I like Blues. I shouldn't have to preface this post, but I don't want anyone to say "Maybe the blues just ain't your thing." I went to a Budweiser Blues Festival some years ago and watched BB King and Etta James and Elvin Bishop. I've seen the late Gatemouth Brown play. Twice. I even have a replica of one of his signature pipes. I saw him when he opened for Eric Clapton in 1995.
By 1995, Eric Clapton had a career spanning 30 years, and enough "street cred" to justify pretty much anything he wanted to do. He always loved the blues, and he wanted to finally play pure blues and by God, he was going to do just that. But in 1995, Clapton could have switched to writing sacred chants and gotten away with it. He's Clapton for pete's sake.
I mention Clapton because John Mayer's love of and association with Clapton is no secret.
But where as in 1995 Clapton had 30 years under his belt, in 2005 John Mayer has.........SIX. Prior to 1999, no one knew who John Mayer was. After 1999, he quickly developed a following...of 16-year-old girls who loved his boyish looks and belived he honestly thought their bodies were, indeed, wonderlands.
To be perfectly frank, Mayer was lucky to have people like me buying his albums and showing up at concerts. I actually thought he was a decent musician, and lot of his songs (the ones you don't hear on the radio, like 3x5 and Comfortable) tell great stories, and the music itself is very distinctive.
I saw Mayer last year on the "Heavier Things" tour. It was a pretty bad show. He played all of the corny radio songs that he pretty much has to play to keep the teenieboppers from rioting, and interspersed them with a bunch of rambling and rather tedious bluesy tunes. I theorized to my friends that he was trying to shake the teeniebopper reputation and was trying to break the audience into a different sound. "Heavier Things" was a stepping stone from the accoustic ballads of "Inside Wants Out"/"Room For Squares" to a heavier, more adult John Mayer.
Aside from picking up on the looming stylistic change, I could not have been more wrong. On this latest tour, the title song seems to be the rather insultingly titled "Who Did You Think I Was?" You can hear it on his website. It's pretty mediocre. Not an awful song, but it sounds pretty much like any bluesy-rock song. This time around, Mayer didn't even bother trying to placate the teenieboppers with his lame radio tunes - he just played nondescript blues song after nondescript blues song, occasionally with uninspiring solo work. He also covered Ray Charles and James Brown. Probably some others I didn't recognize, too. Finally, at the end he placated the 16-year-old set by playing "Something's Missing" and "Daughters." John Mayer has gone from having a rather distinct sound, to just sounding like any blues musician you can find playing in a blues bar in the great white northeast.
So what's the difference between John Mayer and Eric Clapton? Clapton had the decency to make it totally obvious that on the "An Evening Of Nothing But The Blues" series, you could expect to hear just that. He also released the all-blues album "From The Cradle" prior to embarking on his tour. Anyone that showed up for those concerts expecting to hear "Tear In Heaven" or "Layla" was either deluded or not paying attention.
Mayer, on the other hand, gives us no advance notice. The entire move smacks of musical bait-and-switch. Put out something that you know will sell even though you don't really like it, and once you've got a big enough following, play whatever you want knowing that even 75% of those people never buy another album or go to another concert, you've made enough money that you can live comfortably even if you eventually become relegated to a local night club circuit.
I want a musician to feel that he can freely express himself, but on the other hand, as a paying audience member, I also have an expectation to not hear something completely off the wall, at least not without being told in advance. Most of the time the people yelling "Play something we know!" are the jerks who have only heard the radio singles and you wonder why they wasted $45 on a concert ticket just so that they could get wasted on $8 beers and hear a song that they could have heard just by listening to the radio for about 10 minutes. But this time, despite being pretty familiar with Mayer's entire musical catalog, I was the one thinking "Play something we know!" Or even...."Play something that doesn't suck!"
It pretty much never happened; I want my $45 back, please.
