress.
This album was met with a lot of indifference when it first came out, at least critically. Fans of old school Bon Jovi *still* cried foul over this one not rocking enough, and the pop audience they gained with Crush didn’t show up to support this album probably because it was too much of a rock album. Despite the lose/lose situation, Bounce debuted at #2 on the Billboard charts, and although it quickly fell through the charts, it eventually went Gold in America (selling 3.5 million worldwide). But when Crush from 2 years previous went 2x platinum in the U.S. (and 10 million worldwide), this album had to be considered a disappointment.
Honestly though, as an old school Bon Jovi fan, I still dig this album a lot. Much like everyone else, I didn’t care for it originally, but months later, I knew I hadn’t really given it a close listen, so I gave it another shot and I’m glad I did. It’s very underrated, although the album’s calculated “rocker, ballad, rocker, ballad…” track listing becomes quite tiresome. Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t compare Slippery When Wet or New Jersey or even Crush, but it’s still a very enjoyable effort with a few killer songs like “Bounce”, “Everyday” and “Misunderstood”.
One thing that hurts this album is the lack of a decent ballad. What Bon Jovi offered here, I just could not get into, which is surprising because they’ve written some of the greatest ballads ever (even their super lame 2007 release Lost Highway featured the amazing “(You Want to) Make A Memory”, but nothing of the sort is to be found here.
Highlights: “Undivided”, “Everyday”, “The Distance”, “Misunderstood”, “Hook Me Up”, “Love Me Back to Life”, “Bounce”
Lowlights: “Joey” (reminds me of a very slowed down version of “Wild in the Streets” from Slippery When Wet), “Open All Night” (not feeling this ballad at all, one of BJ’s worst)
BON JOVI – These Days
Bon Jovi – These Days (1995, Mercury Records)
Track Listing:
1. “Hey God” (6:20)
2. “Something for the Pain” (4:46)
3. “This Ain’t a Love Song” (5:06)
4. “These Days” (6:26)
5. “Lie to Me” (5:33)
6. “Damned” (4:27)
7. “My Guitar Lies Bleeding in My Arms” (5:42)
8. “(It’s Hard) Letting You Go” (5:50)
9. “Hearts Breaking Even” (5:05)
10. “Something to Believe In” (5:25)
11. “If That’s What It Takes” (5:27)
12. “Diamond Ring” (3:46)
Band:
Jon Bon Jovi – Vocals
Richie Sambora – Guitar
Tico Torres – Drums
David Bryan – Keyboards
Producer:
Peter Collins
If 1992′s Keep the Faith started to show the band’s desire to *not* rock, this album all but confirmed it. These Days is Bon Jovi’s attempt to shed the “80s rockers” label and get serious. It’s not as fun as the Bon Jovi that the world was used to up to that point. It’s a little darker and a little jaded and a little angry.
From the opening moments of the album with the almost-alternative rocker “Hey God” you can easily tell this is not the Bon Jovi of days gone by that sung about riding steel horses or the temperature being 99 in the shade. When I first heard this album, I absolutely hated it. A friend of mine played this album for me and I remember that we kept playing “Hey God” over and over again, laughing at how bad it was and how much this whole album was NOT *our* Bon Jovi.
Well, that was probably about ’97 or so that I first heard it, and since then, These Days has grown on me and has become one of my favorite albums from the band. Once I had a copy of my own, I listened to it a lot. I remember many late nights playing this album nonstop after I had moved down to Florida when I was in my late teens, totally getting into the melancholy nature of the songs. There are a few albums in my collection that really represent a period in my life, they represent what I was going through emotionally at the time, and this is one of them. And for that reason, it’s almost like a time warp listening to this now. It’s also for that reason that I tend not to listen to this album much. It’s amazing how many feelings from a certain point in your life that you can associate with a song or whole album and not being able to disconnect the two.
