You know when you go to a concert given by one of your favorite artists and it just feels like the set list was picked for you? You know, when song after song is just right on the mark. Maybe they're not all your favorites, but you can't help but be overcome with joy and a "God is Good, Life is Wonderful, All is Right With the World" mentality when you hear the opening chords or lyrics of each. In the case of this John Mayer concert (in Nashville on Wednesday) I got those feelings in spades because he constantly does "teaser intros." You know, playing ambiguous melodies that a discerning (slash obsessed) ear can sometimes recognize as possible lead-ins to particular songs. BUT you never know 100% what the song is going to be until the first real note, so it's then that much more exciting when the actual song begins.
I've been wanting to post about this concert and really do it justice. I don't want to just write something hokey about how, *~like, omigod, I totally wanna marry John Mayer because he's SoOoOo perfect.~* Yes, I do love John Mayer and have since 12ish, and I'm not going to deny that I proclaimed my love loudly from my nosebleed seats and went absolutely nuts when JM "replied" with "I love you too" (cynics might claim it was because a big group yelled it right after I did, but I know he saw/heard me standing up there in Row Eleventy Billion...recall Juliet on the balcony, Romeo beneath. Duh.)
But that's not what's important here.
What was important about this concert was the display of a remarkable talent and my personal recognition of how much his particular talent has meant to me over the years. Hearing John Mayer live was very different than hearing, say, Bon Iver live, and it's not because John Mayer's "better" and not because of the differences in musical stylings but because of my personal history. I love Bon Iver now, and For Emma, Forever Ago has gotten under my skin, the way a good album does when it just catches you off guard and shakes you up and sings its way into your being. But I only discovered Bon Iver in 2008. John Mayer I've been listening to since sixth grade. I grew as he grew. I changed as his music changed; I played his albums through middle and high school and carried them with me to college. So many of the songs are attached to specific memories and, since he's an artist who the majority of people know, there are many people who share these types of feelings with me. I had this whole epiphany during "No Such Thing," reveling in flashbacks, and just burst into tears of joy. You could say I'm a freak, or you could say I'm just someone who loves being reminded how MUSIC IS MY LIFEBLOOD (I can hear you gagging). Both are true, I guess. I honestly can't measure or put a price on the impact that so many artists have had on me. I have no idea what my late middle-/early high school years would have been like without Room for Squares, and perhaps they wouldn't have been significantly altered, but, bottom line, they would have been different somehow without John Mayer. Or any other musician who was important to me at that time. To quote Lester Bangs (well, Phillip Seymour-Hoffman) in Almost Famous: "Music, you know, true music, not just rock 'n' roll, it chooses you. It lives in your car, or alone, listening to your headphones - you know, with the vast, scenic bridges and angelic choirs in your brain. It is a place apart from the vast, benign lap of America."
Anyway...I'll quit reminiscing and movie-quoting and just get to the concert...
The song selection alone was fantastic, and each performance was just impeccable. "Heartbreak Warfare" kicked things off, and right when he launched into that pulsating intro, the song just seemed to be written for that moment, made to open a show. Magic. He played songs spanning his entire career ("Comfortable" being the earliest) and at least one from each of his albums. He merged old with new (...yet old) when he combined "3x5" with his new (sshhh,betterthanBruceSpringsteen's) version of "I'm on Fire" during one of two acoustic medleys. I only had 2 real disappointments: I was really surprised that he didn't play "Edge of Desire," which is probably my favorite from Battle Studies, and I was really looking forward to hearing it live :(. Bummer. The other song I was really itching to hear that he didn't play was "I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You)", one of my favorites and one of the best tracks on Continuum, his 2006 magnum opus. He more than made up for it, though. "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room" was probably the highlight for me, besides "Gravity" (which I'll get to later); "Waiting on the World to Change" also was the best I've ever heard it played, preceded by a RIDICULOUS 3-minute Steve Jordan drum solo. He. was. amazing. The encore was particularly awesome and emotional-he played "Who Says" and then closed the night with "Say." Click here for the whole set list.
