They've Got It Going On!

You asked for it, you got it, not Toyota, but Bon Jovi! I know you want details, so here they are.

The girls and I drove downtown to pick up Brad from his office and we headed to a little Mexican restaurant we like called La Luna. If you are ever in downtown OKC and craving some good Mexican food, head to this little place. We had a nice leisurely dinner and had fun talking and getting excited about the concert. Here is Brad making fake-grumpy faces at Ashley who is sporting her usual silly for-the -camera grin.


Sarah was trying to avoid having her photo taken but I eventually got her, with a mouthful of chips! Ha Ha!



We then headed the few blocks to the Ford Center area, where we decided to park in the underground parking at the Cox Convention Center, which is right across the street. We paid $6 which is the normal price, but cheaper than some of the outside lots surrounding the area. We saw one parking area that is normally $5, selling spots for $10 on Bon Jovi night. That's parking lot robbery!

Even though it was only about 5:45-ish, and the doors didn't open until 6 (concert to start at 7:30), we stood off to the side of the ever-growing lines. We were right next to the tables where the fan club members signed in and where those who paid $1000 each for the VIP treatment were to sign in. Being Spring in Oklahoma meant wind, so we chased down the crew's fly-away papers several times. We were secretly hoping that we'd get a cool VIP Bon Jovi bag for our kindness, but no such luck. They only gave those to the $1000 folks. That's okay though.

We love to people-watch and had a great time observing the different people in the crowd. You had your average joes like us, then you had some weird-looking folks who we were surprised to see at a Bon Jovi concert as they just didn't fit the "norm", then you had the best group to watch, and that was the 40-something women who are still acting like groupies, dressed to kill or at least to show lots of cleavage. They were the uber-tanned, prima-donna types who I told Brad were most likely groupies in high school way back when Bon Jovi was first popular. I also told Brad that the good thing about groups like Bon Jovi that never go out of style is that if you were a groupie back then, you could still be a groupie in your 40s. LOL

Then there was a man we got a big kick out of who walked up to the VIP table. He was dressed in black from head to toe, wearing an expensive leather blazer. He was a big, quite tough looking guy with black hair. You could tell he had money to blow, and we thought perhaps he was a member of the Mafia, but then he made sure to let his badge show when he took out his wallet to get his driver's license. So maybe he was FBI or CIA but boy he could have gone underground in the Mafia easily! He also did not like the idea that a VIP, and someone of his obvious importance, should have to stand in the line with all of us other peons. It was quite amusing.

People watching continued, but not as much, as we finally made our way into the building and up to the rafters to find our seats. We were 5 rows from the very top and at first it was a bit unconcerting with the heights. But we were fine after awhile. This photo is a little hazy because of the "smoke" in the air.


We got bored rather quickly and since we still had over an hour before the concert started, we decided to go out into the corridor and walk around the circle (the Ford Center is a round arena so you could just go out to the hallway and keep going around in the circle over and over). While walking around, Ashley and Sarah wanted to look out the windows and much to our delighted surprise, we realized we'd stumbled upon the area where the crew buses and equipment trucks were parked. How cool is that! And you know I had to get pictures.



We counted somewhere between 6 to 9 buses parked down there, some of which are out of view in this photo. Then there were the equipment trucks. You can see 5 in this photo, but there were 2 more toward the left edge of this shot, plus there were 3 more parked along the street on the other side of the arena, and after the concert, there were 4 more semis parked along the street you see on the other side of the fence, just at the top of this photo. That is a LOT of stuff!


After this excitement we walked around a little while longer and then headed back to our seats.

We did notice one funny thing on the LCD advertisement that circled its way around the arena. This was apparently not the Lost Highway tour, but the Lost Higway tour. Someone had forgotten the "h" in Highway! How embarrassing! Spell check, people!

The concert finally started a little after 7:30. Daughtry was the opening act, and while I like several of their songs, if I based my liking them on this concert, I wouldn't listen to them at all. It was so loud that you couldn't understand a word Chris Daughtry said or sang. even the songs that I knew I couldn't understand! I have to be honest and say I was a bit worried about the rest of the concert, especially since the jumbo-tron on our side wasn't working, so we could only see them from however high up we were. They looked like tiny little ant performers carrying guitars and microphones. There was one funny thing during the time Daughtry performed. At one point, Chris said to the crowd, we're going to do something fun - at the count of three everyone take a photo at the same time. It won't turn out, but it will be fun. So that's what we did. And actually it didn't turn out all that bad. Here is the photo with everyone flashing - as you can tell, the room is much brighter than before.


Daughtry sang for about 40 minutes at which time there was a brief intermission, in the dark, while they changed the stage for Bon Jovi to come on. And then there was an ever-increasing roar in the crowd and it was finally time!

Can I just say, Jon Bon Jovi is simply like fine wine - he really does get better with age. Oh that face, those biceps, that voice!


When Bon Jovi started singing, the sound issues were magically fixed and all of the screens worked great. Now, don't ask me what the first song was, because I simply can't remember. I had intended to try and recreate a song list of what they sang but that didn't work out because I was just too into the music. I will say they did an outstanding job of mixing songs from the new Lost Highway album with old classics that every Bon Jovi fan loves, including a solo by Richie Sambora of I'll Be There For You. Chris Daughtry did a duet with Bon Jovi on Blades of Glory, which was awesome. Their voices really blend together well. I think Jon changed shirts about 4 times during the concert. The special effects were really cool too!

At one point, about halfway through the 2-hour set, the lights came back up and Jon is standing on a platform out in the audience at stage left about a third of the way out into the crowd. He had his acoustic guitar and sang "Bed of Roses". He was surrounded by ladies in the audience and spent a good part of the time touching people and holding hands. They showed the crowd around him and there was this little girl, probably around 8 or 9 and she had the most awed look on her face as he sang so closely to her. It was so cute.

Despite the ringing in my ears that lasted until mid-morning yesterday, I was ready to go to another Bon Jovi concert the next night. If I could, I'd sacrifice and pay the $1000 to have the back-stage pass and all the other perks the VIPs got. But it was so worth every penny we paid. It was worth the nosebleed seats. It was worth having to get up and down 7 times for the same people to enter and leave our row over and over. It was worth the man a few seats away (also the one who kept going in and out, but was indeed a very nice man) who was chain smoking during a non-smoking concert in a non-smoking building. It was worth the 30 minutes it took to go 5 blocks to the highway to get home. It was worth not getting to bed until after midnight.

Yep, I'd do it all again.

I didn't upload all of the photos I took. In fact, I apparently lost a whole bunch of them (some of the best ones, of course) from my camera somehow because when I went to download they weren't on my camera. So sad! But if you'd like to see the rest of the photos that I didn't post here, you can see them by following this link.

Have a nice day!