... AND TAKES AWAY WITH THE OTHER

What a splendid gesture on the part of Bon Jovi, granting permission to their home state, New Jersey, to use Who Says You Can't Go Home in an advert intended to attract tourists to the place.

It's slightly tarnished by the publishers insisting on being paid a whopping USD175,000 for the rights.

It's made even worse by the reaction of "sources close to the band" quoted in the New York Daily News:

"That's not a lot of money. Coke pays millions to use a song in a commercial. People should get paid for what they write. Jon and Richie are good Jersey boys. They've done so much charitable work for the state."

Well, there's nothing there that's untrue, as such, but it's still not exactly right, is it? For a start, Coke is a multi-squillion pound private corporation and slightly evil, and would be using the track on every TV and radio station around the world every ten minutes for ever, so, yes, you'd expect them to pay more (mind you, you'd expect them to not be implicated in the deaths of trade unionists, too.) And while Jon and Richie Sambora may have done a lot of charitable work, since when was "I gave at the office" an excuse for justifying a spot of breathtaking greed?

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