John Mayer
Any Given Thursday [Live]
On Sale Now
For $15.48

By now, if you’re between 15 to 30 years old, you’ve heard of and fallen in love with John Mayer. Especially the ladies. The first thing that strikes you on Any Given Thursday is the screaming masses of girls. I imagine at this point Johnny has a panty collection that rivals that of any porn star. I asked my fiancé what all the fuss was about. Granted, as a dude I don’t know what qualifies other guys as attractive, but isn’t John kind of pasty with collagen-esque lips and raccoon eyes, or is it just me? Her response: “Put any guy on stage with an acoustic guitar and girls will fall for him”. There you have it.

Anyway, so he did play some songs on this album. In fact the first song started out horrifying. It was “3x5” and there was some sort of sound effect at the beginning meant to induce a seizure. Eventually it passed and gave way to a brilliant performance. I think the thing that struck me the most about the album was how polished John’s music sounds live. For better or worse, it sounds like he’s in the studio and the screaming is background noise on the track. Sometimes live music can take an effort to listen to, but this is a pleasure. It would be fairly safe to say he’s an excellent performer. In speaking to the crowd between songs you can catch a hint of cockiness in the sense that he’s a confident guy who knows his stuff is good. Also there is no indication that he doesn’t like to play live or that he’s bothered by the adoration. He plays the songs effortlessly and playfully.

With 15 tracks on the album, 10 of which were simply live versions of the songs on his debut release, I was more interested in the unreleased songs. The first new song to make a cameo is “Something’s Missing”. I would describe this song as a little more rock than JM’s normal poppy stuff. It has a more intense feel to it as far as John Mayer songs go. It shows off a different side of Mayer’s musical ability that perhaps “the man” i.e. record label, preferred he leave off of Room for Squares. This song was followed by “Lenny/Man on the Side”. Here again we see yet another side of Mayer’s musical ability and influences. Man on the Side is a bluesy rendition not experienced on the debut album. “Oh, I am the man on the side/ hoping you'll make up your mind/ I am the one who will swallow his pride/ life as the man on the side”. I found that the unreleased songs were rather lengthy “jam-out” songs where John more or less played whatever he felt like playing for however long.

“Man on the Side” is followed by a cover of the Police song, “Message in a Bottle”. I thought it to be an excellent rendition. Slower than the original, but I like John’s voice better than the original! Don’t get me wrong, I love the Police, but for some reason I always hear Sting as having a high-pitched accent in the original. Either way it made for a nice addition to the CD even though it was not actually an unreleased song. The next unreleased song was my favorite. This appeared as the 4th track on the second CD called “Covered in Rain”. This song easily runs about 10 minutes, time well worth it. Again its “jam” music, but it’s that kind of music that gets under your skin and you don’t want it to end. Makes you feel like sitting down and smoking a fat . . .uh, whatever. I like that you see some more of those great JM lyrics- “Firewoods to fire places/ Summer snow and fallen places/ now we're people watching other people, people watching you and I/ Standing by the missing signs at the CVS by the checkout line/ Put your tiny hands in mine/ Cause your the brightest thing I got”. And that ladies and gentleman is why the girls go crazy for pasty John. Finally we have “Comfortable”. The amazing thing about this song is that it wasn’t on the original release. Up to this point the unreleased songs were pretty different from most of what I’ve heard from John, but this was classic Mayer. This is a beautiful song that apparently is played at most of his live performances. It is soft and sincere and wonderfully written, check it out- “She thinks I can't see the smile that she's faking/ The poses for pictures that aren't being taken”. He goes on to say “Our love was comfortable/ and so broken in/ She's perfect, so flawless/ I'm not impressed”. In fact, I might have to change my mind and say this was my favorite of the unreleased songs. Like the title, it is just comfortable.

I always feel like a sell-out if I can’t be subjective and critical of an album. After all, there is no such thing as a perfect album. This was a rather difficult task considering that this of course is simply a live version of Room For Squares with some unreleased stuff. The ONLY thing I had a tiny qualm about was some of the “jam rock”. Every now and then Johnny would go on a Dave Mathews tangent where he would waste like 7 minutes playing his g-string. Some people, like Phish fans, love that stuff. But I went to a Dave concert once where he played for like an hour and a half and only played 10 songs because of all the jamming. Now for $40 I want to hear as many songs as possible. But in all fairness this show would have easily been worth $40. It sounded like a real gem of a concert and you can hear it for significantly less by buying the CD for yourself.

So now for the highlights and low-points. I loved the live version of “Why Georgia” and of course, “Your Body is a Wonderland”. I also loved the cover of “Message in a Bottle” and the new song, “Covered in Rain”. The low-point would have to be the beginning of “3x5”. That was dreadful. Other than that I would certainly recommend picking up the album, it sounds great. You’ll love this as much, if not more, than Room For Squares. High-five baby!

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