If you want Bon Jovi singing big rock anthems with huge choruses, this is not the album for you. Heck, as I said previously, they don’t even rock out much here as there’s only a few songs that really open fire (“Hey God”, “Something for the Pain”, “These Days”, “Damned”). The rest are pretty low-key, slow to mid-tempo numbers. If you can get past the fact that you aren’t going to get a sequel Slippery When Wet or New Jersey, this is a darn good album and one of their betters ones, in my opinion.
This album also marks “unofficial” band member Hugh McDonald’s first full studio album appearance on bass. As of the time of this writing, he’s *still* not a recognized member of the band, despite playing bass on their albums and tours since 1994. There’s also a few B-sides floating around from this album that didn’t make the cut and mostly wound up in special international editions of the album and that’s a shame for the U.S. because it’s really good stuff.
Highlights: “Hey God”, “These Days”, “Lie to Me”, “(It’s Hard) Letting You Go”, “Hearts Breaking Even”, “Something To Believe In”, “If That’s What It Takes”
Lowlights: “Diamond Ring”. Some things never changed, I’ve always disliked this song and I still do.
YOUTH GONE WILD: Heavy Metal Hits of the 80′s, Volume 4
YOUTH GONE WILD: HEAVY METAL HITS OF THE 80s, VOLUME 4 (1998, Rhino Records)
Track Listing:
1. “Up All Night” – Slaughter (4:20)
2. “New Thing” – Enuff Z’Nuff (4:23)
3. “10,000 Lovers (In One)” -TNT (2:57)
4. “Walkin’ Shoes” -Tora Tora (4:04)
5. “Walls Come Down” – Every Mother’s Nightmare (5:17)
6. “Naughty Naughty” – Danger Danger (4:54)
7. “Down Boys” – Warrant (4:04)
8. “D’Stroll” – D’Molls (5:53)
9. “Hollywood” – Junkyard (3:01)
10. “Heartbreak Blvd” – Shotgun Messiah (4:20)
11. “Future World” – Pretty Maids (5:21)
12. “Set Me Free” – Heathen (3:48)
13. “The Calling” – Leatherwolf (4:04)
14. “Turn up the Radio” – Autograph (4:37)
15. “Badlands” – Metal Church (7:23)
16. “To Hell With the Devil” – Stryper (4:05)
Rhino’s 80s rock/metal compilation series comes to a close with this fourth volume that was released two years after the first three. 1998 was also the year that the wave of interest in the so-called “80s bands” was starting to rise again and many of the bands documented in this series have since gone on to have reunions, new albums, new tours to varying levels of success (not to mention the new breakups!).
At this point in the series, outside of really big name acts such as Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, KISS, Alice Cooper, Motley Crue, and Guns N Roses a lot of bands had already been covered and it seems Rhino tried to pick up the rest of scraps for Volume 4, giving many bands that were second or even third-tier acts (even at their peak of popularity) a track. So what we have here are bands like D’Molls, Junkyard, Heathen, Pretty Maids, Shotgun Messiah, and Every Mother’s Nightmare that were never very big and what small buzz they did build up was only just as the era was coming to a close.
While this volume may not pack a lot of star power outside of Warrant, Stryper, and Slaughter, that by no means affects the quality here. But I have to admit, I would rank this volume as the weakest of the series.
Overall, I’d say Rhino did a great job with the series, but had some questionable inclusions (Metal Church? King’s X? Sam Kinison?) and exclusions which I have previously stated I think mostly came down to not being able to afford the larger acts. I do believe there were quite a few bands that they still could have afforded to add on such as Kix, XYZ, Black ‘N’ Blue, Sleaze Beez, Trixter, Tuff, Nitro, W.A.S.P., Keel, Dirty Looks, and Babylon A.D. (just to name a few). And not in the least, Rhino certainly should have secured Skid Row a place here if they were going to name the series YOUTH GONE WILD. That’d be a no-brainer to me.
Highlights: “Up All Night”, “New Thing”, “Naughty Naughty”, “Down Boys”, “Hollywood”, “Turn Up the Radio”, “To Hell with the Devil”
Lowlights: “Badlands” by Metal Church. Not because it’s a bad song, but because it just doesn’t belong here.
