Author: Suzanne Beenackers

creative writer & artist

Lay Your Hands On Me | Live From London

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

video: at 3:00 Jonny welcomes you into his church

I saw the word in two places I did not expect it.
One was referring to author Gabby Bernstein and the second was on the cover of the famous bestselling book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.
The word was “spiritual”.

Gabby Bernstein was referred to as a spiritual coach, and the cover of the book promised:
“A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity”

“Spiritual?” I wondered, as if it was an entirely new perspective. 
And in a way it was!
I was a yoga teacher for over a decade and a half, but I think this had made me compartmentalize spirituality a bit.

Spirituality was reserved for shops where you could buy a deck of angel cards, or a postcard with a bracelet  in the color of a chakra attached to it. 
Spirituality was related to Christianity too. And to yoga, because of Hinduism.

But to tie spirituality to life coach Gabby Bernstein or to a book on creativity was an entirely new concept to me.

And these two mentions of the word happened within the same day, and they caused an avalanche of thoughts.
Because pretty recently I had already realized other accounts where my own work had proven to be spiritual.

My main motivation, the thing that shakes me awake and that I can’t NOT look into;
Is I always look for meaning. 
I’m a storyteller, but not a real storyteller because I never know the ending. Let alone the moral of the story. Or what it’s supposed to prove or illustrate.
I write a story in search of meaning.

I have an uncontrollable urge to understand what happened and why.
And how it can be healed, or sweetened, if it’s a bad thing. How can a more compassionate viewpoint lead to a better understanding and less pain?

Or, alternatively, if something was really good, and want to know why it was so good and filled with love and light.
And then highlight and amplify those aspects. Perhaps record them in a way so they will be better remembered, or more people will see their beauty.

I look for meaning, and writing is my process of uncovering it.

Just this morning I tried to first make notes for this story, so that I would have breakfast first.
Without the computer on.

But although to the outside world, it must have looked like a picturesque image of a woman trying to have breakfast when her cat was standing on her lap and constantly wanted to butt heads with her, or climb into her neck, or otherwise insist on melting together with his human, in a way that made having breakfast at the same time almost impossible.

In reality it was a woman who had gotten out of bed, read a page in her “prayer book” (more about that in a minute) and KNEW she had a full and completely finished story in her that would unfold the moment she’d start writing.
But instead she tried to stay offline for her breakfast and note down the different elements and structure her story first. 
So that she would get to work knowing, what she would write!
Like a real writer.

And instead she felt the story falling apart.
As if it was picked on by hungry scavengers, the story started to disintegrate.

Sure!
I could now see what the different parts were, as they were randomly flying around over breakfast! 
Story elements that were no longer tied to the entity, to the story as a whole.

I would have to manually sow them back together to what I presumed the story had looked like.

So in my grownup attempt to hold and pause the story for the duration of one breakfast, and take the time to examine the story first, it was being ripped to shreds instead.
What an agonizing breakfast.
What a horrible way to start the day.

Back to what I call my prayer book.

The book is called “Until Today” by Iyanla Vanzant, and it has 365 one-page thoughts to start the day with, organized per date. So today I read the one for May 27.
It said, among other things:
“Intellectual spirituality will not save you.”
And:
“Practice grounding your spiritual philosophy in your heart.”

And suddenly I understood everything…..

WHY it feels so good, to be here on this blog always starting with “something Bon Jovi”.
* insert love heart shower *

WHY we feel so good when we’re at a Bon Jovi concert and it’s time for Lay Your Hands On Me.
And Jon Bon Jovi says:
“Welcome to Jonny’s church of rock n roll.”
And we get speeches about souls being saved, and a special welcome to the sinners!

WHY indeed intellect will not save us. Nor will angel cards I reckon.
Why structuring my story was pointless.

The one who knows what’s in their heart is already done for the day.
Whether it is Jon Bon Jovi, Lay Your Hands On Me, or a blogpost that is just waiting to be written.

There really is only one thing, and one thing only that is gonna save you.
Love.

Follow your heart, my friend. 
Or follow Jon Bon Jovi.
Gabby Bernstein.
Or follow the path of the Artist’s Way.

They re all the same.

“Welcome to Jonny’s church to rock n roll where all you gotta do is believe.
You gotta raise your voice so they hear you.”

Raise your voice.
So they hear you.

.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
Paypalme

.

LIVE FROM LONDON 

Just a few days ago, I had stopped writing for the Live From London series…
No kidding! And then what happened, right?
Story came out by itself.
Of course it did 🙂

Lay Your Hands On Me 
is the fourth chapter to
“Live from London
Take the stage, rock your life and rule the world”
Click on “Live from London” to read all chapters.

Subscribe to the blog, to get these posts in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

Rock Star Writer on Facebook
my personal Twitter account

Subscribe to the blog to receive whatever it is I cook up! 

Ditto for YouTube – but there I really have no idea yet what will happen:
(what the Lord wants I guess!)
Suzanne Beenackers YouTube
It’s a surprise!

NEW 2021: Art & Popular Culture: World Between Worlds 
NEW 2021: YouTube Rock Your Business
NEW 2021: My Main Project: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga

Subscribe to the blog, to get these posts in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

Rock Star Writer on Facebook
my personal Twitter account

video: fan made compilation of Bon Jovi’s faith-inspired songs and live performances.
“Welcome to Jonny’s Church of rock n roll.” is a classic line in live shows.

Don’t Leave The Sex Out

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment
69a618414fee5408afac3db4cebae557
You get the message basically spoon-fed at the correct formative age and then you still manage to forget

I think I should have started with:
“I made a mistake.”
Followed by:
“A huge one.”
“Perhaps unforgivable.”
“Probably two, depending on how you count.”
But they’re related so maybe I can get away with calling it one.

Every Sunday, and twice a week if he has the time, the Bon Jovi remaster demi-God hAnD90 treats us to a new remastered concert recording.
https://www.youtube.com/user/hAnD90

And every Sunday, but twice a week if it’s been a holiday or there was otherwise a day off which was immediately invested in creating for his channel, I get confronted with how little I have done for this Bon Jovi blog, and for my Bon Jovi Concert Series on YouTube where I review the 1995-1996 concerts. That has turned out more of a quarterly activity.

I m confronted with all the plans I had for this blog and my YouTube channel.
And how I failed.
And failed.
And then I failed again even though I had been sure this time I would make it “work”.

My last blog post here was how I would watch half an hour of the Bon Jovi concert every day and make little 5 minute reviews (videos), covering only half an hour of material instead of 2,5 hours per show. 
I never did that.
Ever.
I m sure it was a good idea in theory, but I m just not doing it. Watching half an hour of Bon Jovi concert, making notes, and then setting myself and my couch up to make a video;
Bleh.

It feels like penicillin.
Or a to-do.
Or like a desperate attempt to make a life that is not fun, fun.

To me watching that half hour of Bon Jovi, would feel like punishment. Like a disconnect from other people. It would be just as lonely and awful as publishing my books, which is another thing I have made some important decisions around, but that s a story for another day.
But the truth is:
I don’t want to spend my free time studying Bon Jovi, making reviews. And I also don’t want to spend it studying the video Live From London and write blog posts from that. I don’t want to spend them listening to the Box Set and then write about those songs.

