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Show Midweek Ete. September 5, 1995 Page 3 Back Home, Bon Jovi Talks on would have stuck up at a war zone — probably moreforthe safety of the people in front rather than for our sake — because they never had a show at their cricket grounds like this. It was the big- By Roger Catlin (¢) 1995, The Hartford Courant Jon Bon Jovi was home, picking out old Creedence tunes onhis acoustic guitar, back m the land of Big Macs. His band, Bon Jovi, just fin- Now back in the United States, the superstar says, “It's nice to know there’s a MeDonaid’s around,” Although the bandisn’t topping the charts in its homeland(‘These Days” opened at No. 9 and has since dropped to No. 16), it is hanging in there, no mean feat when its hard-rock colleagues trom the ’80s have faded or fallen in the alternative-rock revolution. than ever. Its new album, “These Days,” is currently No. 1 in 12 countries, including England, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands, doing better than Michael Jackson and everyoneelse. The group completed a tour of European stadiums, where Van Halen opened for them. And in the most distant corners of the earth, Bon Jovi says, there were problems. “We had to come into Jakarta by boat to get to the venue because they had no idea that 100,000 peopie would showup, ly looked like something they Country: One Song, You’re Hooked By Robin Abcarian (c) 1995, Los Angeles Times I don’t drive a pickup. Don't have big hair. Hardly ever call my husband “‘darlin’.” AndJ ain’t neverlived in no holler, nor anything even approaching one. Whoops. I mean, havenotever. not ain't. ‘This tendency to talk like a hillbilly — or rather, an indigenous mountain person — has come over me recently, ever since I experienced a peculiar and wholly unanticipated musical conversion while watching the Academy of Country Music Awards on television. The only other time in my entire life something similar happened was whenI fell deeply, irrevocably in love with Tom Selleck during an episode of ‘““Magnum,P.I.” Go figure. Exceptfor the sweet twangof steel guitars, I have always disdained country music. Always thought it was made by a bunchofhistrionic entertainers writing songs with the intellectual depth of Rod McKuen poetry. Plus, the obsession with cowboys and their accessories struck me as nothing more than cultural expropriation, having more in common withthe theft of Native American traditions by men’s movement drummerdilettantes than anything resembling true appreciation and respect for an American subculture. I guess still think the cowboy thingis little over the top, but I swear on the grave of my cat (because my mama — whoI used to call Mom — isstill alive): In one electrifying epiphany last week, I forsook een’ roll and fell head over high heels for ecountry So, bye bye, Bruce. And hello, Garth. It happened somewhere between the Garth Brooks medleyof country hits and Loretta Lynn’s tear-jerking acceptance of the Pieneer Award.(Did you know that Loretta met her husband, Mooney, when she was only 13 and by the time she was18, she already had four kids? When she announcedthatshehadleft Mooney’s hospital bed because heinsisted she beat the awards ceremony, I had a hormonal surge and fell completely apart.) To my way of thinking — for which, obviously, there is no accounting — country music suddenly became the most honest, profound and meaningful expression of the interior landscape of the human mind, a way of mapping every inch of our torments and delights. (I make an exception in the case of that Tanya Tucker. One look at the way she was wriggling across the stage in hot pants, and it was clear that what she was up to had about as muchrelation to the interior landscape as Reba McEntire’s mile-high hair has to gravity. Well, maybethe interior landscapeof a bedroom. Anyhow,ah luuuvedit.) Sure, there are drawbacks to country —a little too muchreligion for my secular taste, the way there’s a tad tco much Satan worship in heavy metal and a bit much misogyny in rap. Nor is country what you wouldcall a culturally diverse discipline. By Wayne Lockwood Knight-Ridder Newspapers er day looking for some direction after a dayoflazy loafing, I found a curiousbailed-up wad of typing paper. Eureka! The