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Holy crap! I don’t sound like complete ass! Here is mp3 evidence:
The People That Walked In Darkness
Right?

Oh yes. This happened.

You’re right, I have had professional vocal training!

I’ve had my copy of John Mayer’s new album, “Battle Studies,” for a week now, so I thought I’d share my thoughts. First, a little disclosure: I love John Mayer, and would probably be willing to modify my personal anatomy if he asked me to be the bearer of his golden children. Also, I’m not a professional critic, I just like music. Anyway, my thoughts:

• First hearing: it sounds like John had been listening to a bunch of music, and occasionally said “Wow, that’s a great song, I want to write a song like that.” The first track, “Heartbreak Warfare,” is so similar to U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name” that it’s hard to decide if it’s an homage or just a ripoff. I can only assume he wrote “Half Of My Heart” and “War Of My Life” immediately after multiple listenings of Jackson Browne’s album, “Alive” (a wildly spectacular CD, by the way). “Who Says” is…well, frankly it sounds just like “Stop This Train” from John’s last album, “Continuum.” “Crossroads” is a cover of the standard Cream song, and is remarkably original given that the band plays all the same notes as Eric, Bruce, and Ginger. Then you find something like “Assassin,” which is a fantastic rock song that I almost wish was sung by someone with an edgier voice. “Edge of Desire,” “All We Ever Do Is Say Goodbye,” and “Perfectly Lonely” are standard Mayer fare; soft guitars, gentle lyrics, sweet melodies. “Edge” stands out for its long musical exploration, almost evoking 19th-century-style symphonic development. (Was that a sufficiently douchey, pretentious comment to make this a proper music critique? Good.)

  
  In all, the first hearing rather left me cold. This should have warned me, since I’m pretty sure his “Continuum” and “Heavier Things” albums did exactly the same thing.



• Second hearing: Hmmm. These are good songs.


• Third hearing: OMG LULZ “Half Of My Heart” is the BEST SONG EVA WTF!!1!1!1!? It’s a pleasant “duet” with Taylor Swift, who continues to be the best thing happening in country music. I put duet in quotes because really she just serves as a backup singer, delivering a few solo lines to echo John late in the song. Possibly the best lyrics on the CD:
  

  Half of my heart is a shotgun wedding to a bride with a paper ring

  
  It seems kinda silly out of context, but trust me it is SO GOOD. I believe it’s going to be the second single, so if you were disappointed by “Who Says” (which is a decent song, but probably the 6th best one on the album), keep an ear out for it.

John Mayer consistently releases albums that kind of irk me at first listen, and then grow on me quicker than mold in your mom’s basement¹. I take this to mean one of two things. Either

1. John Mayer is consistently expanding his musical sensibilities, getting better with very album.


2. I love him so much that he could release a spoken word album of Muppets quotes and I’d post a glowing review.

I’m not ruling out either one.

Footnotes:

1 (She lives in filth, dude. Seriously, stage an intervention.)

Saturday night, I managed to make it to the fall Ychromes concert. The show was pretty damned fine; good arrangements, fantastic soloists, and a few nice touches. I’m still hoping to see the 2nd act video turn up on Youtube, because it was so funny I peed in my pants just a little bit. They also did a really fantastic tribute to Colin Hines, alumnus #54, who sadly passed away last week of complications from leukemia. (I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Cancer, you are a serious douche. Please stop killing people.) And in the 4 days between Colin’s passing and the concert, some of our smarter members managed to pull together the Colin Hines Memorial Scholarship Fund, and raised $3000 to be split between the Chromes, and Leukemia research. It was a pretty memorable evening.

Did I take pictures? Of course I did.

I even managed to spend some time at Klondike Kate’s without drinking anything (a remarkable feat, given the booze that was flowing freely), since the local constabulary had been kind enough to set up a DUI checkpoint 15 feet from the parking lot where my car resided. A fantastic evening.

Oh: best shirt ever.

Crazy busy today, so posting may be light, but my friend Sarah sent this to me and I enjoyed the hell out of it:

Stand By Me | Playing For Change | Song Around The World from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

This is completely brilliant in every way. It’s like Mary Poppins, or something.

