Say what you will of John Mayer and what you know of him from controversial tabloids, interviews and his incessant tweets, but wow—the man is a brilliant musician.
Reid and I had the opportunity to attend his Battle Studies concert at San Jose’s HP Pavillion last Friday, and I was enraptured the entire time he was on stage. The concert was much less theatrical than, say, John Legend’s Evolver concert; Mayer doesn’t strike me as a showman despite his penchant for inane ramblings woven into his set lists and his whole set is centered around the music.
He was right when he said during the concert that it was amazing that you could have 15,000 people in a stadium enjoy the music of one person’s acoustic guitar. The heart of the matter is that regardless of who John Mayer is and what he says or does, the music he plays is kind of amazing.
(That said, I am tickled pink that Mayer makes what my friends and I call an “o noes!” face when he sings. D: O noes!)
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite John Mayer songs which he unfortunately did not sing at the concert. Slow Dancing in a Burning Room is the most bittersweet song I know; the mental image conjured from the title alone evokes the emotions surrounding the music and lyrics. I particularly like this recorded live version; it sounds much more raw than the studio-recorded one on the album.
