Hold the Bon Jovi please

If you are a fan of Bon Jovi, I suggest you stop reading right now. I am not a fan although I do like one of their songs. One.

Last summer we were fortunate enough to attend the second "Crossroads Festival" here in the Chicago area. It was a day of great music featuring a whole lot of great guitar players. Perfect for a guitar junkie like myself...comparing and contrasting with Bon Jovi was inevitable...

I have a befriended someone in the past few years that is a music industry insider. One of his involvements is with the "Soundstage" program. Knowing my love for music, he had mentioned that he would get me to one of the shows at some point. These are very intimate shows in a small television soundstage. Knowing that he has had artists in the past like Neil Young and Allison Krauss, I was really excited about the idea.

Well, he finally got us into the studio for, you guessed it, Bon Jovi. We didn't feel we could turn it down without ruining our chances of ever going to one of these shows, yet my wife and I were not big Bon Jovi fans by any stretch of the imagination. So we go...

When we get there we are met by the producer. He shows us to our seats and says "you guys are going to be on camera a lot so I need you to really get into it". Yikes! Now I am thinking that I will have to pretend to really like this. I am also hoping that maybe I am wrong about Bon Jovi, maybe they will actually be good and I will get into it. I regret to inform you all that not a single one of my overactive rock and roll genes was awakened at any time during this show. Alas, I sold my rock and roll soul to the devil at the request of a producer.

We did enjoy seeing how these shows are put together. In fact, we made fun out of being in this predicament. Only one song had to be redone. Unfortunately they were three quarters of the way through it when the producer stopped the action due to some technical problem. Now I had to re-pretend I was enjoying this song I barely survived hearing the first time. It was a struggle but as first time television actors, it was our duty to grind it out.

John is actually very good at what he does. I am sure when he was younger the girls went crazy. He's not younger and I'm not a girl. Richie is a tool. He had make up touch him up after every song. His guitar playing was average, at best (read lousy). Hell, I'm average and I don't need makeup after every song! The other members of the band were there...thats about all I can say about them. Who's the guy with the French poodle haircut?

We were fearful that our friends would see us being "into" Bon Jovi, demand that we give up our die hard rock and rollers membership cards and get a laugh on us for a long time. Well, we finally watched the show on TV and we can see us but if you don't know where to look you won't see us and I'm not telling you where to look. One thing of note...the sound production on the TV show is incredible. They sounded infinitely better on TV than they did in a live studio. My kudos to the producer. That is some unbelievable producing!

I will have some other concert updates when I find the time to write again. Business dealings are really taking up a lot of my time right now. I will do some posts about this when I am able to share. I am using what free time I have to take advantage of the short, though beautiful summer we are having here in Chicago.

To all my friends and loved ones...I love you more.