Top Rock Bons By Clark Benson  [94 more lists]

What a voice, what a frontman, what a loss. Gotta give the slight nod to former AC/DC singer Bon Scott over the next choice, who also died in 1980 after choking on his own vomit.

While Bon Iver (pretentiously pronounced Bon-Y-Ver) put out a great debut record and also a strong followup EP, does he really deserve to rank higher on this list than Jovi?

I give Iver the nod because although one wouldn't remotely expect it from his albums, he was actually quite rocking when I saw him live at Bonnaroo. And it's pretty safe to say that Jovi won't ever be playing Bonnaroo, so Bon Iver wins, by Double Word Score or something like that.

(Yes, I know Bon Iver is the name of the band and not the person, in time honored (Tull, Skynyrd, Zep) rock tradition. But I think it's mostly a one man band kinda thing, at least the debut album.)

The image on the left is the cover of the first Jovi album which is, perhaps slightly surprisingly, the only era in which I saw Jovi live (opening for the Scorps on the Love At First Sting tour). At this juncture they were decent, nothing spectacular. I dig Jovi in a Greatest Hits kinda way, and also he seems to be a decent guy, but IMHO the only really memorable full album they made was Slippery When Wet, and even that had crappy cover art.