My “1995 Bon Jovi Concerts series” on YouTube, the Live From London series here on this blog, the The Box Set series here on this blog too;
They were me thinking I was anything like hAnD90

But I have nothing to offer you in the die-hard Bon Jovi fan, knows-their-shit, works-their-butt-off, skilled-as-fuck, area.
Nothing.
I stand here naked before you.

In one of the hAnD90 chats, a man with whom I was flirting, told me to listen to a certain song. I noted it down, and made the resolution to go listen to it. Yet two weeks after, at the next premiere chat (hAnD90 had a week off), the man appeared on our chat,
and I said:
“Hi (X)! Still haven’t listened to Rotterdam 1989 I ll Be There For You.”
“You had two weeks!” he typed.
“I know!” I yelled.
Probably a bit overexcited because I had already thought of how to turn this into something good.
“I haven’t done my homework. I think I deserve a spanking!”
“It was Livin’ In Sin,” he said. “You deserve two spankings.”

Now THAT, is what I gladly show up for.
THAT, is what I do with my free time.
And you see how smooth that went, right? 
I mean, it takes two to tango, but I had my reply in place. I had anticipated this. In the two weeks where I was dramatically failing at an assignment as simple as to listen to ONE song (I had even failed at remembering the title correctly), I already thought:
“Well, at least I ll turn it into something sexy, if I really haven’t listened to it by Sunday.”

And I did.

But even if I had listened, and this is just to hammer my point home that I m not cut out for the work I thought I was doing here, even then there would be such a high chance I would not pick up on what it was X wanted me to hear.
Is there something like musical dyslexia? 
Because then I definitely have it.
It would explain why nothing musical ever “sticks”. 

I’ve heard Wembley 2nd night 1995 about 50 times now, and yet I remember nothing.
I ve started over many times; throwing out my printed setlists with all the notes, thinking that this time I m going to get it right. Push through. Start listening in a disciplined fashion, a little every day, and get my head around it. And then make the video review of the concert.

I ve gone through that process multiple times, and I m still on Wembley second night 1995, knowing I have to start all over again, again, because the notes don’t mean anything to me anymore.

Like I said:
I stand here naked.
There is absolutely nothing of musical interest I can offer you, and I am done wasting my hours studying something that I am obviously not cut out to understand.

I have no idea what I m going to do with the YouTube channel………

Okay.
I m done.
That was it, that was the (naked) bottom, dark side of the coin, that – fortunately for me – has another side as well.

And this is my second mistake, but it was really nothing more than a logical consequence of the first part of the mistake, where I apparently thought I was hAnD90 and had something coherent to say about music.

The other side of the coin, the thing I AM good at, is to immediately see emotion, love, freedom, God.
And sex.

And what I do on a daily basis, is to look for those things.
When I write, when I chat, when I do my Daily Bon Jovi Yoga (which is also still not daily yet, because I haven’t given that total free rein), when I meet people; Emotion, love, freedom, God, STORY (forgot that one!), and SEX.
That’s what I look for.

I m not going to say I  specialize at sex, because that is compartmentalized thinking as well. Thinking there are specialists for sex, is part of the problem. And besides I don’t have a business anymore, I m not selling anything, so I don’t have to pretend I know anything about anything.
But I have left sex out, way more than I should have.

Unless I could tie it to Bon Jovi, for example in my favorite post on this blog 5 Unexpectedly Sexual Bon Jovi Songs, I felt unworthy of sharing it here.
This was a proper blog, and I was not allowed to pollute it with whatever was on my mind.

But by tying this blog to the topic of Bon Jovi, I was basically making myself audition for my own blog. If I wasn’t writing about Bon Jovi, then it/ I wasn’t good enough to be here.

This blog exists almost two years now.
And over that time I have become more constrictive, less spontaneous.
No wonder, really, that I stopped writing. 
And that every Sunday when hAnD90 had a new premiere, I wallowed in shame about my unproductiveness for this work. I always felt that sting, of not being good enough for the work I was called to do!

Except: You re ALWAYS GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE WORK YOU RE CALLED TO DO!
But you can’t go around pretending it’s something fancy and proper, if the work you’re called to do is messy, sexy, rich in love, God, mystery, more sex.
And then you soak it into Bon Jovi to amalgamate it all together, in all its random messiness.
And you pull it out, like an artist pulls out their creation from the steaming hot pot filled with boiling metal.
And you present it to the world.

I know that’s not proper.
Not the pinnacle of productivity, or usefulness. It’s not of service, doesn’t cure Covid, makes matters worse, and may annoy the shit out of plenty of people who thought I was going to play nice, and here I am wearing horns AND wings.

When a 100 years from now, my work is dug up it will probably end up on the trash pile.

But damn, is it hot!

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
Paypalme

Subscribe to the blog to receive whatever it is I cook up! 

Ditto for YouTube – but there I really have no idea yet what will happen: 
Suzanne Beenackers YouTube
It’s a surprise!

NEW 2021: Art & Popular Culture: World Between Worlds 
NEW 2021: YouTube Rock Your Business
NEW 2021: My Main Project: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga

Subscribe to the blog, to get these posts in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

Bite-size nuggets! 1995 Bon Jovi Concert Series Returns (YouTube)

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

09f0c0f1b0e75072f466ca1c6c64d944I see it is two weeks ago that I broke the news that I saw no way to pick up making reviews about Bon Jovi concerts, on YouTube.

That it took me hours hours and more hours to interpret every frame, the body language, the story behind it;
To decipher every word in particular from the in-between songs speeches or the moments I swore we were getting alternative lyrics;
Only to then have to simplify and dumb down my findings to a spoken word review that was ideally under 10 minutes.

90% or more of what I had to say about the concert got lost or never made it to the video.

I once wrote a blog post after making the video;
A blog post where I shared all the extra information.
But this did not make the process, the series, more manageable. In fact it may have been the first moment I realized it was hopeless and that it was never going to be done.

Like the queen in Rumpelstiltskin having to sort out a room filled with straw, reviewing the 1995/1996 tour from Bon Jovi was an impossible assignment that would never be complete.
And I was lucky if no one took my firstborn in retaliation for not completing it!
I saw no way but to quit.

But maybe the fact that I never made a goodbye video for the channel, and the fact that I kept posting/ adding the link to the YouTube channel on all my blogs, revealed I was not done with the series…..
That I didn’t know HOW. But that I still wanted it!

Maybe reviewing Bon  Jovi concerts from 1995-1996 was never meant to be one of those projects that end.
What if it was allowed to go on for ever?

What if I started all over again with that second night in Wembley, a video for which I had already invested 5 hours or more when I quit, yet I had had nothing to show for regardless of how many times I printed the set list, made notes which speeches to listen into again and so on;
What if I started that second night in Wembley all over again;
But made reviews about only parts of the video?

For example a five minute review of the first 30 minutes?
And a few days after the next 5 minute video about the next 30 minutes?

