Agora, Ohio, 1984

Jane Scott was there at Live Aid back in 1983, and she blogged about it here.  She meanders through memories of the show, and segues into paragraphs about different artists she's met in or who've played at different venues in Ohio over the years.  She has this to say about our boys:

Bon Jovi was living on little more than a prayer when the band came to Cleveland in March 1984. The crowd went to the Agora to see the Cleveland band Beau Coup, then began to filter out before Bon Jovi had taken the stage.

Agora owner Henry Lo Conti was able to herd only about 150 fans back into the club to see the New Jersey band.

"I felt embarrassed for the guy," Lo Conti said of lead singer Jon Bon Jovi. But Jon Bon Jovi sang like there were 1,000 people in the crowd. Two years later, after the band hit it big with the album "Slippery When Wet," it drew 42,000 to Lo Conti's Buckeye Lake Center near Columbus.

Could you imagine (today) an intimate 150-person show?  How much would the die-hard fans LOVE that :)

This reminded me of the story from when Jon was working on U-571 with Matthew McConaughey. Remember this one?

Matthew asked Jon, "How do you stay so humble?" Jon answered, "Do you know what color the seats are in the stadium in Knoxsville, Tennessee? They are orange. I know that because I saw a bunch of empty seats at our concert there." Matthew subsequently sent Jon a section of the bleacher seats when the Knoxville stadium was demolished.

Anyway, if you want to hear the show, you can get the bootleg from D & P's Bootleg Tunz World.  It's an amazing show.

~ Hath