unpublished work of an unknown poet, strangely reminiscentof the style of that ‘50s literary icon, Allen Ginsburg. Hmmm. The Beats had their “Howl.”I give you... WHINE 1 saw the best minds of my generation working at The Gap starving, hysterical, well- clothed dragging themseives through the chartered aisles at closing looking for an employee exit angelheaded grungers burning for the cable connection to the starry dynamoof night butthe electricity’s shut off who passed through universities in eight years hallucinating careers among the scholars of stores whoatefire on drive-thru dashboards and damued their dreams with waking nightmares rock and endless mails who drank all night in floreseent light of Denny’s on one cup until thrown out who sat through the stale beer morning in desolate bars listening to the crack of Nirva- na on the Dead CD jukebox whobared their brains to Cindy Crawfords in parking lots And on “Something ToBelieve In,” he renounces God, religion, friends, the pope and drugs the way John Lennon did in “God.” “In a world that gives you nothing,” Bon Jovi sings over yet an- other catchy melody, of “the world around me. Or the shoes I’m wearing. 70s Revival Finds Donna Summer By Roger Catlin (c) 1995, The Hartford Courant The Queen of Disco’s reign seemed tied to the music's relatively short shelflife. Nearly 20 years ago, when “Disco Sucks” buttons began appearing and special nights were “I’m ecstatic,” Summersays by phone from Nashville. “You nev- Donna Summerrecord, or a Chic record, it brings back a whole er know what you're going to get wave of . positive memories. “It's happy music, to tel! you the truth. There was a joy about set aside at Major League Base- ther, although she’s back in stores with the compilation ‘Endless out there. Andtours are extremely expensive.If you don’t have a smashhit record, you've got to get sponsorship.” Summer,this time out, has nei- ball games to burn disco records the future didn’t look bright for Donna Summer. Now,with '70s music a viable radio format, with platform shoes, Afros and mirror balls back in vogue, and with old-style discos popping up in every city, it's no surprise that Surmer’s suddenly back in the public eye. Still, nobody expected that Summer would sell out the 11,000-person Jones Beach arena in Wantagh, N.Y., recently, leaving scores clamoringfor tickets. that period,” shesays. Kids whofelt excluded by the first disco wave can become their own dance-floor stars in the current revival, Summersays. What's more, she adds, “with a fewexceptions, (disco) was not as Summer: Donna Summer's Greatest Hits” (Mercury), which itself promiscuous as music these has been doing well, thanks to the days.” somewhatinexplicable '70s revival. “Mytake on the whole picture is that, back in the "70s, when parents were going out dancing, kids The big what was going on; those seeds were planted in their memory banks,” she says. “So when they forefront,” Summer says, “The songitself I could live without.” go out now and someoneplays a Those Hard Rock Cafes Just Keep Growing and... Knight-Ridder Newspapers Q. In your list of Hard Rock Cafe locations, you omitted those in Toronto, Montreal and Calga- ry. as I fantasize Mooney must have been, back in the A. The list just keeps growing, and growing. There are six Hard Rock Cafes in Canada, and two more scheduled to open soon. There is also a k : lawsuit against the Canadian operation by Hard Rock Cafe Inter- — Associated Press nationalinvolving use of the name and trademark. There are two Hard Rock Cafes in Toronto and one each in Montreal; Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta; and Vancouver, British Columbia. Others are scheduled to open soon in Whistler, B.C., and Elton’s Eyeglasses Rebecca, a worker at Sotheby's Auction house in London, models Elton John’s 1976 “Grand Piano” glasses in London. The glasses will be put up for sale for estimated value of 3,000-4,000 pounds ($4,500-5,590) this month. Donated by Elten John, proceeds from the sale will go to the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Banff, Alberta PRICES EFFECTIVE “TUES, -MON. SEPTEMBER. UTAH'S 5b, BF, IC Ith FOOD BARGAIN WAREHOUSE BONELESS UTAH AB” SONATHAN ar,STEAKTA, neeG24 Bee GPARE’ APPLES GOLDEN GRAIN RICE-A-RONI AND