What if the Bon Jovi concert series 1995-1996 was not a “project”;
But a practice?
Meaning the aim was to practice listening, watching, reviewing, making a video.
And the aim was not, to one day complete it.

So here we are.
Two weeks after I swore I would never lay one finger, never review one more 1995 Bon Jovi concert ever again, because the frustration over my own inadequacy to create momentum was eating me alive!
And it’s six weeks after the first night in Wembley review.

I’m starting again.

Studying Bon Jovi videos, or audio only, starting back at second night Wembley *
And making the first bite-size nugget video, as soon as I have like an A4 of notes or something.

Subscribe here for the Bon Jovi 1995 Concert Series:
-> YouTube Channel Suzanne Beenackers 

Subscribe to the channel, and we’ll be seeing each other very often.
And probably until the end of time!

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

* The recording of the concert second night at Wembley stadium is at the bottom of this post

Suzanne Beenackers YouTube

Series running ON this blog:
The Box Set
and new chapters for my Rock Star book Live from London
Subscribe to the blog to receive them!

NEW 2021: Art & Popular Culture: World Between Worlds 
NEW 2021: YouTube Rock Your Business
NEW 2021: My Main Project: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga

Subscribe to the blog, to get these posts in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

Livin’ On A Prayer | Live From London Series

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment
bon_jovi-livin_on_a_prayer_s_2
Dutch single cover from Livin’ On A Prayer. Which I received as a gift on my birthday in 2019

On the evening before Easter, I ask of thee;
Do you think it was a coincidence “Livin’ On A Prayer” was Bon Jovi’s finite-no-going-back-now breakthrough?
Could it, for example, also have been called “Livin’ On Five Bucks” or “Livin’ On Love”?
Or was there a reason it was the song with the word prayer in the title that called on the Lord and touched our hearts?

That neither God, nor you and me, would have felt called if Tommy and Gina had been “Livin’ Hand To Mouth”.
Is it possible that in that song a prayer was said?
And because of that song a prayer was answered.

Tommy and Gina and Bon Jovi were given all their hearts desired, not because they only had their prayers to live on.
But because that’s the only thing that’s gonna work.

I know in that paragraph several more question marks could have been and probably should have been used. But they seemed obsolete. There was no reason to keep putting things in questions, because you get the gist;
Of course it’s not a coincidence.

All those who call on a higher power, consistently, will have their prayers answered. Whether you’re Tommy and Gina wishing to get Tommy’s job on the docks back and a nice pay raise for Gina, or Jon Bon Jovi wishing for world fame.
The procedure of how prayer works, is explained in several places in the bible. But since this blog is about Bon Jovi, I will happily choose for John!
(Jon’s original name is John, with an h)

John 16:24
Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full.

Ask and you shall receive.
It is as simple as it seems, but in many cases the relationship with God was an aspect of religion. And religion in turn, was an aspect of things like social life, community, parenting. Education. Power structures where religion kept a hierarchy intact.
And in questioning the status quo, religion was thrown out by many. As was their relationship with God.
And asking and praying, was lost.

By the time Bon Jovi was pounding the pavement, as a photo book I own eloquently worded their hard fought rise to fame, by that time hardly anyone grew up religiously.
In the Netherlands we got a good social security system, which meant that the task the church does in many countries, which is taking care of people who need help, was pretty much covered by government. So perhaps our secularization has been unintentionally thorough.
But in most Western countries, the church lost much of its power and less people called themselves religious.

In the mid-eighties, deregulation of the financial world brought forth a new generation of wealth, but at the same time unemployment for older industries such as steel, was on the rise.
In The Netherlands, those who are the age of Jon Bon Jovi meaning born between 1955-1965, have had an incredibly tough time trying to get a job, whether straight from school but also if you went to college.
There wasn’t any work.

And it was in that time, when there were no more churches to turn to for meaning and the world was weighed down by unemployment, that Bon Jovi brought the new gospel:
Livin’ On A Prayer.

It is their trademark song and every now and then it hits the charts again, inspired by a viral video of people singing along in the park; Or when a country is going through tragedy.
The message of Livin’ On A Prayer, is timeless.

Just that every 2000 years or so, we get a new John to bring the message.

.
~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

new: LIVE FROM LONDON 

Livin’ On A Prayer
is the third chapter from
“Live from London
Take the stage, rock your life and rule the world”
Click on “Live from London” to read all chapters.

Subscribe to the blog, to get these posts in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

Rock Star Writer on Facebook
my personal Twitter account

And follow my Bon Jovi 1995 Concert Series (Stories)
at Suzanne Beenackers YouTube

concert upload on Vimeo

Let’s All Dress Up Like We Re Jon Bon Jovi. And Maybe Add Lipstick

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

I felt something important had to be decided today! But I was not sure what it was…
Maybe stay offline, fulfill my destiny, purpose, knowing that my ultimate art will be living offline?
I call it “analogue heritage”.

My ultimate art will be to be offline.*
But just like my ultimate “look” will be wearing red lipstick day in day out;
I judged it wasn’t the time.

Red lipstick is very high maintenance; It smudges easily and after a meal you need to reapply.
Every time you ve worn a mouth mask, your carefully applied red lipstick comes out looking like it’s 3 A.M. and you had too much fun.

For the offline bit, my inspiration to create an analogue art project of myself
– in combination with carefully crafted online presence of one hour a day! –
I judged our current state of being Covid grounded and confined, ball and chained to our homes, the absolute worst time to go full in on that.*

If there ever was a time for online social interactions, online inspiration, and yes also for online wasting time with things that ultimately are the digital junk food and empty calories of our lives;
Then now was the time to go all in and binge on being online.

Now was definitely not the time to economize on being online.*
As tempting as it was to fall for the idea of becoming this peaceful hermit in a time when everybody has their mood tied to their news- or Twitter feed.
Which is especially true for the Netherlands.

Did you know no one gets vaccinated here?
It’s as ill-organized as our defenses in second world war.

So I think in 5 years the allied forces will come to save us, because it sure as hell doesn’t look like anything is under control here.
Which is actually quite surprising because in 2008/9, The Netherlands were the first to have everyone vaccinated for swine flu because they had it done by the army. 

When late 2020 journalists starting making inquiries why the army wasn’t going to be involved in operation vaccination, it turned out that they initially had been; but then for unknown reasons had been sidelined.
I think now they’re officially at the table again, but it seems almost more symbolic.
Military is not running the show. 

So The Netherlands have lost the vaccination race.
But since vaccination is probably not going to be the ultimate answer anyway, this is slowly but steadily losing its relevancy.
Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible { Nature, March 18 2021 }

The last paragraph says:

It’s time for more realistic expectations. The vaccine is “an absolutely astonishing development”,
but it’s unlikely to completely halt the spread, so we need to think of how we can live with the virus.

And a very meaty article, that I admit I did not read entirely. But it looks like the real deal:
The coronavirus is here to stay — here’s what that means { Nature, February 2021 }

And Dutch article:
Pleidooi: beter niet iedereen vaccineren, het coronavirus verdwijnt namelijk toch niet { De Gelderlander, 26 maart 2021 } 
Translation header: It’s better to not vaccinate everybody because the virus will not disappear.

