John Mayers new power trio: Upgrade or downgrade?

I find this relentlessly fascinazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

That photo proves that slowly but surely John Mayer is morphing into Terri Schiavo

PLEASE RUIN HENDRIX FOR EVERYONE WONDERLAND SHITHEAD.

oh fucking hell, John. BLUES TRIO?

I wish Stevie Ray Vaughn was never born.

Well, I really dislike John Mayer's acoustic bullshit, but I think I hate generic electric blues even more. I'm pretty sure if I went to one of these shows, I'd suffer from spontaneous and uncontrollable bowel movements. Downgrade, I guess.

The best stuff on his last album was basically blue eyed soul. Shame he doesn't see that as an option.

wait, so he's not in "Herbie and the Headhunters Mach 2000" anymore?

i think its a smart move for him, get at least an ounce of credibility to his name. i think he's a keen guitar player, maybe he'll put out fewer smarmy songs this way.

I'll give it a shot.

Mayer once again confounds expectations by sucking worse than previously thought imaginable.

John Mayer Blues Explosion!

This thread is a wonderland.

oh fucking hell, John. BLUES TRIO?

I wish Stevie Ray Vaughn was never born.

-- miccio (anthonyisrigh...), June 30th, 2005.

heh otm

Steve Jordan has produced (parts of) the last two Blues Explosion albums. So maybe we'll get, "John Mayer sure likes to FUUUUUCCCKK!!!"

ok that would redeem it

Blueshammer 2005.

Blues Traveler 2005

The PopperMayerWiener tour.

TS: "My father was Sister Ray!" vs. "My father was Milton Mayer!"

More like, "I've got the Blues/Kraft Macaroni and Cheese/The Blue Box Blues" 2005

"Imma beat dat wonderland up"

at first i read "new power pop trio" and I was conflicted.
I'm still conflicted.

Yeah, but who wouldn't like to hear a Cream-level power pop group putting out new stuff today?

Mayer has said he wants to step out and play some music of some substance (my words, not his pretensions)...maybe this will allow him to do so.

Suggested Band Names:
Finding Wonderland
Another White Boy Rapes the Blues
Wonderland Lost
We're Not Fathers

All you people reflexively bashing John Mayer are complete fucktards. The guy is a great guitarist and a good songwriter. Who gives a fuck if he wrote a few songs that girls like?

Get over yourselves. Jesus Christ, it's pathetic.

he should grow a mustache for this tour.

xpost I don't know about anyone else that bashes John Mayer, but I do it because I think he's a shit songwriter.

John Mayall to thread!

"take a whiff of my GAP pant leg!"

"I need a fuuull GROOOOOOWN Jennifer Love Hewitt!"

Ned, John Mayer is FUNNY. And that's not funny.

I want a John Mayer / Trick Daddy album collab STAT.

http://i.realone.com/assets/rn/cms/2004/other/John_Mayer_-_news_image_3_live.6659191.jpg
John Mayer don't look like the blues, he looks like BLUES CLUES.

If John Mayer's power trio was himself, Dave Chappelle, and ?uestlove, I might feel differently about this whole thing.

as i've pointed out on "john mayer thread no. 467," he is actually a seemingly very nice guy with pretty good taste. his music isn't very good, but whatever.

i just mean that i feel bad being cruel to john mayer.

the guy just needs to get some humility and become a better songwriter's guitarist, because he actually is damn good at playing guitar. and ... i don't know, maybe put a paper bag over his face when he's playing a solo live.

John Mayer and the Bluesbreakalls

Geez, at least wait until you've heard it and know it sucks to start knocking. Also, John Mayer jinxes the downfall of his success in that article. There is no way this album won't be nominated for a Grammy.

he should grow a mustache for this tour.

That's the rightest thing anyone on ILM has said all day.

"I may never win a Grammy again, I may never sell a million records again, but the world will get where I'm coming from. Laugh at me, will you? I'll show you all, all of you! I have PINO FUCKING PALLADINO keeping time for me! What do you have, bitches? Nothing, that's what. Go suck a mop."

Erm, italics mine...

I was skeptical, but he actually sounds pretty damn okay on the new John Scofield record, where he sings on two cuts and trades fours with Sco on one of them. I found this tidbit on Scofield's website interesting:

The guest most likely to raise eyebrows from my fan base is John Mayer -- of hyper-successful pop singer-songwriter fame. I didn't know John, but knew his name. Steve (Jordan) worked with John on Herbie's new record and was also producing tracks on his next record. I was surprised but John said he wanted to participate on That's What I Say in some way. I got his records out, and I realized he was playing the hell out of the guitar. We do guitar trading on "I Don't Need No Doctor." I thought he would be good for that track, and he came in and totally nailed it! After we recorded, he said he's never sung like that on a record before.' He usually does a more breathy thing, and this was full voice. And he can do it really well! Really well!

i don't know why i'm saying this but...there's something about his energy/personality i like. and i suspect he's made boring music in the past b/c he was unable to unleash the inner Mayer. this seems to be a step in that direction at least. he certainly had a lot of good loose energy on D. Chapelle show.

