Detroit review @ The Windsor Star

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Bon Jovi still drives the fans
Ted Shaw, Windsor Star
Published: Thursday, February 21, 2008

You can take the band out of rock, but you can't take the rock out of the band.

Bon Jovi, a veteran of 1980s melodic rock that has gone country in recent years, proved it still has the goods in the arena business with a power-chord-packed, sold-out show Wednesday at the Palace of Auburn Hills.

More than 20,000 people poured into the Palace early to hear opening act, Daughtry, whose bestselling debut follows leader Chris Daughtry's appearance on a recent season of American Idol.
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The band is touring in support of its latest album, Lost Highway, partly recorded in Nashville, Tenn. The band may look to Nashville for inspiration now, but at its core it still rocks. The influences have come full circle -- today's major country stars take their cue from bands like Bon Jovi when it comes to mounting concerts with arena proportions.

Much of the concert was drawn from Lost Highway -- songs like the title track Lost Highway, (You Want to) Make a Memory, We Got it Going On, and the Nashville tribute I Love This Town. The album is a terrific driving disc -- pop it into the deck at the start of a long trip and the miles melt away.

In concert, they are engineered for performance, too, like those finely-tuned Dodges that swept the field at the Daytona 500 last weekend. Bon Jovi is NASCAR-approved.

Lead singer Jon Bon Jovi and guitarist Richie Sambora are like a couple of good old boy drivers, teammates pushing each other to take the checkered flag. They traded playing frontman, while David Bryan on keyboards, Tico Torres on drums, and recent acquisition Hugh McDonald on bass held down the beat.

The concert opened with Lost Highway.

Bon Jovi himself knows how to work a crowd into a frenzy. Of course, with the adoring women in the audience, half that work is done the second he steps on stage. At 45, the ageless boy wonder seems to be thriving on all the new accolades.

It was right back the 1980s with the next song, You Give Love a Bad Name. Four diamond-vision screens backed the stage, moving up and down to give everyone from the front of the main floor to the upper reaches of the back rows a good view.

Despite the recent success with the country-rock crowd, the charter members of Bon Jovi's following represented the bulk of the audience and they came to hear songs like Complicated, Livin' on a Prayer, Bad Medicine, Wanted Dead or Alive and Keep the Faith, and they weren't let down.

Raise Your Hand, a great rock anthem, followed in quick succession.

Torres is a joy to watch, delivering the meter-perfect beat while twirling mallets instead of the standard drumsticks.

The more than two-hour show took fans right back to the formative years of the early 1980s, and it's instructive to hear how little Bon Jovi has really changed in terms of its sound and energy level. A song like Runaway has the same freshness that it had in the early-80s when Detroit stations WLLZ and WRIF were among the few in the country to give it airplay. Bon Jovi took the time to thank his Detroit fans for giving his band 10 straight sell-outs, an achievement acknowledged by a banner that was unfurled from the Palace rafters the night before at a Detroit Pistons game, which Bon Jovi attended.

The band paid tribute to its forebears, as well, in a middle-section of Sleep When I'm Dead that included the Stones' Jumpin' Jack Flash.

Later, during a country turn, they turned in a respectable cover of Bob Dylan's Knockin' on Heaven's Door.

This led to the band's early nod to country-rock, Wanted Dead of Alive, driven by a soaring Texas blues solo from Sambora.
Daughtry opened the show with nine original songs from its debut, self-titled album.

The band is named for its lead singer and songwriter, Chris Daughtry, a former American Idol contestant who first came to attention singing a Bon Jovi cover, Wanted Dead Or Alive. He didn't sing that, of course, but he cruised along in the melodic rock groove.

Songs like the hits It's Not Over, Over You, and Home are arena-ready, however, and Daughtry had the early-arriving crowd fully behind him, singing along to the chorus of the better-known songs.

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and again! une de plus ! ces dingue tte ca! il pleut des reviews!! tongue