The Dutch article states that a high percentage of the population being vaccinated, helps vaccine resistant Covid to spread.

So now YOU have two choices;
1. Either you believe there will be a right way and a wrong way a government can go about this.
In the sense that one approach is based on the correct information, and implemented the correct way.
And the other is based on the wrong information or executed wrongly.

Or, you make 2021 the year you do what I do, which is try an entirely new approach.
It is:

2. The only correct strategy is the one the majority of people believes in.

The first time I formulated this strategy was in the time of the banking crisis.
In 2008, the people who had known financial structures had been collapsing, had been expecting not just the collapse of the systems but also social unrest, riots, probably a civil war.
They were convinced the collapse of the financial system would have disastrous consequences.

In the years that followed, many people thought it was important not just for the systems to be more sturdy, (they are still nowhere near as tightly regulated as between the great depression early 20th century and Reagan/Thatcher era of deregulation);
But they also found it important that normal, previously not-informed people like you and me, had a better sense of the danger of this financial trapeze.
This illusion, the non-realness of money and the systems managing it.

Wrong.

It was BECAUSE the public didn’t know, didn’t care, and simply TRUSTED the financial systems to keep working;
That they kept on working.

The most dangerous thing you can do is convince people of death, decay, poverty and pending civil war.

We have just had elections in the Netherlands and a very optimistic party that wants to leave as much as possible to the market, has won.
Even though their reign has marginalized entire groups, and public housing is in its biggest crisis ever. Homelessness and people living with their parents because there are no houses, is soaring.
Yet everybody votes for the party who crashed all our social services, including our entire health-care system and bankrupting tens of thousands of families through a corrupt allowance system.
And the number of government-induced bankruptcies is still going up, because of poorly executed Covid relief allowances that now have to be paid back.

With so many financial consequences, why would so many Dutch people still vote for this party?

That is because they refuse to buy into the truth, that it is hopeless.
And although I did not vote for that party;
I see the power of simply holding on to your belief that you will make it.
You believe in the American Dream, the Dutch dream in this case.

Both the voters for this liberal party in the Netherlands, as well as the uninformed public in 2008 who did not understand the apocalyptic proportions of their banking crisis, have contributed or are contributing to the catastrophe not taking place or not taking hold.

As long as there is no apocalyptic banking crisis in the minds of the majority?
There is no apocalyptic banking crisis.

As long as there is no worst-since-second-world-war housing crisis in the minds of the majority?
There is no worst since second world war housing crisis.

And as long as there is a Covid crisis in the minds of the majority?
There is a Covid crisis.

Whether you believe in conspiracy theories, or science. Whether you re in favor of vaccination or not.
The moment you give the virus itself your attention, you are contributing to the crisis.

Does this mean you should not go along with the measures?
No.
That is your social structure.
We’re all part of a larger social structure, and it is our responsibility to be aware of the minds and moods of the people around us.

If people around you are afraid to catch the virus, or want you to vaccinate, or they don’t feel safe;
That IS your job to know, and act on/ make a decision on how you can or are willing to help.

It is your job to read, and adjust and be an agile responder to your social surroundings.
But it is NOT your job to distillate “the” truth.

Truth is what the majority believes.

If the majority believes vaccines play an important part in “going back to normal”, and vaccines are provided?
Things will go back to normal.
That’s the only thing that matters; What does the majority want? Then affirm that as true (as a leader) and act accordingly.

Fear of the Covid virus is for the majority of people something that is manageable by acknowledging it, and then the accepted or suggested measures are taken on as being helpful.
It’s like when a mother sees to a hurt knee (acknowledgement), applies a sticking plaster (measure), and then a little kiss (magic, love).
That’s how fear should be managed.

How it should not be managed is starting a discussion if crying or coming in to have the knee attended to is even nessecary; If a sticking plaster is technically the ideal tool/ measure; And leave out the kiss because there is no science backing it up.

For most people, for the majority, their fear (of death, really) can be managed by knowing that they are loved and looked after.
And that is really not just the responsibility from the government, but from all of us.

But right now, we’re all yelling and screaming and disagreeing in various degrees about;
if it is okay to even come in with the hurt knee, if the knee is technically hurt, if the plaster is good, and no one is giving that kiss (love) to the people who are scared. Even though that is probably the most important part.

So what can we do as individuals?
If you’re scared tend to yourself, like a mother to her child.
And I think if you look forward to getting vaccinated, take that shot.
But if it only makes your more anxious, discuss your options until you find something that feels good and manageable for you.

And if, like me, you’re not scared of the virus at all (nor of getting vaccinated), your job is to stay emphatic to all those people who are emotionally affected by Covid or who have strong feelings about vaccines.
And their reasons to be emotionally involved can vary, for example because their own health is not optimal, because of what they believe to be true, because they re scared for their loved ones, or because of their work which maybe ended, is nearly impossible or has become dangerous because of Covid.
Your job is to stay open to their stories.

But as far as ourselves? Our minds, our options, our responsibilities even to not make the problem bigger by drawing attention to it, and magnifying it?
My suggestion is that you live your life, in full trust that it will end soon. That it will be solved.

So do the things now that you do not want to be bothered with anymore, once the Covid crisis is over.
Clear out your house, do your projects that require screen time, or being indoors.
Consolidate your life, so that you are in the starting blocks to fly out when Covid is over.

And the other part is:
Behave in the way you would when there is no Covid.
Don’t postpone Life.

This was sparked when I saw Jon Bon Jovi’s photos in GQ magazine.
He looked so sharp.
After months of home made live streams and hairdressers not being available, months of seeing him in T-shirt, this professional photo shoot with him in suit, in casual chic, and with the grey hair perfectly styled, were a breath of fresh air.
A spark of inspiration.

So dress up, like Jon Bon Jovi.
Wear your best clothes, and take good care of yourself.
Upgrade the f out of life!

And forget the practicalities.

In my case:
Wear red lipstick.

Trusting that going out until 3 A.M. and having too much fun, will one day follow.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

* BEING OFFLINE IS MY ART
I seem to have this thing, that whenever I come to the conclusion that something is a terrible idea? I have to do it! So I DID start being offline despite Covid ruling out real life contact.
Just like I started wearing red lipstick despite the face masks.
My project “Being offline is my art” will be posted on daily on Rock Star Writer on Facebook and my personal Twitter account.
Starting Saturday night March 27.

Naturally Subscribe to the blog, to get these posts in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

NEW 2021: Art & Popular Culture: World Between Worlds 
NEW 2021: YouTube Rock Your Business
NEW 2021: My Main Project: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga

My 1995 Bon Jovi Concert Series Quits (YouTube)

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment
Purpose is what you can do with your eyes closed. (not half-baked after 10 hours of preparation)

It was the moment when Jon covers Richie’s eyes, while he is in the middle of a guitar solo, that I realized that I was never going to get this right.
“This” being creating Bon Jovi concert reviews.

