THANK YOU. I’m glad someone realizes the difference between being technically proficient and being a real blues player.

As he has evolved over the years, he has become a much better guitarist. He now plays some mean blues — not at the same level as Buddy or SRV, but he is getting better.

Buddy Guy is a name pretty much only because he runs an exploitive business in which he hocks a faux-black experience to tourists in Chicago who don’t want to be around black people that haven’t been paid to smile. SRV was a hell of a guitarist pretty much from the time he released his first album. Neither of those figures has anything to do with Mayer, though.

Mayer is part of a pattern that has existed in American music for a long time. He’s a privileged white guy who is passingly proficient on a technical level with a certain genre of traditionally black music whose presence makes it OK for other privileged white people to listen to that music. He’s Elvis, Pat Boone, the Beatles before they started hitting the drugs hard. He’s non-threatening and middle of the road. Most importantly, he lacks the experience which contributes to what made the original music interesting in the first place. Listening to guys like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf is interesting precisely because the emotional content of the music is raw and immediate. It is produced by flawed men who are singing from their own experiences and make music because it is something they simply cannot not do. John Mayer is to these men what riding on the It’s A Small World ride at Disneyland is to international travel.

On another level, he’s a classic example of the virtuso without a soul. He is technically proficient, he can do some mildly impressive things with a guitar, but there is no emotional connection, no musical expression. Listening to a Mayer song is like watching someone rebuild a transmission, technically impressive but not exactly stimulating. Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and Yngwe Malmsteen are all incredibly proficient guitarists technically, but they have skill without feeling. They have nothing to say. Mayer is no different.

Oh, dear GODS, so *he’s* the one that wrote that craptastic tune! Aaaaaugh! I listened to the lyrics *once* and now change the channel any time it comes on, because obviously all women become mothers. And only mothers. And that’s the only reason to be good to your kids. And I cannot bear to listen to that crap one. more. time. *head/palm smack!* (And unfortunately, the tune — which is also inane — itself sticks in one’s head for freaking *ever*….)

Inane. The interview was just inane in the “I’m too cool to answer your questions so I’m just gonna sit here and be an ass” kind of way. Like he couldn’t have said “I really don’t feel qualified to weigh in on that matter; can we move to something else?” Ass.

Thank you, women of Feministe, for a) honing my skills for analyzing pieces of crap like that song, and b) identifying this idiot for me so I can avoidavoidavoid.

Since then I just call it the Pedophilia Song.

LOL

I don’t like *him* though, even as a musician, largely because of that load-of-shit “Daughters” — oh, and also this one. It’s a habit for him.

I can tell you this much
I will marry just once
And if it doesn’t work out
Give her half of my stuff
It’s fine with me
We said eternity
I will go to my grave
With the love that I gave
Not just some melody line
On a radio wave
It dissipates
And soon evaporates
But home life doesn’t change

I think his music is boring, but this gives me yet another reason not to like him.

And his attempts at snarky deflections ranged from unfunny to offensive — I would have expected them to come from a high school freshman.