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Taken from Edmonton Sun (April 4, 2010)
Stop talking and play
by Mike Ross, Edmonton Sun
No one deserves to be told “shut up and sing!” more than John Mayer.
Not since Bono has there been such an embarrassing blabbermouth who lets his brain run out his mouth and risks ruining his otherwise excellent music in a prolonged campaign of blithering media stupidity.
There’s no point going into detail, but thank goodness Mayer let his music do most of the talking at Rexall Place last night. The guy is pretty awesome when he’s not shooting his mouth off.
It was a kind of bait ’n’ switch affair for the 8,000 folks who showed up. Although he’s known for the sensitive, easy listening, romantic gems with the haunting chord progressions and the heart-tugging lyrics and the libido-melting high notes —in fact, that’s why he’s famous — Mayer had another side of him to show off last night.
No, it’s not his bad-boy side (committed to public record in the recent Playboy magazine interview), which can only help his swoon-inducing powers among the fairer sex.
It’s the “real musician” side of him, the heavy cat inside the mushy exterior who wants nothing better than to crank loose guitar solo after guitar solo in some 10-minute funky jam.
We heard a few last night. Early in the set, Mayer unleashed his secret weapon drummer Steve Jordan for an excellent solo — just snare, kick and high hat, pretty cool — that led into an extended version of Waiting on the World to Change.
He complimented the crowd on liking that obscure one, saying it’s a sign of a “true audience” and a “true career,” as opposed to the fake one.
Remember, however, that funky jams don’t often hit the top 10 on the radio or sell millions of records — but hey, this guy can do what he wants.
It’s like he’s had his cake and now wants to eat a completely different cake. More power to him!
Mayer had both the chops and the band to make last night into a wall-to-wall wankfest. It’s a testament to his restraint that he didn’t.
For those who came for his old pop ballads, he threw them a bone or two, wrapping several of them up into a solo acoustic guitar medley.
It was profoundly unsatisfying to hear just a verse and a chorus of his great song, No Such Thing, the song that launched his career, but at least he did the Grammy-winning Daughters in its entirety.
The women went wild, relatively speaking, heaving a collective sigh of pleasure at Mayer’s airy voice uttering one of the song’s many simple yet profound truths, “Girls become lovers who turn into mothers.”
They actually screamed when the bluesy Gravity came along during the encore.
His choice of covers was interesting, though the cynical among us might wonder why he bothered if he’s got enough strong material of his own to fill an entire night.
Tunes thoroughly Mayer-ized included Eric Clapton’s Crossroads — giving the front man and his excellent co-soloists lots of time to jam — and the Bill Withers’s classic Ain’t No Sunshine. Later came snippets of Bob Dylan and even Fleetwood Mac.
It was hard to get a bead on who this guy wants to be, especially when he seems to want it all.
The show never reached the momentum you expect from a good rock show — too many pauses, too many lulls, and it was over far too soon.
Opening act Michael Franti and Spearhead sure lit a fire under the crowd for what was supposed to be an evening of sensitive, easy listening, adult-contemporary pop goodness.
It sure was brave of Mayer to let himself be blown off the stage like that.
Franti rapped, he boogied, he funked it up, he rocked out, he roamed the arena, he invited people onstage, he pulled out all the stops and turned Rexall into an indoor version of the folk fest — that is, the folk fest on a particularly energetic night.
The only quibble: it’s so freakin’ happy, so Up with People that you might puke if it weren’t so infectious and beautifully performed. It may be nice music, but this band is mean.
Discouraging words are not in Franti’s vocabulary, nor in a boisterous, reggae-fied set that included happy hippy affirmations like “that’s the sound of sunshine coming down” and “I got love for you” and “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
Sensing a theme here, and the feeling is mutual.
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