It had once seemed like a super cool idea.
Before I realized every video takes me ten hours of preparation time, plus the additional three of shooting and typing the box, solving upcoming problems, getting the documentation right.
Before my projects started multiplying, my YouTube channels doubled, and so did my blogs.
The work under my pen name still shrieking at top of its lungs when I m finally getting around to publishing that.
My old YouTube videos, among which my entire yoga legacy, untouched for weeks again.

When Covid ends I never want to spend another minute behind my computer.
Fair; I am a writer.
Fair; I can’t stop that.
Fair; I will write to the day I die.
I know all that.

But other than that?
There are days I wish for a life when I only have a notebook and a pen.
A phone for the occasional Facebook update which I ll type STRAIGHT into the box and never blog.
A time when I never touch a computer again.

There are days I swear that after this pandemic, I m going offline to never return.

I have no idea how that will pan out, and what will come true. But the sense of urgency is overwhelming!
An overwhelming urgency to curate, save, publish, and store, anything that I do not want to lose.
Because when Covid’s over?
I m out!

And the concert reviews did not make it to the short-list of things I m going to keep on.
They were driving me insane.
Not only were they a burden time-wise, keeping me from my Noah’s Arc work of saving what should not get lost;.
It was also an inverted Richie Experience.

Where Richie Sambora can still play guitar even when Jon covers his eyes, I could not get “it” right even after I had put in ten hours.

My reviews stayed mediocre at best, even if I had watched the concert registration with my eyes wide open.

And no one to playfully close them for me.

Maybe that was the problem with this series, and this whole entire rotten Covid year;
At some point, loneliness just got the better of me.


~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

final video at bottom of this post.
The muses have been consulted!
So new topics/ videos ARE expected at Suzanne Beenackers YouTube

expected back on this blog:
new chapters for my Rock Star book Live from London
Subscribe to the blog to receive them!

NEW 2021: Art & Popular Culture: World Between Worlds 
NEW 2021: YouTube Rock Your Business
NEW 2021: My Main Project: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga

Subscribe to the blog, to get these posts in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

Rock Star Writer on Facebook
my personal Twitter account

final concert review & goodbye for now video:

Time Blocking With The Bon Jovi Bullet Collection

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment
Little bear Puux arranges our bullet cd collection

This blogpost was one where I thought:
“I can’t do this.”
Too flat, weird, off-topic. And besides, I m sure people know how to date Bon Jovi albums!
They may not all have stickers on the cases with the release date, but I m sure they’ll manage.

But you see, here is the thing;
Maybe you haven’t thought about it.
About how your Bon Jovi collection, whether a physical one like mine or playlists on your music account, is such a great and inspiring way to plan your time.

One cd blocks the time you spend on the activity.
The number of albums dictates the number of times you do it.
And the historic order gives it a rhythm and overall structure.

For example: 
Every month you do fifteen sessions of an activity, listening to every record once.

The activity can be either something fun, like one yoga session per album, which is how I use them.
Or something you value but don’t get around to.
Like work on a project for a minimum duration of one Bon Jovi cd.
Which is how I perhaps should be using them! 😅

But I am on God’s planning, since a couple of weeks.
No more planning for me.
For projects without an external deadline I found out the hard way (three years of having a surplus of notebooks yet time slipping through my fingers!) that the more I plan the less I get done.
And that my biggest achievements were done with zero planning.

They were done, however, at the expense of cleaning my house, exercise, seeing daylight, cooking proper meals, showers, and so on.
But if there had been a planning?
These big achievements would never have gotten done at all.

Bullet collection: band albums only, no best ofs, solo albums, rareties and so on.

So I only use planning for things I sometimes don’t allow myself to do or have. Like daylight, and yoga, and cleaning my house and having proper meals.
Planning is not to make myself be productive, but to make myself a good life.
And then God is in charge of productivity, because who else would you put in charge of that, right?
I heard a guru say that since we would question if something came from God or not, the next best thing to faith, was commitment.
😝
Which I now don’t have to have because I have chosen faith that the right thing will come through!

Such as the urge to write this blogpost, where I was like:
“Are you sure this is the topic?” when the idea came through.
But I quickly restored myself, because I knew the alternative to doing as I was nudged from inside, or above, was taking responsibility for my own work.
And before you know it you have a content calendar, and every Monday is when you write rambly posts, and on Tuesdays we do the Box Set, on Wednesday we make a YouTube video and so on!
The horror of a planned project!
No…. then I d rather just write what comes through.

Today that is: How to use your Bon Jovi cd’s as cool planning tools.

So back to that!
HOW to use your Bon Jovi collection as a time-blocking tool for your projects or your fun things?

If you like the idea of a fixed sequence of the albums then you can choose between earliest album first, most recent album last.
Or you do time machine!

Time machine is part of a Bon Jovi show, when they play Runaway.
Runaway was a song Jon Bon Jovi recorded and he plugged it with a local radio station.
Other radio stations picked it up from there, the band was formed and Bon Jovi was born.

Time machine is the live on stage intro to that song, Runaway.
Jon counts down from the year it is (they have done this on the 2019 tour as well) all the way to 1982.
Then he tells the story of his pitch at the radio station and how he promised the dj that he was a rock n roll star.

If you listen or use the albums in time machine fashion, you start with the most recent one, and then go back in time.

Since the latest album 2020, there are 15 studio albums.
A very tempting way I think, to start using them, is dividing them over the days of the week.

Then you listen to the entire collection every week, and the week gets this lovely predictable rhythm to it.

I put them all in time machine order, and then here is your schedule;

Monday
2020 Bon Jovi – 2020  48:08
2016 This House Is Not For Sale (International Deluxe Version) 70:28
2015 Burning Bridges  40:22

Just pick one;
2020 when you re in a mood for current events.
This House Is Not For Sale, when you need to be reminded you’re not backing down and are going to crush it this week
And Burning Bridges for highest density of underappreciated brilliant songs.
The album was a contractual obligation and was barely promoted by the band.

Tuesday
2012 What About Now 51:36
2008 The Circle 52:49
Anthems and ballads to get you through your Tuesday on a high.

Wednesday
2007 Lost Highway 49:57
2005 Have A Nice Day 49:40
Country inspired Lost Highway? Or more classical Bon Jovi?
Two vastly different albums to pick from every Wednesday. 

Thursday
2002 Bounce 49:10
2000 Crush 57:52

Fans of heavy guitars will throw Bounce on repeat.
And those longing for that nostalgic: “They’re back! They made it!” feel when Bon Jovi returned with It’s My Life, are going to go for Crush.

Friday
1995 These Days  63:55
1992 Keep The Faith  66:10

Two absolute killer albums!
I don’t care how busy you are Friday, but your activity will get done!

Saturday
1988 New Jersey 56:32
1986 Slippery When Wet 43:49

Is this is a musical Do Not Disturb sign or what?
Nothing will stop you from listening to these.

Sunday 
1985 7800° Fahrenheit 47:10
1984 Bon Jovi – Bon Jovi 38:33

A sweet encore to your week with the earliest work.
With the time machine song “Runaway”.

“Hey mister!
Do me a favor and play this song.
And in 3 minutes 50 seconds, you’re gonna see;
A rock n roll star.”

