A few weeks ago I went to see Bon Jovi at the MTS Centre. My cousin Colin called me up with free tickets after seeing Lexi singing “Living On a Prayer”. It was a bad week for me because I was diagnosed with a lacerated ear drum so I wasn’t going to go. In fact Colin said it would be OK for Shannon to bring a friend so she asked Tara Bosak to go in my place. Long story short Colin showed up solo for dinner so I decided to go at the last minute and I am so glad I did.
We were in the first row on the floor just outside the coral of old 80’s chicks who way overpaid for VIP tickets. Oli Jokinen was actually sitting in the seat next to me. It was cool to be chatting with him throughout the concert. At one point the crowd was super loud and he told me to save some cheering for the Jet game the next day. They were playing the Flyers in the afternoon so he would not let me buy him a beer and he did leave before the encore. This drunk dude bumped his way out of the row behind us and I said to Oli “must be from Philly” and he delivered a fake elbow. It was hilarious.
Anyway, back to Bon Jovi, he was awesome. It started a little slow and he doesn’t have an arsenal of dance moves but when the classics came out there was an awesome energy in that arena. At one point during Bed of Roses this lady was flapping her wings for Jon Bon to come over and she gave him a necklace of some kind. Then she broke down in tears and her husband had to console her. It was like a train wreck to watch but it also made me think what a bad ass Bon Jon was back in the day.
I think there was some issues with Sambora not being able to continue the tour and you could tell Jon felt bad about it. He did double encore and ended up being onstage for like 2.5 hours. It was unreal. Big props to Colin for thinking of us, we had a blast.