We are in the year 2004 and Bon Jovi has now been around for 20 Years at this point. To celebrate their 20th Anniversary, they released a really cool box set of mostly unreleased tunes and a lot of little extras titled ‘100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong’. The Box Set is a collection of 50 songs spread over 4 CDs, 38 of which had never been released. The others were songs from soundtracks, remixes and/or B-Sides. This was a band dumping everything sitting by the wayside in to one set and I applaud them for that. Us diehard fans love this kind of stuff. And if that wasn’t enough, if you have the Japanese Edition, which i do, you get another CD of B-Sides and Japanese Bonus Tracks. That is another 10 songs.
This is a lot of music to absorb and we won’t be absorbing it all here. Nope. I’m going to go through each and every CD, track by track over 6 posts. We are now on the fifth disc which is the DVD and then the sixth disc which is the Japanese Bonus Disc, 10 tracks, but they are all previously released. So let’s get started and dive into the music as that is why we are really here any way.
While I was in New York City a little while back for the Final Kiss Show at Madison Square Garden, my brother and I did hit some shops and I found, not one, but two Japanese Singles from Bon Jovi. These were released back in the 80’s in Japan only and they are in such beautiful shape. I had to have them so I bought them. First up was “Burning for Love” and now we get in to the 2nd Single I found with “Borderline”.
I am not sure the reason behind this Japanese Only release. We are during the ‘Slippery When Wet’ era of the band and they release a 12″ Single for “Borderline” which wasn’t even on the album, only a studio outtake. It doesn’t make quite much sense. The opening track is “Livin’ On A Prayer” from the Slippery album, but why label it as “Borderline”??? Very confusing to me, but I don’t care, it is still a cool piece for the collection. The Japanese audience was always treated with special releases from Bon Jovi and better covers.
Included in the release was a lyric sheet for the songs in both English and Japanese…
We are now on to the 15th Studio album from the Scorpions called ‘Unbreakable’. It had been 5 years since their last studio album, ‘Eye II Eye’, which was not a success. The band had some success with their live albums ‘Moment of Glory’ and ‘Acoustica’ and after some touring, the guys were ready to go at it again. They went to the studio in late March or early April and recorded 16 demos. Not a bad start…but…they scrapped every single one and started over. They tried again in June 2003 and nothing much from that one either. Finally after another short tour, they went back in to the studio a third time in September 2003 and did another 20 songs and finally they felt they could pull an album from those tracks.
They shopped for a producer and they had a number of people on the list that they sent the demos to in hopes of hiring a producer. They wooed Bob Rock, Max Martin, Rick Parasher, Erwin Musper and even old time producer Dieter Dierks. In the end they ended up using Erwin Musper and he did a pretty good job. But that wasn’t all they were shopping for as they also needed a bass player. The courted Jeff Pilson (Dokken) and Jimmy Bain (Rainbow/Dio), but they wound up with Paweł Mąciwoda who was able to play on about 10 of the 13 tracks.
After recording from October 2003 to January 2004, the album was finally complete. It saw the light of day on May 3, 2004 and I have to say after the last two albums were a departure from what we expect from Scorpions, this one brought the band back to form. They brought back the heavy riffs, the great bombastic choruses and even modernized it all a little. This is the album that reminded me that Scorpions still had the goods to deliver what the fans like best. Solid guitar rock. I think a lot of what I like about this one is due to the fact of there was so much I didn’t like about the last two. This probably elevates this one a little as a result, but still so much goodness.
It all starts with the killer opening track “New Generation” which starts out with a slow build that keeps getting grander as you go and then the song really kicks in slamming it home. The hypnotic guitar riff is stellar and the song sounds so modern yet so like classic Scorpions at the same time. A brilliant track that reminds a lot of the opening tracks from a lot of bands in the 80’s as it has that grand feel and runs close to 6 minutes. Love it!!
2 Loud 2 Old Music 