 

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

Subscribe to the blog, to get these posts in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

Rock Star Writer on Facebook
my personal Twitter account

Bon Jovi concert reviews 1995-1996 Suzanne Beenackers YouTube

“Rock Your Business” my new YouTube channel

compilation; the time machine intro to Runaway (2006) counting all the way down to 1982, and an early performance of Runaway (1984)

Someday Just Might Be Tonight | series: The Box Set

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

The ninth song on the box set 100.000.000 Bon Jovi fans can’t be wrong (2004).

You are in the premier league of Bon Jovi Fans if you immediately know which era Someday Just Might Be Tonight is from, upon hearing.
And on which album it would have been, if it had been used for an album.
Instead of not being released until the box set (2004), which has previously unreleased songs on it, from nearly two decades.

And within the premier league, you are at the top if you know which song is the  musical twin from Someday Just Might Be Tonight?

I however, do not belong to that category.
The era?
Destination Anyway era (solo album Jon Bon Jovi 1997)
Got that one.

The twin song?
Fortunately the answer was given to me, because I couldn’t guess.
But now I m standing by it;
It’s Ugly.

Ugly is the twin song from Someday Just Might Be Tonight 

Although there are multiple technical similarities, the biggest “Aha! Found it!” came from how they make me feel.
They’re both melancholic songs, but in a weird way. They’re…. I don’t know, “Anthems in Minor”, is what I would call them. With my dangerously limited knowledge of music.

You could imagine both Ugly as well Someday Just Might Be Tonight, having an entirely different feel if played with a heavy guitar, drums, and Jon throwing in some Woah!!!!s.

Like many Bon Jovi songs, Someday Just Might Be Tonight, is filled with messages of hope, and to never give up.
But I would have welcomed them to be a little more full-on, because they’re not even making a scratch in the depressed state I am finding myself in.
Day after day.

The only thing that keeps me going is absolutely refusing to think about it, going in full denial, and make firm resolutions to really go rock my life after Covid, and never be online again.

I think I m going to make a plan how I can live my life after Covid without ever having to spend one more minute behind my computer!
Maybe if I publish all my books (both English and Dutch, and all my accounts); Curate all my videos, and refrain from creating any new online content from the moment Covid is over until death do me pass?
So that I have no choice but to ONLY live in the REAL world?!

“We’re having an online meeting.”
“I don’t own a computer.”

It would be an art project, of living offline.
Yes… And Woah!
That sounds like an amazing plan.

Maybe someday.
And it just might be tonight.

.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

PS: Here’s my new YouTube channel, called Rock Your Business (former No Yoga channel) The first video was absolute gold:
#1 Your Fans Are Waiting For The Show To Start!
| Rock Your Business Channel Launch & Origin Story

.

The BOX SET SERIES

In 2004 Bon Jovi created a 4-cd (1 dvd) box set with unreleased work,
called “100.000.000 Bon Jovi fans can’t be wrong”.
In this series, The Box Set, I am discussing all of the 50 songs

Someday Just Might Be Tonight
is the eighth post in
The Box Set Series

Subscribe to the blog, to get these posts in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

Rock Star Writer on Facebook
my personal Twitter account

Bon Jovi concert reviews 1995-1996 Suzanne Beenackers YouTube

Pics from my 80s Jon Bon Jovi postered bedroom and the wisdom they held

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment

When I found the photos of my bedroom from when I was 16 years old, I was already, or still, shaky from realizing how little I had known about myself.
And how it had lead me to living the wrong *include heavy swearing* life.
When I think of how I am going to make up for decades, I catch myself thinking somewhere along the lines of:
“Louise Hay and Anais Nin were both over 40 before becoming successful.”
Or even:
“Nelson Mandela made something out of his life, when he came out of prison.”

After having screwed up the first half of my life;
I know I will not allow the second half to go to waste.
No way.

Yet, it still boggled me!
How had it even been possible to SLEEP THROUGH two decades of working in yoga, an industry based on enlightenment, consciousness, mindfulness?
Out of ALL the industries, how had I managed to not notice how much of a misfit, how much not-me ness, how much stuff that DIRECTLY conflicted with my values, had been part of yoga?
When I had all the overeating, all the non-practicing, all the not being interested in whatever the flying fuck was going on in my industry, to prove it.
“HOW?!” I ask of thee.

Especially because for the first 30 years of my life;
I DID NOT make mistakes like that!
I came out ready and able, and knowing who I was. And my life was in full alignment of that.

If I had just kept on going, I would not just have rocked at life;
I would have been a beacon of inspiration and entertainment.
And not a swearing like a sailor, middle-aged woman, who can’t believe she let life slip through her fingers for such a vast period of time.

30! I was THIRTY when I took the wrong turn!
Well, almost. I was 29.
Not an age where anyone thinks:
“Oh, we better watch Suzanne. This is a critical age!”
And it was also not an age where I myself was like:
“Oh, going on 30! Better watch out, because here’s where many have failed before me!”
* frowns eyes and stares intensely and unforeseen future*

Nobody watches out at 30.
And neither did I.
Although, although! That is not true!  
I had for years escaped having an office job, and when I caved and gave up on my independence, doing yoga was my escapism.

But then I started getting trained as a yoga teacher, and became that. I thought I had escaped the office job and that teaching yoga would bring me something a normal job didn’t.
Only to then wake up 20 years later.

Maybe that is the cruelty of it all;
You think you escape the monster of mundane office life, only to end up with another job that wasn’t right. 

And yet, before we talk Jon Bon Jovi posters, because I will get to that as well, I have always known for a fact that there was nothing wrong with yoga;
Contrary to something (in my opinion) inherently being wrong with office life.
So I can understand why I thought yoga would be good for me, or an improvement of sorts, because yoga is good.

There really is nothing wrong with yoga practitioners, and being a yoga teacher was and is a noble profession.
Which is why it took me so many years to realize that I ve wasted 20 years of my life. Finding photos from 1988 made the message extra raw and unpalatable;
It had been all there.

My 1988 bed proves I knew exactly who I was, and that I would rather die than cave. I would back myself up, do or die, my way or the highway.
Until…. 

The two photos with all the posters from Jon Bon Jovi, are of my bedroom in the attic.
They are taken in February, this is about a good year after Bon Jovi became famous in the Netherlands.
So it’s not that long.
Yet from the number of posters, and the way they are arranged, you can see I have been collecting and even curating them. The posters I selected for this location, are assorted by size.
One poster is double, it’s in the six piece above my head. But because the posters are hung up in a way that is pleasing to the eye, this does not matter.
It’s the perfect mosaic.

A few months later, I took the posters down.
I had started dating, and although I would remain an avid fan, I thought my bedroom should be more neutral. Or adult. Serious.
I know these things, both staying an avid fan and taking the posters down, because I have another photo where the posters are gone.
And I went to the Bon Jovi concert late that year.

My love for Jon Bon Jovi or Bon Jovi, had not changed.
It was purely because I thought that dating involved only showing the pleasant, the datable, love-worthy, side of yourself.

