More on John Mayer…

July 10th, 2005 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

At my brother’s wedding a week ago there was a string quartet playing, and the music that Skip and Whitney walked out to was the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby played by the quartet. It was very cool. My younger brother commented on how cool it was, and it reminded me that a while ago I heard about a string quartet tribute to John Mayer, but at the time I didn’t look into it.

Heavier Strings: A String Quartet Tribute to John Mayer’s Heavier Things is just what it says. It has string quartet renditions of every song from Heavier Things and an additional eleventh song, which I assume is an original, perhaps “influenced” by the stylings of Mayer. I am very interested as to how “Come Back to Bed” sounds. As soon as I have some spare change, I’ll let you know.

Heavier Strings is not the only Mayer tribute album. Not to be outdone, the bluegrass music community has produced their own tribute album, Pickin’ on John Mayer. “Each track,” the website says, “is filled with performances by some of the hottest Bluegrass musicians.” They also have two audio clip samples available, one for No Such Thing and one for My Stupid Mouth. They sound pretty cool, actually. These albums would probably make for really good background music for work, homework, sleeping, etc.

You may have heard of Any Given Thursday, the live album released between Room for Squares and Heavier Things, but you probably haven’t heard of As/Is. As/Is, recorded from various live shows in the summer of 2004, was originally released in five separate four-song albums exclusively on iTunes. For a while, I thought iTunes was the only way to get it, but I noticed last night that you can buy As/Is as a 14 track, 2-CD set at Awarestore. Don’t you worry, it’s already on the way to my house. You’ve got to hear the unbelievable rendition of “Come Back to Bed.”

Awarestore also has some old Mayer shirts for really good prices ($8.99), considering that you can pay up to $30 for a shirt at a concert.