Cliff's Notes:
0. I like Blues
1. Eric Clapton switched from rock to straight blues.
2. John Mayer thinks he's Eric Clapton.
3. Saw John Mayer play mediocre blues all night long.
4. Some advance warning would have been nice...like an album.
5. I want my $45 back.
By 1995, Eric Clapton had a career spanning 30 years, and enough "street cred" to justify pretty much anything he wanted to do. He always loved the blues, and he wanted to finally play pure blues and by God, he was going to do just that. But in 1995, Clapton could have switched to writing sacred chants and gotten away with it. He's Clapton for pete's sake.
I mention Clapton because John Mayer's love of and association with Clapton is no secret.
But where as in 1995 Clapton had 30 years under his belt, in 2005 John Mayer has.........SIX. Prior to 1999, no one knew who John Mayer was. After 1999, he quickly developed a following...of 16-year-old girls who loved his boyish looks and belived he honestly thought their bodies were, indeed, wonderlands.
To be perfectly frank, Mayer was lucky to have people like me buying his albums and showing up at concerts. I actually thought he was a decent musician, and lot of his songs (the ones you don't hear on the radio, like 3x5 and Comfortable) tell great stories, and the music itself is very distinctive.
I saw Mayer last year on the "Heavier Things" tour. It was a pretty bad show. He played all of the corny radio songs that he pretty much has to play to keep the teenieboppers from rioting, and interspersed them with a bunch of rambling and rather tedious bluesy tunes. I theorized to my friends that he was trying to shake the teeniebopper reputation and was trying to break the audience into a different sound. "Heavier Things" was a stepping stone from the accoustic ballads of "Inside Wants Out"/"Room For Squares" to a heavier, more adult John Mayer.
Aside from picking up on the looming stylistic change, I could not have been more wrong. On this latest tour, the title song seems to be the rather insultingly titled "Who Did You Think I Was?" You can hear it on his website. It's pretty mediocre. Not an awful song, but it sounds pretty much like any bluesy-rock song. This time around, Mayer didn't even bother trying to placate the teenieboppers with his lame radio tunes - he just played nondescript blues song after nondescript blues song, occasionally with uninspiring solo work. He also covered Ray Charles and James Brown. Probably some others I didn't recognize, too. Finally, at the end he placated the 16-year-old set by playing "Something's Missing" and "Daughters." John Mayer has gone from having a rather distinct sound, to just sounding like any blues musician you can find playing in a blues bar in the great white northeast.
So what's the difference between John Mayer and Eric Clapton? Clapton had the decency to make it totally obvious that on the "An Evening Of Nothing But The Blues" series, you could expect to hear just that. He also released the all-blues album "From The Cradle" prior to embarking on his tour. Anyone that showed up for those concerts expecting to hear "Tear In Heaven" or "Layla" was either deluded or not paying attention.
Mayer, on the other hand, gives us no advance notice. The entire move smacks of musical bait-and-switch. Put out something that you know will sell even though you don't really like it, and once you've got a big enough following, play whatever you want knowing that even 75% of those people never buy another album or go to another concert, you've made enough money that you can live comfortably even if you eventually become relegated to a local night club circuit.
I want a musician to feel that he can freely express himself, but on the other hand, as a paying audience member, I also have an expectation to not hear something completely off the wall, at least not without being told in advance. Most of the time the people yelling "Play something we know!" are the jerks who have only heard the radio singles and you wonder why they wasted $45 on a concert ticket just so that they could get wasted on $8 beers and hear a song that they could have heard just by listening to the radio for about 10 minutes. But this time, despite being pretty familiar with Mayer's entire musical catalog, I was the one thinking "Play something we know!" Or even...."Play something that doesn't suck!"
It pretty much never happened; I want my $45 back, please.
Cliff's Notes:
0. I like Blues
1. Eric Clapton switched from rock to straight blues.
2. John Mayer thinks he's Eric Clapton.
3. Saw John Mayer play mediocre blues all night long.
4. Some advance warning would have been nice...like an album.
5. I want my $45 back.