And that the wild, boy-crazy, bathing myself in paper-testosterone version of me, would not be welcomed.

In retrospect, the moment I took those posters down, was the moment I started presenting myself as something I am not.

In the other photo, one I took at a later date, I still have an unmade bed.
But there are no posters.
There is no book.
The photo is uninteresting. I didn’t even bother to scan it.
It’s taken by daylight,  the white wall looks even whiter. The unmade bed looks cold and empty.

It’s a proper photo, the daylight one without any Jon Bon Jovi posters hanging on the walls.
The lighting is good, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.
Nothing.
Except of course the absence of all the liveliness, the realness, and the authenticity that was captured in the two grainy black and white pictures of a girl’s bed with Jon Bon Jovi covered walls.

I gained boyfriends, I gained a sex life. I gained being adult and grownup.

But at the cost of a wall of Jon Bon Jovi posters.

And the highest price of all;
At the cost of being me.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

I m reviewing the 1995 – 1996 tour:
Subscribe my YouTube channel for new reviews

Subscribe to the blog, to get these posts in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

Interested in Rock Star posts and or my other English work, as well? 
All posts go to:
Rock Star Writer on Facebook
my personal Twitter account

Bon Jovi concert reviews 1995-1996 Suzanne Beenackers YouTube

102 Hidden Bon Jovi Gems 1985 – 2020

Published on by Suzanne BeenackersLeave a comment
Click photo for An Evening With Bon Jovi (MTV October 1992) Also: I remember these rose pants were owned by both Richie as well as Jon, and got mixed up

Rare tracks, live covers, B-Sides, bonus tracks;
Fasten your seat belts because for the next 102 songs (!!), you’re in for a ride!

Listen to the playlist here:
Bon Jovi 1985 – 2020 Hidden Gems In Chronological Order

The first song We Rule The Night is from 1985; The final one Luv Can from 2020.
These are all tracks that were not released on the standard studio albums.

The Making Of

It has been a long lost wish of mine, to create a playlist with all these extra songs.
Today I encountered a playlist from another YouTuber, who had already done all the ground work of collecting all the songs.

With help from a friend, who was comfortable getting a 100+ song list with a line “Is this list complete?” and then come with a coherent answer within seconds (you have no idea how much I appreciate such friends), I added a few more.
And then the gargantuan task began of dating them, and lining them up in chronological order.

I am a purist, and instead of just chucking all the songs onto one list, and moving them around until they were chronological;
I wanted to add them, in this chronological order.
So that they don’t just line up correctly if you select “ordered manually”, but also if you display them in the order they were added.

For example, if I unexpectedly encountered a 1986 song (Out of Bounds), when I was already adding from the Keep The Faith era (early 90s)?
I had to remove all songs from the playlist until I was back in 1986, add the missing song, and then start adding 1987 until Keep the Faith back in.

The most meaty task was dating, marking, somehow systematizing, the 50 songs from the box set:
“100.000.000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong” (2004)
For which I used the Wikipedia page about the box set, which indicated for every song for which album, or from which year, it was.

However, an unexpected amount of work went into An Evening With Bon Jovi.
This VHS/dvd from 1993 was recorded in October 1992.
One month before the album Keep The Faith would be released.
More or less accidentally I found out, I did not have all (cover) songs from this show noted down, so I went looking for them.
Ultimately I found a couple more, which were added to the list. But this has resulted in at least one song being not so much double on the list, but double played in the videos (the video “Fever” also contains other songs).
An Evening With Bon Jovi videos are listed separately in the outline, or map, in the playlist below.

Another problem around this show An Evening With Bon Jovi, was related to dating.
“The Sole Truth” was dated (1991) but the video had a still/ a photo from 1992 An Evening With Bon Jovi.
Which meant I was confused and initially dated it wrongly, until I finally realized my mistake and put The Sole Truth earlier up the list in 1991 instead of 1992.

I think I must have spend an hour getting 1991-1992 straight, and it’s still one of the weaker spots of the list.
Maybe that is why with This Left Feels Right (dvd 2004, alternative versions of well known Bon Jovi songs) I was ruthless and threw everything off.
I only kept one cover song there, Sylvia’s Mother.

So all in all, like any curated body of work, the old question;
“What is part of the collection, and what isn’t?”
Reared its long haired rock n roll head.
And just like any curator, I made my choices, with which you may or may not agree.

This project, of cataloging the bonus tracks and rare songs, was my most satisfying Bon Jovi project to date.
And in retrospect this playlist is more a framework for work to come, than an end point.

For this website, Rock Star Writer Nijmegen, I am already writing stories about the 50 Box Set songs. And to know that after I have had them, I can continue with the other 52 from the rarities list?
That’s inspiring!

So who knows!
Maybe one day I will be able to give you an overview, a page, or even a book in print, with 102 Bon Jovi inspired stories.

No doubt, getting lost all over again, in an evening with Bon Jovi.

But then again;
Who wouldn’t.

~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

This is the exact list of all 102 songs in the playlist.
I will come back to these songs, writing stories about them.
Subscribe to this blog to receive these and more.

Outline/ Map To “Bon Jovi 1985 – 2020 Hidden Gems In Chronological Order 

A song with a link/ RED, means it is a song I can’t get enough of.

1985

1 We Rule The Night

1986/ Slippery When Wet

2 Borderline

3 Edge Of A Broken Heart

4 Out Of Bounds

5 Deep Cuts The Night [Slippery When Wet Outtake]

6 Game Of The Heart [Slippery When Wet Outtake]

1988/ New Jersey

(I could have marked all these 1988 New Jersey tracks red/ a favorite, to be honest)

7 Love Is War

8 Born To Be My Baby (Acoustic Version)

9 The Boys Are Back In Town

10 Rosie

11 Full Moon High (Demo)

12 Judgement Day (Demo)

13 Growing Up the Hard Way (Demo)

14 Love Hurts (Demo)

15 Backdoor To Heaven (Demo)

16 Now And Forever (Demo)

17 House Of Fire (Demo)

18 Does Anybody Really Fall In Love Anymore? (Demo)

19 Lets Make It Baby (New Jersey/Sons of Beaches demo (1988))
“Is it a coincidence this is bold?” I hear you ask.
No.
Let’s Make It Baby is the sexiest Bon Jovi song ever written.

undated 80s/ 1992 latest

20 Outlaws Of Love 

1991

21 The Sole Truth (New Jersey 1991)
“This one should be bold!” I hear you shout, avid Bon Jovi fan! 
Yes, it should.
The only reason I didn’t, was because the quality of the audio (a live recording) is suboptimal. 

22 Cadillac Man (Osaka 1991)
YES!!!!!!!!
Not just a great song, but also with video (image) and both Jon and Richie looking so hot my cat jumped off my lap. 

1992 / Keep The Faith

23 Save A Prayer [Keep The Faith Outtake]
I m having early U2 vibes, you?

24 Starting All Over Again 

25 Fields Of Fire [Keep The Faith Outtake]

26 The Radio Saved My Life Tonight
Not just an amazing song, it’s also very fresh and exciting;
I think Jon Bon Jovi had a cold, altering his voice.
It’s as if your boyfriend plays he’s a different man, you’ve never slept with.
Well the last part would be correct regardless, of course.

