john mayer's a tool

so i was watching youtube videos of john mayer last night playing the guitar. he is a well trained musician. he seems to have pretty good technique, some of his solo compositions on the john mayer trio album are fairly interesting. but face it the dude is a tool!

before i start w/ the spitting and the vitriol, let me here give my best definition of what i think a tool is. i believe a tool is a person who acts disenegenuous. they are somewhat who allows themself to be just another tool or cog in the giant capitalist machine. now i understand that they may personally benefit financially from these deciscions, but the romantic in me abhors. what about the desire to create something unique? what about personal views that you really want to express? everyone has to have something that is uniquely theirs, why do you subdue them in order to financial or politcal or popularity etc. gains? it's like the business school kids who wear suits to class everyday. why on earth do you wear a suit to your sophomore intro to marketing class? why not go in pajamas, or try not shaving for a week? you are in college, enjoy yourself, it may be the last time you have.
although many business students seem to be in the throngs of tooldom, what perplexes me even more is artists who give into the pressures of tooldom and make "conservative," calculated, shlock that appeals to the lowest common cultural denominator. it seems like if anyone should want to think outside the box and express THEIR OWN ideas it should be artists, more than lawyers, businessmen, doctors etc. This brings me to my beef w/ jm's toolbox status.

my first bone to pick is his guitar tone. maybe it's because i dont like stevie ray vaughan and every new blues guitarist who has made it after him seems to idolize him and his corny texas rodeo blues tone. it just sounds like jm is following in the long streem of contemporary blues guitarist who have aped srv's tone. i really wished that the texas blues tone had died in the 80's after clapton stopped playing it. so that is my first argument, that he ape's srv, a musician who spent his entire worshipping the music made by hendrix instead of expanding his vision onto new horizons as hendrix certainly would have. i'm sorry, but jm's attempt at copying srv who try as he might, was unable to succesfully plagarize hendrix reeks of the kind of unoriginal musicianship which tools in the music industry posses.

second, the guy dated jessic simpson? i mean yeah guys like attractive women, but REALLY? call me naive, romantic and somewhat idealistic about what goes on between the ears of artists, musicans etc., but i like to think that most of them are deeper than the average joe six pack. i hope that they do more than just sit around and mutter to themselves nonsensical ramblings of "dude she's hot......i could get her.........she's hot...........dude................hot..........haught." but jm and jessica simpson's fling seems to prove me wrong. i guess he is somewhat of a pop music tart himself, but she is a bubble gum musician, seriously? i really am speechless at what an intelligent or thoughtful man would want in her, she doesn't strike me as the kind who thinks a lot about non-hair care products.

lastly, i will bring this backc to my original reason for writing this, the youtube video. watch the little dance at 1:39 into it. it sickens me. the dance is shameless. it makes me feel dirty inside just like chris farley's chippendale act. not only does the dance sicken me, but it is the willingness to be what the fans want him to be which apauls me. it seems to be a complete nod to entertain the females in the audience. compare the shrieks before and after the "move." do you think he is ignorant of his female crowds desires? it doesn't seem like a logical progression from the dirty blues riff he is playing, but rather an expression of his desire to appeal to the lowest common denominator. this smacks of tooldom. this is why i believe that john mayer is a tool

well i hope that my diatribe has been enlighten, or at least partially entertaining.

here's a link to someone else who agrees that john mayer is a tool