Who Can Argue With a Free John Mayer Concert?

"I have been a douche at times."
- John Mayer @ Hotel Cafe on June 14th

A couple of nights ago, I had an experience that I can only define as "completely unique to Los Angeles." A friend had heard from a friend who had heard from his sister who had read on Twitter--yeah--that John Mayer was playing an impromptu set at the Hotel Cafe. Big whoop, right? But his Twitter note came with another descriptor: "5 dollar show." Annnnnnd, now we're talking. Because whether you like John Mayer or not, you're not going to pass up a $5 concert on a Sunday night. Especially when it's a hugely successful musician like Mayer. Because I may be a music snob, but I'm not a general retard.

As four of us stood in a line of at least 100--and growing--I contemplated the schematics of this situation for a moment. At 8:55 PM, John Mayer posts on his Twitter page that he'll be playing at 11:30 PM. At 9:33 PM, we find out about it. At 10:28 PM, we arrive at Hotel Cafe, in Hollywood. That means, in 93 minutes, John Mayer rallied over 100 people via the Internet to see him play a show on a Sunday night. At 10:29 PM, I start to re-evaluate my opinion about the usefulness and popularity of Twitter.

There was a cog in this little scheme, though, which turned out to be the patrons already inside Hotel Cafe at the time John announced his show. Once word crept in, those same people decided to stay, which meant that only a handful of us outside were getting into the already packed bar. And yet, we all held onto faith. On three separate occasions, a promoter/bouncer/manager/dipshit came out of the club to tell the line (rapidly lengthening to something of a riotous mob in line for a Harry Potter movie) that "the show is all sold out. No one else is getting in. So go home. Please." And each time, a few of the lesser fans would fall away, letting us inch closer to the door.

(Note: fans in this sentence relates to fans of cheap shit, and not necessarily John Mayer's cheap shit. Though it's possible.)

Photo Courtesy of Just Jared.

And then...the man arrived. The man who was advertising a "5 dollar show" was here to play that very same 5 dollar show. The coolest thing? He drove himself into the little back alley where we stood, parked his car beside the line, grabbed his own gear and headed inside, leaving his Porsche parked in a back alley...alongside a hundred star-struck fans. He must have had a separate guitar case for his balls somewhere in the back of that Porsche. Paparrazi flashes be damned if I didn't get a good solid glimpse of "that guy who played that song about bodies being wonderlands." Neat. But he didn't say a word to anyone, didn't look toward the general direction of the crowd, and didn't respond to my announcement of "fuckin' Twitter. Yeah!" What...a...douche.

Having witnessed Mr. Growley-Face mope his way into the venue, I was less concerned about seeing him play. My posse stood strong, though, and that meant that I did too. We stood that way for another half an hour after the show had started. In the alley, talking to the paparazzi. Fuck me. No, wait, fuck John Mayer. I doubted we would even catch him coming back out, let alone see him sing any chords. I'll tell you this, though, I was this close to peeing on his windshield wipers. Thankfully, after a few of the longer moments a person can have had passed, an incredibly pierced hostess came to let the stragglers hear the remaining Mayer-time. "He's not done yet, but I don't know how long he'll keep playing for." The crowd of now perhaps 14 scurried inside.

I thought to myself, "Self, I'm not paying 5 bucks to hear this newly-proven d-bag maybe play half of a song." And then the hostess said, "You don't have to pay. You can just go in." At least, I'm assuming she said the second thing, I'm not really sure because I was already standing 20 feet from John Mayer inside Hotel Cafe.

Dimly lit and intimate as all get-out, the inside of that place was cool beans. John was mid-solo in some bluesy little jam when I entered. Being a bit of a guitar nerd, hearing him bust out some cleanly-plucked blues ditties made me smile and like him just a little more, but not as much the story he was about to tell would. In between songs, he spoke to the crowd with a sense of humor--though, thankfully, not from his stand-up act--and introspection. These two things mixed in a coming-of-age story, wherein he admitted (wholeheartedly) to the small audience that he had been a huge douchebag in the past, and that he was working on it. In the same story, he told us not to be the "beta" to anyone else's "alpha," meaning that we should not take guff from people. He relayed the much-recounted TMZ segment, where Mayer came stumbling out of a bar with lipstick marks covering his face and slurring about how drunk he was, which--spoiler--turned out to be a prank. And while I had previously fallen on the side of the TMZ reporters who lauded Mayer as "lame" and "sad," the argument Mayer gave for himself was hard to counter. He said in plain terms that he had fun and no one should judge him for that. He did something he thought was enjoyable and then had a good chuckle over it. You can't get much cleared than that.

Photo Courtesy of Alejandro De Cruz.

I enjoyed his insightful musings on life, but that's not what I (hadn't) paid for! I (hadn't) paid to hear music! So he played some things old, and some things new, some things borrowed, and some things blue. And, fine, I'll just come out and say it: he was fucking goooood. He may not be Eric Johnson, but he's pretty damn solid. I want to share with you a small, lyrical snippet from a new, in-the-works song he played. It goes:

" Anything other than yes is no. Anything other than stay is go.
Anything less than 'I love you' is lying. "

Whether you like John Mayer or despise the very fingers he uses to play the guitar, you have to agree that those are words to live and breathe by.

After the show, he continued the slow dropping of his cape of douchi-ness and stayed to sign tons of autographs and take what felt like thousands of pictures. He defaced Emily's wallet (don't worry, she asked him to).

I walked into the alley behind Hotel Cafe a fan of cheap, live music and went home a pretty sizeable fan of John Mayer. I won't be asking him to autograph my genitals or see him star in a summer action movie anytime soon, but I think I'll consider picking up his next album.


This Entry In Song:
John Mayer - "Heart of Life"

Be Back Soon,
Shaky Jake