"There's a pianist here who had her Carnegie Hall debut when she was eight! I mean, geez! When I was eight, I was just sitting around, picking my nose!"
HAHAHAH.
I went to John Mayer's concert at Shoreline a few nights ago. In my humble opinion, I think a main difference between classical music and popular music these days is, experiencing a live performance for classical music (like going to a concert) is usually better than experiencing a recorded performance (listening to a CD or the radio). Whereas, in popular music, the artists sound better on recordings than in real life. In general. Owl City opened for John Mayer, and it was pretty disappointing...I usually like their songs, although they all sort of sound the same. But seeing them live was such a boring experience. I couldn't appreciate the lyrics (their strong point, for me), because it was so loud that the words were indistinguishable. They didn't have much of a presence, and the quality of music-making was kind of non-existent, since apparently most of it was pre-recorded (LAME).
Then, John Mayer bounded on stage, and my heart sighed a million sighs of relief. Real music at last. He is one of the few artists of the day I believe is infinitely better live than recorded. The spontaneous and incredible guitar solos, the sweat flying off his face, the IMPROV...there was one part when the saxophonist in his band (Bob Reynolds) was improvising a lead-in to their next song. It was the most tender and intimate sound, the notes fluttering out of his instrument soft and light and sensuous, like white butterflies or little neck kisses, one after another. Beautiful. After a while, John Mayer walked over and started improvising with him, each of them intertwining his own thread of notes with the other's, as it blossomed into this organic, round climax...until the recognizable tunes of the next song finally spilled out, like a heaving sigh of satisfaction.
His band is amazing, too. Especially the saxophonist. Pheww...be still, my heart!