One thing I see as another measure of a good concert is when you can hop in the car on the way home, spin that iPod button right to the artist you just heard, and as you start listening the songs have a new energy to them. They sound fresher and more resonant than before, and you're suddenly noticing more of the little intricacies, voice inflections, the shifts and surges. I mention this because often my expectation is that when I exit an amazing concert and then listen to the artist's studio recordings, I'll be disappointed with how they compare. But after a really great concert, the songs excite me more than ever. And that's exactly what happened after this concert.
By now I'm sure most people know about his controversial comments in a recent Playboy interview, as well as his general tendency to overshare and, well, come off as a jerk in interviews over the last couple of years. Maybe you even heard about what happened during the concert I'm so glad I attended. If not, brief synopsis: Toward the end of "Gravity," which is, IMHO, his best song, John stopped playing and began talking about how, in his endless "quest to be clever," he's "forgotten about the people [he] love[s] and the people who love [him.]" He added, "I went, as I've begun to do, into a wormhole of selfishness and greed and arrogance...thinking that if I just continued to be witty and pull together the most fast phrases that I could, that I could be clever enough to buy myself another day without thinking that anybody had finally pinned me down and said, 'you're a creep." He later said that he had done this at the expense of people he loved and that "it's just not worth being clever, it's just not worth it," mentioning that he "should have just played the guitar a little more." Throughout his apology, he was visibly choked up, as were a couple of his bandmates, whom he praised and thanked for standing by him. He pointed out to the audience that they were not on stage with him because they "condone anything [he] say[s] in any given interview, and especially not in the one that's made the rounds today, but because they support [him] as a possible future grown-up."
When people in such high profiles address the mistakes they've made it's always a no-win situation. If they apologize, no matter how much they may mean it, there's going to be backlash and criticism from people dismissing them as attention-hungry, equivocating, or just plain insincere. If they don't address them at all, they're written off as unfeeling jerks who think they can spit whatever they want on whomever they want and get off scot-free. He would have been slammed either way, and that's the truth. He apologized and spoke honestly and candidly. He didn't go on a 20-minute rant or try to make the whole concert about redeeming himself; he played for the fans, spared us the marathon Remorseful Ramblings and saved a genuine, heartfelt statement for the right moment. (There was an added level of poignancy since John has said on more than one occasion that he considers "Gravity" to be his most meaningful work.) Why not just give him the benefit of the doubt? The man was crying. He acknowledged his mistakes, not only with the most recent interview but over the years. (Before the whole Big Onstage Apology he responded to a fan on Twitter who reassured him that "we all make mistakes" by saying "True, but some mistakes are harder to pinpoint because they happen slowly and over long periods of time." sidenote-i'm really trying to avoid using the word "tw-eting.") The thing is, I know I've done/said plenty of things before that were just as thoughtless and selfish as anything John Mayer's ever said. Fortunately I have the luxury of not having millions of fans who put me on a pedestal and dissect my comments and lyrics. I also don't have critics and skeptics hanging on my every word just waiting for me to mess up and put my foot in my mouth. Everything is amplified a million times over when you're in the spotlight. Honestly, how many people do you and I know who have made embarrassingly shallow or selfish comments, or who have let their mouths get ahead of their brains? Oh right, that's me, along with all of my friends.
Referring to Almost Famous once again-I've always loved the part when William FINALLY sits "Stillwater's" lead singer Russell down for their interview. He opens with, "So Russell. What do you love about music?" Russell responds, with a grin and a pause, "To begin with...Everything." Then they cut to that montage set to "Tangerine"...shucks, it gets me every time. I could write a million posts about what I love about music. At the end of the day, John Mayer makes good music. The way his songs have worked their way into my life and affected me, that's more important than any embarrassing interview. At the end of the day, John Mayer is a flawed human being. Just like every other human being. And if we weren't flawed, there would be no such thing as good music. There would be nothing to sing about, nothing to relate to, no chord progressions with any real depth or feeling. The people who are so quick to criticize and write off all famed musicians as "insincere," I have to wonder if, as "Sapphire" said in Almost Famous, they "even know what it is to be a fan. You know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts."
WHEW. I'm finished.
your shoutouts to Almost Famous basically made my day. As did this post. Bravo.
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