NOOPLE-RONT FRYER LEGS cour CapeBer YOGURT| PAR-S lbez- MEADOW GOLD WHOLE WESTERN FAMILY FUDGE 4 FE: DREAM BARS IVMBO FRAN LA FAMOUS ASST- IDAHOAN @- POTATO FLAKES WESTERN FAMILY (LONG, THIN) (cee PEAS, ) MIXED RAGU ASST26-3002. SAUCE Fee. y / 3 VEGETABLES = season T’m with you in Seattle where the coffee is an elixir but there’s not really that much te slay awake for Uh... weli . . maybe you should just ball it back up now also 17-minute epic whose orgasmic heavy breathing would have caused Madonnato blush. “In retrospect, it was the song that caused me to come into the were old enough to experience When I told my husband, Jethrg, about it, he oho Ner she “Love To Love You Baby,” the looked at melike I had just told him had to go plow the back 40. ({ renamed him because ‘‘Tom”’ doesn’t really fit in with my newlifestyle.) Thave been reluctant to play country musicin the housesince heis a tie-dyed-in-the-wool rock ’n’ roll type, but he has been surprisingly supportive. (Much contemplating condoms and fear and AIDS who fell on knees in TV cathedrals paying for each others’ salvation who wished forebears were burnedalive in Brooks Bros. suits amids{ innocentflannel shirts but were run down by the drunken drivers of Everyday Life who plunged themselves through dumpsters looking for a couch who copped commitment despite extended family diyoree who watched Mom’s marinated state hospital breakdown with acid indigestion eyes and Bismol mind coated, soothed, relieved Whatsphinxofsilicon and plastie bashed open their skulls and ate theirliving dead brains and imaginations? America! Opportunity! Fast food and unobtainable dollars! Kurt Cobain! I'm with you in Seattle where the space needle penetrates veins I'm with you in Seattle where the mad change with the exception, knows, includes her ownfirst hit, country’s emphasis on sexual indiscretion, drinking binges and other dysfunctional behaviors — subjects that, let's face it, everybodycanrelate to. Oris it just me? How has my conversion affected mylife? days whenLoretta warn’t nothing buta little gal with a cheap guitar anda big voice.) Jethro even announced the other morningthat he had written mea country tune. I said, ‘Thatis really strange, because you can’t write music and you definitely can’t carry a tune, Is it about how your wife has turnedinte a nut?” He looked wounded, “This is a love offering,”he said,“not a criticism.” Then he preceeded to sing mehislittle ditty, “Another Night in the Backhoe Bar.’ It was aboutlove andloss and, frankly, it sounded like het. But I'm a country woman now.So I stood by my man. With hands over myears till he was done. “I need somethingto believe in. It’s a reflection, Bon Jovi says These quibbles are more than canceled out by Beatniks Had ‘Howl’, but Now Generation Xers Have ‘Whine’ While Dumpster-diving the oth- Baby” and “I'll Be There for You,” listeners may be surprised at the dark vision on “These Days.” “The stars seem out of reach,” BonJovi sings on the album’stitle song. “Hey God, do youeverthink of me?” says the luckless protagonist of the opening song, “Hey God.” “We're just doing what weal- says. “We had to build a barricade in Bombayoutof anypieces of wood they could find. Itliteral- Ace of Base is just one of many successful bands from Sweden, besides Army of Lovers, E-Type, Rednexand the Cardigans. Thesecretof this country’s musical success? Artists and agents sayit is free music education, obsession with American Pop culture and a yearning for exposure outside Sweden. vin on a Prayer” “Born To Be My ways did,’ says Bon Jovi, aimlessly plucking strings. “We just won't go away.” There’s no secret to the band’s longevity, he says, “other than writing songs that people like And not trying to play the fad game. And just staying true to whatyou are. Bon Jovi has had successful powerballads such as the current and they had to secureit,” he “This Ain't a Love Song,” following last year’s No. 1 “Always.” Not because ballads are all the band does, he says, but becauseit’s all the radio pl. s.Bon “The albums rock plenty Jovi says. Indeed, after a decade of upbeat, optimistic hits such as “Li- gest show they ever had there.” ished a big overseas tour, in places where the group is bigger Secret of Their Success Top 20 hit, @ ine PIROSH KI |
