Going back and coming forward
My hunch is that the majority of our readers would regard it as par for the course – given our self-styled contrary, old-school, anti-mainstream, cult status slant – for the Rust’s music correspondent to admit that he doesn’t listen to music much anymore these days. The fact is that, at our lunch at which he first offered me the position, our esteemed editor brushed aside my protestation to this effect with the comment that – far from being a hindrance – he regarded it as practically a qualification.
Which brings me to the subject of the day – The Search for Everything – the just-released new album from John Mayer.
I have always been a fan of live music, the more so at small venues in recent times, and for many years belonged to a social group of similarly-aged enthusiasts who occasionally teamed up to spend an evening indulging our hobby. It must have been around the year 2006 or 2007 that I received an invitation to join a party going to the Hammersmith Odeon (as it used to be) – now apparently known, from September 2013, as the Eventim Apollo – to see some new musical artiste from America of whom I’d never heard.
As a musical illiterate belonging to the camp that professes “I don’t know what’s good, I just know what I like” – I take the view that at a certain point in life we tend to leave popular music behind (or maybe that should be the other way around?) – the concept of going to see someone I knew nothing about was initially of scant interest. However, on this occasion, largely upon a whim, I decided to tag along just for the ‘craic’, even if the music should turn out to be rubbish.
I was glad I did. The artiste concerned was John Mayer, then in his late twenties, though to me at the time he looked far younger than that as he came on stage dressed like a uni student in camouflage trousers and a T-shirt or singlet, sporting an electric guitar, with a self-effacing demeanour about as un-starry as you could get. If memory serves, it was his first-ever visit to the UK.
There were two memorable aspects of that evening.
Point one was that, having been used to three or more decades of official public warnings that taking pictures and/or making recordings at a live concert would be a breach of copyright, it was here that I first encountered the phenomenon of social media. Mayer opened proceedings by inviting the packed auditorium to take as many photographs as they liked and send them to his official website, where he’d feature the best of them as a record of the evening.
The second was that, from the moment he began performing, it was self-evident that Mayer was a considerable talent. His voice had a breathy intimacy to it, his songs were accessible and lyrically-interesting and he was an outstanding guitar player.
The concert was one of the best I’d been to in years and afterwards left me buzzing with excitement, as these things tend to when, having attended something with little or no expectations, by chance you come across a special performer.
See here – courtesy of YouTube – GRAVITY
Little did I know at the time of attending that first Mayer concert – I’ve since been to two more since in London, both also sensationally good – that he was well on the way to major artiste status in the United States. He’d already won two Grammies in 2005 (for Best Song – Daughters – and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance) and won two more (Continuum for Best Album and Best Pop Song With Vocal for Waiting For The World To Change off the same album) in 2006, having been originally nominated for five.
Since then – on my radar – Mayer has stalled somewhat, becoming most well-known via the media gossip columns and magazines for his colourful love life in dating a series of actresses and celebrities than anything else, including his music.
Then about a fortnight ago I read somewhere that he had a new album coming out, the aforementioned The Search for Everything. I immediately went to the Amazon website and read the customer reviews, all of them favourable. I therefore ordered a copy, which arrived at the weekend.
Aside from the awful cover artwork – and indeed the failure to include the title of the album anywhere upon it, which to me is a mistake of significance – [see right] I’m still very much in the ‘getting to know you stage’ of appreciation.
On the first couple of play-throughs, it’s a promising offering – not quite in the sustained class of Continuum, mind, but still easy on the ear. It’s early days, of course, and sometimes the best albums take time to grown on you.
The only aspect that is slightly disappointing as I type this is that, having checked on Wikipedia, I note than 16th October this year John Mayer will reach the age of forty. Hitherto, in my mind’s eye, I had him fixed in my mind as a ‘new kid on the block’ (aged 30, maximum).
That’s the trouble with living in the middle of your seventh decade: any new artiste seems young and permanently so.
Meanwhile, to be frank – come on, admit it – for a popular music artiste the age of 40 is positively ancient.
I’ll report again further in due course as to whether The Search For Everything is going to reach ‘great’ and lasting status in the Stuart household.
