Dear trusted friends, the next time Jonny Karate and I audition for ninja movie roles, please remind us not to do this. (And what’s that at the end… a Jedi?)
Ok… (yes, i’m still awake) highlights from the Mayer show.
Better arrangements and use of the band all around. He’s playing less and less acoustic… which is great. He’s only an average acoustic player anyway, and his acoustic tone is abrasively bad live. But vocals withstanding (no one is fooling anyone, he’s never going to have perfect vocals… we can deal with that and move on) this was the most flawless Mayer show i’ve ever seen… and his vocals actually weren’t that bad anyway. It was seriously 10 times better than the last few times i’ve seen him play.
But the icing… 1 amazing cover of Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues and 1 oh… my… dang… 10 minute freak-out-session cover of Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)… as a 3-piece… complete with throwing the guitar down a-la-Hendrix and playing it on the floor. I mean, seriously people… in the words of Jeremy, “That’s just stupid.”
I really don’t know what to make of a musician who can, in the space between first song and last song of his set, do singer-songwriter and radio rock… and then channel Hendrix and Stevie Ray. Who the heck would have ever thought the next guitar hero was going to be a skinny, dorky white kid from Connecticut? Believe the hype. He’s so freaking good. Naysayers? Can it. Until you see him live… you have zero to say to me. No, really… you got nothin’. Go listen to some emo and be glad you don’t wet your bed anymore.
Why do I like bizarre design-related things like this? Better question; why do you keep reading the various design-related musings on this site? Even better question; why am I still up considering I must rise at the hour of 6:00am? Hmm… I think we’ll leave the pondering to those better suited to it. Is that you? If so… ponder away.
Nashville was a nice little trip. The abridged version goes something like this: 1 drastic haircut, 936 miles of driving, $67.00 spent on gas, $73.78 spent on food, 1 iPod full of music (put to good use), 2 mostly-asleep yet still fun travel companions, 1 stop by the famed Pancake Pantry (it’s a Nashville tradition), 1 or 2 “deep” conversations, uncalculatable laughter and mocking, 64 kept photos, almost 16 hours in a vehicle, 2 meals partaking of country ham (?), 1 ridiculously enjoyable show from John Mayer and Maroon 5 (I don’t recall the last time a band impressed me enough live that I wanted to buy their album afterward, but the M5 boys have done well in that regard), 1 random byrd sighting at that show, 1 North Carolina Arby’s employee with gross dirty fingernails, 1 more step towards making a slightly awkward internet friendship with Jeremy feel a bit more like a real friendship, 1 all-natural and all-awesome strawberries & cream popsicle at Las Paletas, 3 or 4 are we going the right way?’s, 5 different stores/eateries (in one day) playing ’80’s music…
1 pause for effect…
2 trendy shoe store employees who actually had personalities and weren’t trying too hard, 1 surreal sighting of Bocephus’ ex-wife and daughter, 1 fairly unimpressive stop by the supposed “it coffee hang” Fido (whose wifi was broken), 1 Saturday morning spent with TLC eating, laughing, catching up, and getting 1 explanantion that Fido was no longer the “it coffee hang” and has apparently been recently dethroned by The Frothy Monkey (which is one of the better coffeeshop names ever… and we saw Toby Mac there today, so it must be cool), 1 scheming Wertz fan who overheard mention of his name from TLC and started chatting with us, and 2 restless nights spent sleeping in a free, yet still wretchedly uncomfortable grandma bed with canary yellow sheets. Top that. Sucka.
Or something.
I think I might fly to Orlando for vacation in October. I’m all drived-out.