Before “Wanted Dead or Alive,” before “It’s My Life,” before Jon Bon
Jovi went off to Hollywood and took the Lost Highway through
Nashville in 2007, Bon Jovi was a pretty decent hard-rock band. Poppier
than most, definitely, but Jon’s Springsteenian tales of boardwalk
knockabouts and Richie Sambora’s streetwise riffs combined to make a
denim-clad, working-class alternative to stacked-heel Sunset Strip
skirt-chasers like Mötley Crüe. Judging by its debut CD,
Where I Stand (released last year), Houston’s Low Man’s Joe is
quite familiar with pre-Slippery When Wet Jovi – the woman
in “No Heroes” even works in a diner. (All day.) Not only is singer
Bret Gyrich’s voice a dead ringer for Jon’s, growling the verses and
exalting the choruses, but the music clings tightly to the Jersey boys’
Thin Lizzy/Journey axis, with just a hint of Jovi’s thrashier neighbors
Skid Row. The lyrics, meanwhile, peer into the lives of people who
don’t have a lot (except each other) or a lot to lose, people for whom
salvation is a Saturday night on the town. The frustrated desire of
“Temptation,” on-our-own defiance of “No Heroes,” last-chance
powerdrive of “Radio Saved (My Life Tonight)” — it’s all
well-trodden territory, to be sure (and was when Jovi got there too),
but why fix something that was never really broke?
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2009.
