It was shaping up to be a good long weekend. It really was. I had gotten hours of reading done, slept well for once, and, on the musical front, assembled tracks from Black Tambourine, The Shop Assistants, Tiger Trap and The Pastels into a basically perfect blob of indie pop for the bus. To top it all, I found a new Mexican restaurant in Winnipeg, one with vegan versions of almost all their standard dishes no less. But wouldn't you know it, John Mayer intruded on my day. The fucker is wont to do that.
For the second time in about a week, the retail outlet I was frittering away time in was playing a John Mayer album from beginning to end. God, how I wish I worked in one of those used bookstores where they place noise music just to drive away stupid assholes from their cuistomer base. But I digress. Really, the amount I hear John Mayer in public places is like a rock persistently lodged in my shoe. Honestly. But, the whole ordeal made me wonder why I have such a beef with John Mayer. It's not like he's really all that worse than any other lame-ass easy listening adult contemporary shit out there, and I probably listen to an hour of that garbage a day due to it constantly wafting through public places. Ultimately, I guess my problem with the guy is pretty similar to my problem with any other vand or musician I genuinely loathe, instead of just passively disliking. People actually respect him, and encourage him to get on his whole serious-legitimate-musician trip, which just cheapens the whole idea of listening to music for pleasure, really.
It's not that he's genuinely recording the worst songs out there, but I'm actually somewhat indifferent to the recording of bad music in and of itself. Who gives a shit. Most of it never leaves whatever localized area is inhabited by its progenitor and their friends; and even if it does get on the radio, its usually in the capacity of something I might hear while I'm waiting for a haircut, or on a commercial, but still, why do I give a fuck? The Black eyed Peas are the only thing in recent memory so bad and so ubiquitous that just hearing them causes me some level of anguish. What, ahem, grinds my gears is when people treat shitty pop singers like they're fucking tortured artists (artistes?) whose every awful, contrived piece of shit song is profound and deeply emotional. Fuck that. I have no qualm with pop music in general, and if some new soulless pop tune is crafty enough it'll probably be on my iPod, but what the fuck ground do assholes like John Mayer have to stand on as far as creating serious works that yield insights about anything at all, beyond appearing in black and white publicity photos where they appear to be contemplating something? Also, This also applies to Bon Iver, Coldplay, and the flat-out atrocious Mumford and Sons.
I've been accused of being too sarcastic, and using a wall of irony and snarkiness to avoid dealing with the world. That's probably true, but it's a much less wrenching characteristic in a person than fake sincerity. That's basically the problem with any of the previously mentioned assholes, and, really, the singer-songwriter movement at large. There's such a surplus of "maybe-if-chicks-think-I'm-sensitive-they'll-suck-my-dick" idiots in North America. Which is, by itself, pretty beningn. There are a lot of volcanoes in the world, and, as long as they're not erupting and killing people, why do i care? The problem with cloying, empty hacks like John Mayer is that way too many people actually take them seriously. We'll never get rid of them now. If I may generalize, artists like these seem to appeal to younger folks who describe music as "chill" and assume that anything midtempo at a fairly low volume must be intellegent. They also seem to love mamking shitty lyrics into even shittier facebook statuses. You know, because that shit really pertains to their lives. It speaks to them. All art appeals to peoples' vanity, but that takes it too far.
Also, they guy is a shitty guitar player. I mean, Christ, play with some feedback or something. Anytime caucasians claim to be playing "the blues," my eyes get ready to roll. When they're rcih, famous white people... I don't actually need to finish that sentence. Its ending is contained implicitly within its beginning. Even Stevie Ray Vaughan completely, utterly fails to impress me. So he bends the string a lot and died in a plane crash? Big deal. back to John Mayer, though. In any of his songs I've heard that have a lengthy guitar solo, it sounds like the worst parody of Eric Clapton when he just fully gave up and decided to start courting old people as an audience. Fuuuuck.
This seems like a good time to bring up people who have Bob Marley shirts and Bob Marley posters and regularly quote Bob Marley, but aren't actually familiar with any other reggae. Those people should be gassed to death.
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