John Mayer- Stop this Train

John Mayer is a tool.  In other shocking news: Atlanta is hot in the summer, the Yankees spend too much money, LeBron James can dunk and Tiger Woods isn't winning husband-of-the-year.  And I'm okay with it.  If you were going to make a list of the 10 best guitarists of the last 10 years, John in top 5.  He's an all-timer, and most all-timer's aren't nice guys.  Most star athletes are more like Michael Jordan than Bill Russell.  It's that weird catch-22 where to be the best, you kind of have to be a jerk.  Now, I don't really want to hang out with him, and wouldn't want him to date my sister, but this blog isn't a critique of John's personal life, it's about his music.  But if you want my critique on his personal life: on John's first record "Inside Wants Out" there's a song called "My Stupid Mouth", that was in 1999*.  Which is my way of saying this isn't anything new for him.  

So John is a jerk but plays a mean ax, let's talk about the ax part and why this is blog-worthy.  I chose "Stop this Train" because it's a really well written song that I feel a good connection to, but it also employs John's now famous** "picking and flicking" technique.  Without getting too techy, the picking and flicking technique is a right hand finger picking technique where the thumb slaps the bass note while the other fingers strum and pick then pick the higher notes.  This guy explains it better.  You can hear a variation of this technique early in John's playing on "Neon".  He uses it here on "Stop this Train" as well as "Heart of Life" and "Who Says".  A few things about this technique:  A)  I've never heard anyone else before John use it.  B)  It's really really complicated.  It takes a ton of practice, coordination and independence from your individual fingers to pull it off.  C)  It sounds really really good.  It adds a rhythmic quality to a simple finger picking song.  It's a sort of marriage of strumming and picking, taking the best qualities of both, and merging into one super-right-hand-technique (I call it a right-hand-technique because I'm right handed, I guess technically its a strumming-hand-technique but oh well, sorry lefties, percentage wise I know you're out there).

So "Stop this Train" is a really good song from a guitar standpoint, but it's also really good lyrically, and if you've read my other blogs, than you know that good lyrics go a long way with me.  It's also a song I've connected with a lot in recent years as it's about becoming a grown up and yearning to be a kid again.  Unfortunately, you can't stop the train, we all get older and we all have to grow up.  Being an adult isn't nearly as fun as being a kid, you've got responsibilities, bills, a job and various other things that keep you from that carefree life you lived as a kid.  It's a lot like sitting on a train.  Everything is moving by you, and it's going pretty fast, but you can't see where you're going and you have no control over it.  Who doesn't want to stop the train?  Not permanently.  Just for a minute.  Just a quick break to get out, look around and enjoy the place you are until you're ready to move on.  (Sorry to get metaphorical and deep, I'm still trying to digest the finale of Lost)

Also, it's interesting to insert a conversation with your father into a song lyric:

Had a talk with my old man

Said "help me understand"

He said "Turn 68,

You'll renegotiate,

Don't stop this train

Don't for one minute trade the place you're in"

Thanks for the advise John's Dad!  Now please tell your son to shut up and keep playing!  Click here to see a live acoustic video.

*I know the song was also on "Room for Squares" which is the more popular album but since "Inside Wants Out" was released 2 years earlier and I'm trying to make a point.

**Okay, so "famous" is a relative term.  It's famous among guitar geeks who watch instructional videos on youtube...I'm not saying I'm that guy.  I'm just saying, you know, there's people out there who do that stuff.

Josh Ritter Live at Variety Playhouse (a special concert review)

At the risk of "Over Ritter-ing" the blog, I'm going to review my man-crush's show from last Thursday.  I was lucky enough to attend the show and when you do a music related blog, you kind of owe it to yourself and others to review a concert, even if you've just written another blog about this artist and your man-crush is starting to reach levels where people are worried.  I promise in a day or so I will come down off this Ritter-binge I've been on and write about somebody else soon.  I quit whenever I want, really I can...

Josh Ritter- So Runs the World Away (as promised)

There's nothing like hearing a song and immediately falling in love with it.  That moment when you find yourself singing along to the second chorus even though you don't know the words and are only a minute and a half into your first listen.  That's what I felt when I streamed "Change of Time" off Josh's website weeks before the release of "So Runs the World Away".  I was hooked.  I love the way it transitions from a simple finger picking song to a big anthemic swell of horns guitars and pianos.  It got me excited for the new record.

If you're a complete music nerd like me(I know, I know, you have a "life" or whatever), there's nothing more interesting than listening to an artists' records in progression.  You can hear how they change, how they grow up, how that weird song on their second record that just doesn't seem to fit serves as a logical jumping point to the next record.  Josh's music does that beautifully.  "Hello, Starling" is a great folk-pop record, full of acoustic guitars, whispered vocals and quiet pianos.  It's ideal coffeeshop music.  "The Animal Years" pushes that music forward.  More guitars, more intensity, songs are bigger and bolder.  "The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter" is more of an explosion than a record.  A great big cacophony of pianos, guitars, horns and back up singers.  It's a fast, loud record about gunslingers and missile-silos. None of Josh's albums sound like the others, so it's hard to know what to expect.  In the same way that these records build on each other, but are completely independant of one another, "So Runs the World Away" follows that tradition.