Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles
By: Noah Germolus
Tags: Blues, Music, John Mayer, Growth, Rock

For most of my driving years, I drove cars with CD players and no aux. In my junior year of high school, I dated someone who collected vast numbers of CDs. I was, and am against my better judgment, a collector. Not a devoted or systematic collector, mind you — I’m just a regular person who finds satisfaction in looking at a large variety of related objects. It’s been shiny rocks, Pokémon cards, books, and other objects that require no record-breaking, bank-busting, or extensive study. I could never commit to any one collection: I just have poor impulse control and a hearty sense of materialism, but this is not the place to explore my neurological flaws.

When I started collecting CDs, Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles was among the most heavily-played. If you have the means, throw it on and take a listen while you read. It’s seriously good, in a sort of non-objectionable way that manages to dig in a little at the same time. Maybe you think Mayer’s cocky and annoying. Maybe you think he steals his art from black musicians. Maybe you worship his guitar playing and want to be him someday. One or more of you may be right, but that’s moot here. Consider this a small memoir to a piece of art was the background music of many parts of my life.

I have a dear friend named Christian. About six years ago, Christian decided to perform some blues at our high school’s annual Coffee House. Revolutionary: a teenager crooning over some piano, covering Michael Bublé, who in turn was covering Nina Simone. It could have been mediocre, but Christian was no mere pubescent vocal peacock. He enlisted a girl we’d been in a musical with, and she had a rasp to make the goodiest of two-shoes want to start smoking. Past the two singers and Christian’s piano ability, a drummer joined the one-off group, and I was recruited on tenor sax to provide a little flair. Instrumentation promptly got nontraditional. Instead of bass and guitar, three more friends were recruited: a baritone sax and two alto saxes. Two vocalists, one drummer, and an entire saxophone quartet. Looking back, it’s easy to think it probably wasn’t tasteful, but at the time, we were feeling good.

If you trust my memory, the performance kicked hard. There’s a video somewhere, and it’s probably unimpressive. Cell phone video was lackluster in 2012, and the music itself was good for a musical menagerie of sixteen-year-olds. Regardless, nobody in that gymnasium had ever seen anything like it. Nothing could kill that vibe, not even my a capella performance later that day (that I did to impress a crush who, to this day, has no idea — or so I hope).

In the glow of this showcase, Christian planned our next high-riding romp: “I Don’t Need No Doctor.” When it was introduced to me, I thought of this as a John Mayer song. It isn’t. Like a man-child yelling that Columbus was the first man to discover America, I still only listen to Mayer’s cover. Christian and co. never performed “I Don’t Need No Doctor,” and he and I haven’t performed together since. The song never left my mind. The spiraling guitar hook, the enchanting nonchalance of the trumpet and sax solos, the vocal styling — it’s exactly the kind of performance that a person dreams about emulating while listening to it.

So began life’s undercurrent of the only John Mayer album that matters. I sang “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” to myself in the car (I’m doing it again right now), improvised along with “Vultures” in my bedroom, and enjoyed a strange kind of dual musical identity. This was the height of both my post-hardcore discovery phase and my dubstep phase, and the soft appeal of Live in Los Angeles was the socially acceptable counterpart to everything else I enjoyed at the time. Gradually, as with any album, I listened to Live In Los Angeles less and less over a few months. Summer came and went, and I had abandoned the album as a performance project, shelved it as a conversation piece.

The following year, snow fell heavy over Bismarck. I was in a relationship and a large part of our common ground was music. “Who Did You Think I Was” played, Emarosa’s self-titled the next slot in the changer, and she told me: “Be a man.” Nervously, tenderly, clumsily, I made out with another human being in the parking lot of a Buffalo Wild Wings. It was a winter to remember, and most of my junior year of high school was consumed by that relationship. It was the first time I really enjoyed the person more than the idea of a partner. When I wasn’t struggling with school or figuring out new and innovative ways to press my mouth against another person’s mouth, I was in the car driving to and from the Starbucks where she worked, to her mom’s house across the river, and back. She started lending me her CDs and I started buying my own, using that time in the car to enjoy what music had to offer. It was a glorious profusion of taste, so much so that John Mayer faded away yet again.

College was a time of even more discovery, said almost everyone ever. Somehow, Live In Los Angeles appeared in blips throughout. During a long drive — the date and vehicle I even fail to recall — Mayer came along for the ride and surprised me. The album had held up, burgeoning with new details I’d missed or songs I’d previously not paid much attention. It strikes me as significant: of all the times I’ve made the seven-hour sojourn from Minneapolis to Bismarck and back, why do I remember this trip for no other reason than the musical content? Even albums I would describe as having been favorites — Hands Like Houses’ Ground Dweller, Dinosaur Jr’s I Bet On Sky, The Dear Hunter’s Act I — all seem to be a little bit paler. Maybe it’s the style or production, but I have a hunch that there’s something enduring about Live In Los Angeles.

As we approach today, John Mayer keeps appearing in dual fashion. I know he’s still making new material and hear about it occasionally, but I don’t feel pulled to listen. Nobody I know talks to me about this material with enthusiasm; it’s all just the periphery of pop culture. On the other side of relevance, Live In Los Angeles has appeared in almost every musical group I’ve been a part of recently. The Empty Sets considered a cover, and the infamous “Bold As Love” monologue became a running gag among the five of us. I play saxophone now in a group here in Massachusetts, and we do an enjoyable rendition of “I’m Gonna Find Another You.”

Tonight, the first snow I’ve seen in Woods Hole is falling outside my office. It’s quiet except for the muffled bounce of “The Heart of Life,” the music like reminiscing with an old friend in this new and unfamiliar place. Soon I will walk home through the forest, plodding on the carpet of winter that I’ve walked on so many times. This is a night for remembering. Some things are comfortable only because they never change. Fond memories, how an inch of snow feels underfoot, and old songs blanketed with people and places that brought so much happiness — I will always have these.