27 Taking It Back
Tokyo Road revisited. Damn! What a killer song, you guys!

28 Miss Fourth Of July

29 Every Beat Of My Heart

30 Sympathy
+ 31 Billy 
I don’t know what they were “on” in 1991, or as we say in The Netherlands “What was stirred through their porridge” but Sympathy and Billy show they were on fire.

An Evening With Bon Jovi October 1992 | VHS 1993

I m not even going to individually rate songs from this fest of musical mastery! 
But here’s the link to the entire 1992 show “An Evening With Bon Jovi”
WATCH -> Keep The Faith: An Evening With Bon Jovi (1080p)

And here are the (rare) ones which I copied to my playlist:
32 With A Little Help From My Friends

33 Brother Louie 

34 Fever

35 It’s My Life~We Gotta Get Out Of This Place Live

36 Baby What Do You Want Me To Do

1995 These Days

37 I Thank You [These Days Outtake]
Rare song with horns and female backup singers

38 Mrs Robinson [These Days Outtake]
Live recording, which is indeed very lively!

39 Let’s Make It Baby [New Jersey Outtake – remixed version 1995]
“I know this one!” I hear you say.
“I bet it is no coincidence the sexiest Bon Jovi song ever written, is bold again?”
That is correct!

40 I Don’t Like Mondays Live Duet with Bob Geldof
Recorded in Wembley 1995, ten years after Live Aid. 

41 Crazy [Live These Days Bonus Track]
Waltz sung by drummer Tico Torres! 

42 Tumblin’ Dice [Live These Days Outtake] 
Rolling Stones cover by keyboard musician/pianist David Bryan!

43 Heaven Help Us [Live These Days Outtake]
By guitarist and singer Richie Sambora!
OR!
As I have heard;
“Jon Bon Jovi may be the heart of Bon Jovi, but Richie Sambora is the soul!”
Amen!

44 Prostitute [These Days Outtake] 
You didn’t know you needed Bon Jovi to go grunge, until you hear this song. 

45 Lonely At The Top ( Bonus Track )

46 The End [These Days Outtake]

47 When She Comes [These Days Outtake]

48 Wedding Day

49 These Days (Acoustic Demo)
I can’t help it: I m a sucker for the raw, the real, the stuff that ain’t finished but that is So! Much! More! Powerful! 
(because of that)

50 634-5789 [These Days Outtake]

51 Bitter Wine [These Days Outtake]
If you liked Wild Horses by the Stones, you should not miss out on this one.

52 I Get A Rush
🎵🎶 I like it, I like it, I can’t get enough🎵🎶
🎵🎶 I like it, I like it, yeah I get a rush 🎵🎶
🎵🎶 I like what I like and I like it too much 🎵🎶
🎵🎶 You know what I like, yeah I get a rush 🎵🎶

I m not even going to apologize for liking ALL the songs on this list!

However, if I keep going at this pace, it will be March before I finish.
So I m going to be ruthless, and skip a bunch.
A bunch of entire cd’s from the box set.

1996

53 Someday Just Might Be Tonight

54 River Runs Dry 

1997

55 Shut Up And Kiss Me

56 All I Wanna Do Is You

1998

57 Last Chance Train 

58 Rich Man Living In A Poor Man’s House

59 Crazy Love 

1999

60 Real Life 

61 Garageland 

62 Maybe Someday

63 The One That Got Away

64 You Can Sleep While I Dream

65 Satellite

66 Too Much Of A Good Thing

67 Kidnap An Angel

2000/ Crush

68 I Could Make A Livin’ Out Of Lovin’ You
Heavy guitars which must be listened to by everybody.
Everybody.

69 Neurotica

70 Ordinary People

71 Temptation
Ooh….. this is a good one.
And fans of The Doors, may want to check out the organ and Jon’s dark singing technique. Just sayin’.

72 Hush

73 Stay

74 Gimme Some
In the category, Upbeat Bon Jovi Songs About Sexual Encounters That Never Get The Attention They Deserve

75 Do It To Ya

76 You Can’t Lose At Love

2002/ Bounce

77 No Regrets

78 Postcards From The Wasteland

79 Lucky

80 Breathe

81 Another Reason To Believe

82 One (demo later released as Undivided )

2003

83 Thief Of Hearts

84 Sylvia’s Mother (Live from This Left Feels Right)

2005/ Have A Nice Day

85 Dirty Little Secret

{ I don’t make the law but: }

THIS SONG IS THE KING OF UPBEAT SONGS ABOUT SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS! 

Damn, that’s a good song.

86 Unbreakable
YES! BRING IT ON!
Did I mention Bon Jovi is famous for its anthems that could bring you back from the brink of death?
And Unbreakable is proof of that.

87 These Open Arms
This is a good time to get your box of tissues.

2007/ Lost Highway

88 Put the boy back in cowboy
This fan made video just got chosen, as the closer on the bottom of this post!
Props for this fan who made this video featuring all the times Jon danced, kissed, or otherwise engaged with a woman on, or in the proximity of a, stage.
Or swayed his hips, in more or, more likely, less innocent fashion.

We need fans like this, who go the extra mile to create something special.

Speaking of fans who go the extra mile;
After starting early today to create this 102 song long playlist, and now this matching blogpost; Watching all this warm Jon-female interaction makes me feel needy and clingy.
And kind of like I m not focusing on the right things in life!
I m at 11 hours behind my desk.
Time to start wrapping up this post.

89 Walk Like A Man

90 Hallelujah
A little shy of midnight, after my computer crazy day, I m not going to watch this. But Jon Bon Jovi singing Hallelujah is so incredibly beautiful that it will not just be the best thing you saw in February.
But the best you saw this year. 

91 Lonely
I get it. You have already cried your way through your box if tissues, didn’t you? 

2010

92 This Is Our House

2011

93 Have a little faith in me

2013/ What About Now

94 Into The Echo (Japan Bonus Track)

95 Burn With Me

2015/ Burning Bridges

96 Take Back the Night

2016/ This House Is Not For Sale 

97 Touch of Grey

98 Color Me In

2018

99 Walls

100 When We Were Us

2020

101 Shine

102 Luv Can
Best track of the album “2020”; Which was never selected for the official album.
Luv Can was a bonus track for the Japanese album.
But what a song…. Beautiful.

It’s almost midnight.
I ve worked on this post and playlist the entire day, and feel a little overworked and exhausted.
But as said in the first paragraph it has also been very rewarding to finally get my head around it, and have a structure and starting point for future projects.

For now good night. 

Sayonara, adios, auf wiedersehen, farewell

.
~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer

I m reviewing the 1995 – 1996 tour:
Subscribe my YouTube channel for new reviews

Subscribe to the blog, to get these posts in your mailbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

Interested in Rock Star posts and or my other English work, as well? 
All posts go to:
Rock Star Writer on Facebook
my personal Twitter account

Bon Jovi concert reviews 1995-1996 Suzanne Beenackers YouTube