JAZZ FEST SPECIAL:

Bon Jovi is THE can't miss act

New Jersey band has New Orleans musicians giddy with excitement

By Jacques Mouledoux
The Levee music writer


Jazz greats say Bon Jovi doesn't give Jazz Fest a bad name.
Since the January announcement that Bon Jovi would be performing at this year’s New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, many local music greats have spoken out against criticism that the pop/rock band might not be the best fit for the festival.

Wynton Marsalis, the legendary local trumpeter, has been particularly vocal in professing his excitement for the coming show.

“I remember when Louis Armstrong was lying on his death bed and he proclaimed, ‘One day, there will come to New Orleans a group that embodies the laissez-faire musical independence of the city and performs true jazz: that pure, unadulterated form of rhythmic expression that seems to spring forth right out of the history and culture of this nation, indeed out of the great Mississippi herself.’ Well, on Saturday, May 2, his prophecy will be realized. Now I know what he was talking about. I’m getting there early.”

Even the Soul Queen of New Orleans, Irma Thomas, has gotten in on the Bon Jovi Jazz Fest lovefest: “When ‘Born to Be My Baby’ was first released, I used to spend long nights in bed imagining that Jon was talking to me, that I was the one born to be his baby.  I still think he was born to be my man.”

Though most were content to shower the group with unabashed praise, some were compelled to get into the specifics of what makes them great.

Kermit Ruffins, the renowned solo trumpeter and singer and co-founder of Rebirth Brass Band, explained, “Like Jimi Hendrix with the electric guitar, (Bon Jovi guitarist) Richie Sambora revolutionized the talk box, which allows him to modulate the sound of his guitar with his voice. Many people told Sambora and Bon Jovi, ‘Peter Frampton killed the talk box, no one wants to hear one ever again.’ Did they listen? No, they sold 120 million albums worldwide.”

Ruffins added, “Anyone who has heard any of my work, either solo or with Rebirth, can hear the overwhelming influence of Sambora’s playing on mine.”

Trombone Shorty said the band is not just for the “old folks.”

“As a comparatively younger performer in the scene, my first experience with the band came with their 2000 smash ‘It’s My Life,’” Shorty said. “Some have written the song off as a bland rewrite of their 80s glam metal smash ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ in the context of contemporary nu-metal aesthetics. Whatever, those folks won’t be on my mind when I’m in the front row headbanging to ‘You Give Love a Bad Name.’”

The late Pulitzer Prize-winning local author Walker Percy was a huge fan of the band beginning in the early 80s.

His final work was a lengthy criticism on Bon Jovi’s lyrics titled “Existential Loneliness: The Influence of Kafka and Dostoevsky in the Works of Bon Jovi.”

In it Percy writes, “Consider (the 1986 Bon Jovi hit) “Wanted Dead or Alive,” in which the speaker, a cowboy on a steel horse, confronts questions of life and death.  

Bon Jovi begins by suggesting the uselessness of a repetitive existence: “It’s all the same/Every day it seems we’re wasting away.”

The speaker goes on to describe how his rather Kafkaesque situation has led him to experience problems of alcoholism, insomnia, and crippling self-consciousness – issues oft-explored by important writers and artists including Italo Calvino and Dostoevsky.

“The main difference is that while it took Dostoevsky thousands of pages to get his head around these ideas in works like “Crime & Punishment” and “The Brothers Karamazov,” Jon Bon Jovi manages to capture their essence in a single verse,” Percy wrote.

He insists his love of that song in particular isn’t all academic.

“My favorite part in ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ is when he randomly switches perspectives from the cowboy character of the song to his own rock star self and says, ‘I’ve seen a million faces and I’ve rocked them all.’ That is soooo good live.”

One thing all those excited about the performance can agree on: it will only be positive for New Orleans.
“This city has gone through a rough patch recently,” Marsalis stated solemnly before adding with a wink, “I think what we all need is a little ‘Bad Medicine.’”

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Well, since I don't have anything good to say about Bon Jovi.....

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