Here is why I don’t normally watch American Idol: because of hacks like Allison Whatsherbutt, who deafened me for a while last night. She sang “Someone To Watch Over Me,” one of the best songs ever put to lined paper, like a pig in an abattoir. Good job, Allison: you can song really frickin’ loud. Is that all you have to offer? Really?

Here’s the thing that, if you’re lucky, you’ll learn somewhere down the line: singing is often about subtlety. Loud is merely the first step in learning how to sing. I know literally dozens of people who can sing loud. I know a very limited number who can sing softly, and more importantly, know which to do at any given time.

“Someone To Watch Over Me” is wistful, almost a bedtime prayer. Belting it out at the top of your lungs is like playing a lullabye on a piccolo trumpet directly into your baby’s ear. It’s like a Frost poem through a megaphone. It’s like waking up your sleeping spouse by kneeing him in the testes.

Sadly, <SPOILER ALERT>you’ll be there after tonight</SPOILER ALERT>, so next week perhaps you can commit voice rape on a Norah Jones song, or something. Color me “not watching.”

This puts a grin on the face of any old-school tech dweeb, which I only barely qualify as, due to my beautiful youth. Enjoy: Bohemian Rhapsody on Atari 800XL, TI-99, 8-inch floppy, 3.5-inch hard drive, and HP ScanJet 3C.

Yesterday was Sarah’s birthday (she’s heck of old), so we went to Red Robin (which recently opened near us, and which we had been advised was rad) to get some burgers and meet up with friends. There were perhaps 15 of us, 5 of which were small children. I spent most of my time making sure Charles didn’t eat silverware, but here’s what I came away with:

• The burgers are fantastic. I had something with egg on it, and I say, anything you can do to add fat and protein to my meat, DO IT. (More on this later.)
• The fries are free. Let me repeat that: the fries are free. And they just keep bringing them to you, like tortilla chips at Mexican restaurants. And they’re not little cheapy fries, but enormous steak fries, one of which was the length of my forearm. I wouldn’t want to meet that potato in a dark alley! Ha ha!
• The burgers aren’t bad reheated and feasted upon the next day, either.

It wasn’t haute cuisine, but it was good, and Red Robin himself was there, to the mirthful delight of all. If I could describe Charles’s response to the enormous mascot, it would probably have to be “speechlessly enamored.” Sarah even got a picture with RR, which I can’t find at the moment or I would have scanned in.

I’ve been in a pretty serious burger mood recently for some reason; Friday night, I took a last minute trip to NYC with my parents and ate at the Ben Ash Deli, known worldwide as “The Deli Across The Street From the Carnegie Deli Which Is More Famous.” Like all good NYC delis, the meals are enormous. I got a basic bacon cheeseburger, which contained a half-pound of beef and easily another half-pound of bacon. As I was eating it, I somehow finished the beef first, and was left with a bun and a handful of bacon. I actually had to stop: I had had enough bacon. This has never, EVER happened before. My mother wondered if I was feeling okay.

We were in New York, incidentally, to see the St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys sing the Bach St. Matthew Passion; it was last minute ’cause my rents were going with a friend who had to back out. It was, nevertheless, 8 bombs of awesome. They had TWO orchestras of “period instruments” (wooden flutes, weird fat oboe things, old-style violins strung with catgut and bowed with tree limbs or something), a good gaggle of soloists, and of course St. Thomas Church, which is a rather resonant place to sing. Plus the conductor looked like an Austrian Richard Marx. I was going to shout “PLAY HAZARD” during a tender moment, but my mom grabbed my arm skin with her fingernails like she used to do when I misbehaved in my vigorous youth.

The Phillies preview is TOTALLY COMING, I swear! I might even throw in something about how my fantasy baseball draft went! I’m sure you’ll be thrilled. Hint: Mark Teahen is the highlight of my team. It’s going to be a GREAT season.

I have acquired an organ.

Seriously, you have to click the image to see the full glory of it. Particularly the missing leg on the right. It sounds kinda sickly (I’ve been trying to create an mp3 of myself playing it, but I can’t find the drivers for my little recording doodacky), and just feels, uh, dusty.

I love it.

If I can figure out how to make my recording doodacky work, I’ll post a sound file of the joy later.