John Mayer

Got the chance to see John Mayer in concert in Co-Co-Columbia on Thursday night. It was a good concert, possibly suited to a more intimate setting than the arena at the Colonial Center. He just didn't seem to have enough "show" for the crowd -- although boys and girls alike seemed to be swooning over his perfectly humble and awkward stage persona. He only played about an hour, considerably less than say, ... Springsteen or Paul McCartney or Tom Petty or even Elton John -- who is, by the way, a bonafide diva. His concert was also missing most of the bells and whistles we tend to see, like, everywhere these days when we go to concerts. No jumbo tron, just a few little lights that emerged from behind a curtain during the first number -- leaving us to expect great things from them, which never materialized. But for the pure of heart, it was a nice show. And the audience was well behaved for the most part. Fiona just has one suggestion. If you are a middle-aged person and are planning to attend a concert in the future, do yourself a favor and give yourself a few nights out on the town before this event. Go ahead and booze it up a little during those nights out -- have a good time like you used to when you were in school. Or if you've never really given yourself these nights on the town that I'm talking about -- and maybe you still have some wild seeds to sew, some houses to burn down, then go ahead and sew those seeds, burn those houses, before you go to your next concert. Get that stuff out of your system in advance so that on the night of the concert you can maybe have a beer or two, relax a little, even boogie in your seat some. But don't waste the price of your ticket -- not to mention the experience of seeing the show and the memories that will provide -- by getting so snookered before the concert even starts that your eyes are rolling back in your head and your hips are doing that undulating, hump-y thing that makes everyone around you throw up a little in their mouths. Goodness! It really makes the rest of us mid-lifers feel embarrassed for you. And for all of us. The three ladies sitting in front of us were so potted and so much more into each other than John Mayer (and these are heteros I'm talking about) that they left when he sang No Such Thing and Waiting on the World to Change. Plus they were doing this funky thing with their hands -- sort of like ... hand dancing. It got a little creepy.