"I need a fuuull GROOOOOOWN Jennifer Love Hewitt!" what is this about? does he actually say/sing this?

As a (perhaps surprisingly) big Mayer fan, I too have mixed feelings about the "blues trio." But I still hold out hope Mayer will eventually confound all expectations, even if he'll likely never be hip in critical circles. I suspect he's yet to discover "the inner Mayer."

All you people reflexively bashing John Mayer are complete fucktards. The guy is a great guitarist and a good songwriter. Who gives a fuck if he wrote a few songs that girls like?
Get over yourselves. Jesus Christ, it's pathetic.

OTM. It's the songwriting, stupid.

John Mayer > Bob Dylan

John Mayer says he’s sucked the flavour from acoustic, moves to blues, funk
By Nekesa Mumbi Moody
NEW YORK (AP) — John Mayer won’t go ballistic if he hears you’ve outgrown his Room for Squares CD. Or that you’re so over his Grammy-winning hit Daughters. Or that you’d rather go deaf than hear Your Body Is A Wonderland again.
Mayer feels the same way. Just two CDs and three years into a multiplatinum recording career, Mayer talks about his past hits with disdain, like an embarrassing high school yearbook photo.
“I’m done with acoustic guitar, balladeering, I’m done with acoustic groove. Acoustic groove sucks so bad,” moans the boyish singer-songwriter. “I’ve sucked the flavour out of it.”
If earnest crooning and guitar strumming over mellow grooves defined Mayer’s musical adolescence, he’s grown into to more substantial, mature fare with his latest passions — funk, soul, and most notably, the blues.
So long James Taylor: Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles and Buddy Guy are the musical heroes Mayer now hopes to emulate as he embarks on his new mission — trying to make the rest of America fall as hard for the blues as he has.
“I believe that people could love blues more than I believe anything in my life,” says the boyish-looking Mayer, sitting on his sleek couch in his sleek apartment.
“That’s my whole year, that people could like blues. The problem is who’s been playing it, what’s the sentiment behind it, what’s the need behind it,” he says. “Most people who play blues ... they’re playing for themselves, and I’m thinking about how to get blues to other people. And that’s through pop music. (Eric) Clapton does it, and he makes me want to tear my hair out because I want to do it too.”
While he may not be on the same level as the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, the 28-year-old Mayer is impressive nonetheless on his new live CD, Try! The John Mayer Trio Live In Concert, released Tuesday. The album encapsulates Mayer’s musical growth over the past year — much of it spent on the road performing material like Ray Charles I Got A Woman and Mayer’s own soulful compositions with two veteran musicians, drummer Steve Jordan and bassist Pino Palladino.
Daughters is the only tune from the Mayer catalogue on the CD — and that song is significantly revamped. Yet in concert, that didn’t seem to matter to his fans. At a recent performance at New York’s Beacon Theatre, the audience, which varied from shrieking teenage girls to sophisticated baby boomers, remained on their feet as Mayer’s frenetic guitar play anchored the evening.
“The reaction from the audience is wild because they don’t know what to expect, but they’re loyal fans, so they know that John doesn’t intend to steer them wrong,” says Jordan.
Jordan, a past collaborator, says Mayer’s immersion in blues and soul is not something that came about on a whim (his next studio CD, Continuum, is due out next year and continues in the bluesy vein).
“I think he’s always had a love for blues and R&B — he’s always been a big blues fan,” Jordan says. “He became popular off a different type of songwriting — a melodic soft side — but still had a lot of intensity and obvious musicality.”
Mayer says his previous CDs, 2001’s Room for Squares and 2003’s Heavier Things, didn’t reflect that blues influence because he didn’t think he was at a point musically where he could do it properly.
“I always go for the path that ignites me the most, and I’ve always been beyond intrigued — I mean, just enraptured by blues music and soul music and the depth of that music,” he says. “(But) because I know blues so well, I know when I’m not getting it and I know when I’m not good enough for it.”
So he focused on the kind of emotive singer-songwriter odes that were palatable to a wide audience, from college radio to pop and adult contemporary stations. His two major-label albums sold about five million copies combined, and earned him three Grammys, including song of the year this year for the sentimental track Daughters.
Yet the more popular Mayer became, the more ubiquitous his kind of music became, as soundalikes flooded the scene. At the same time, Mayer began to grow more disenchanted with his best-selling works. Playing them night after night made them sound dated, he says.
“Ray Charles in 1962 is the same feeling you get now because it’s human — it’s a human emotion, not human intellect,” he says.
“Nobody cares about Your Body is a Wonderland. If I wasn’t changing, people wouldn’t care about Wonderland in the first place. They become relics. And I’m too young to be a nostalgia band, I’m too young to remind somebody of 2002. That’s not fun.”
But ditching the kind of music that made him a household name for a genre that for many fans is the very definition of musical nostalgia might seem foolhardy. Even Mayer declares that the “art form is pretty dead right now.”
But Mayer believes he can bring the music to the masses by tailoring it to a pop audience.
“I’m not the best person who has ever done it. But I’m the most popular person who has ever done it in the last ten years,” he declares. “That’s my duty.”

"Affluent White Man Enjoys, Causes The Blues"