Bon Jovi Lost Highway The Concert
December 2007 Reviewed by: Joseph Taylor Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Rock‘n’roll musicians, especially those who have been around for a while, aren’t having an easy time getting people to hear their new recordings. Rock stations play their old stuff, but programmers seem to think anything new, even by an established artist, would confuse listeners. MTV and VH1 don’t run many music videos, and when they do they're by younger bands -- CMT showed Bruce Springsteen’s videos from The Rising far more often than MTV. John Mellencamp licensed "My Country" to Chevy for use in a truck commercial, on the not-unfounded belief that more people would hear the song via a TV ad than would ever hear it on the radio. The Eagles initially released their newest album, Long Road Out of Eden, exclusively to Wal-Mart, since the folks who buy their CDs also buy discs by Sugarland and Trisha Yearwood (apparently the band puts its reservations about capitalism aside when it wants to move product).

Bon Jovi had a surprise hit on country radio last year when it remade "Who Says You Can't Go Home," with Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles. The next logical step was to make a whole CD in Nashville (who can tell the difference between current country and classic rock anyway?), and the result, Lost Highway, sold by the Silverado load. When the band took the CD on the road for a short, ten-date tour, it scheduled a special appearance in Chicago for broadcast on A&E, which has now released it on DVD. The show featured all of Lost Highway’s tunes, played in the CD’s original running order. Bon Jovi, augmented by a few other players, delivered a spirited performance, and director Joe Thomas caught the atmosphere of the show, focusing the camera on Jon Bon Jovi and guitarist Richie Sambora. The audience of about 400 people clearly enjoyed themselves and that fact comes across on the DVD.

I doubt anyone’s going to mistake Bon Jovi for a country band -- even Rascal Flats has more twang than these guys -- but somehow Lost Highway’s songs about regular folks and small-town life seem more sincere than a lot of young Nashville’s efforts. And when things get a little tougher, as they do on the hard-rocking "We Got It Going On," Bon Jovi pulls it off with more conviction and authority. The 5.1 surround mix captures the buzz of the audience, but Jon Bon Jovi’s vocals are more focused on the two-channel mix. The surround mix is lively, and you can hear some of the instruments, such as the fiddle and pedal steel, a bit more clearly, but I found the two-channel sound less distracting overall.

Speaking as one who is indifferent to this band, I was surprised at how enjoyable Lost Highway: The Concert is. The songs are well crafted, if a little clichéd, and the playing is solid throughout. What is most enjoyable, however, is seeing how much the band enjoys performing and how strongly it conveys its appreciation for its fans. Lost Highway: The Concert probably won’t win Bon Jovi any new fans, but it shows why it keeps the ones it has.

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