John Mayer

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Review: The many tentacles of Jason Spooner's Sea Monster

Get kraken
Jason Spooner is an amalgamation of John Prine and John Mayer — great songs and great hair, all in one package. Their aesthetics are similar, too. Sure, there are important and wounded songs in the bag, but these guys aren't afraid to have a good time, either.
By SAM PFEIFLE | November 16, 2010

By | January 01, 0001

The Big Hurt: Lightfoot lives!

Plus Weezy tweets and Mayer backpedals
Last week, the world was gripped in the terror of a GORDON LIGHTFOOT death scare when a realistic-looking Twitter obit was picked up by several Canadian papers.
By DAVID THORPE | March 02, 2010

By | January 01, 0001

Soul training

Suddenly, Mayer Hawthorne is running retro-pop
Mayer Hawthorne rose to instant retro-pop acclaim the same way that everyone from Al Green to Michael Jackson moved on up — work and luck.
By CHRIS FARAONE | September 22, 2009

Can classical be underground?

Portsmouth's Navona Records releases an indie aesthetic for orchestra
At least one of the reasons many of us contemporary-music fans don't get into classical music is because it seems like no one wants us to listen to it.
By SAM PFEIFLE | November 14, 2008

Hearts of gold

Pete Kilpatrick Band make like Obama and hope
Pete Kilpatrick’s burgeoning career is a microcosm of the near-chaos that is the current state of the music industry.
By SAM PFEIFLE | October 02, 2008

Festival casualties ’08!

A grim reminder that rock can still maim you
A young man died of meningitis, which doctors believe he contracted by sharing joints with contagious hippies at the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival.
By DAVID THORPE | July 21, 2008

Popular douches, hetero boyfriends, and softie gangstas

The Big Hurt tackles Tori Amos, Pete Wentz, and Ice Cube
I invite those of you who hate me to take a moment to delight in my pain.
By DAVID THORPE | June 17, 2008

Keys to our hearts

Interview: Alicia Keys on first love, the White Stripes, and being a Bob Dylan muse
"I’ve never been someone that goes to the ‘it’ places and does the ‘it’ things and goes to the ‘it’ restaurant and go to the ‘it’ club. I like more off-the-beaten-path kind of things."
By JASON O'BRYAN | June 06, 2008

Dance, Monkey: Dan Hirshon

We put a visiting comic on the hot seat. This week’s victim . . .
Marriages don’t always turn out the way you think they’re going to. Make sure you have a way out of it if things don’t go as planned.
By SARAH FAITH ALTERMAN | May 13, 2008

Guitars are from Mars, Feist and Björk are from Venus

A musical battle of the sexes
It’s 3 am. Do you know if you’re a man or a woman?
By JAMES PARKER AND SHARON STEEL | March 19, 2008

Call and response

Satisfying a growing crowd with a Playtime Music Session
We’ve had the pleasure here in Portland of watching a number of great singer/songwriters develop their careers into something substantial recently.
By SAM PFEIFLE | February 20, 2008

Eric Clapton: Crossroads Guitar Festival 2007

Rhino
Every so often in Crossroads Guitar Festival 2007 you can see the beaming host, Eric Clapton, behind a stack of amps shooting photos of his fellow performers.
By JEFF TAMARKIN | January 22, 2008

Happy endings

Bad news begets good tunes
The end is nigh! And I’m not talking about the mortgage market.
By MATT ASHARE | September 12, 2007

So wrong they're Righteous

These brothers make their own rules
Less than two years into their existence, the Self-Righteous Brothers already have a press kit worth of raves.
By BRETT MILANO | July 25, 2007

Brett Dennen + Pete Kilpatrick

Music seen at Space, July 21, 2007
Brett Dennen looks alarmingly young despite wardrobe choices that reference Jimi Hendrix.
By SONYA TOMLINSON | July 25, 2007

Live Earth 2007

Where to go, who to see, what to know — even if you don't have a ticket
So you’re headed to a Live Earth gig somewhere, whether outside New York City or in a remote outpost in Antarctica.
By JEFF INGLIS | July 10, 2007

Going on sale: May 4, 2007

Breaking news from the concert ticket trade
Mirah, John Mayer, Goo Goo Dolls, and more.
By GOING ON SALE | April 30, 2007

Sing Now or Forever Hold Your Peace

Cheesier than a capella Coldplay
It’s not so much the music that’s annoying about college a cappella (though it’s that, too).
By NINA MACLAUGHLIN | April 25, 2007

Going on sale: April 6, 2007

Breaking news from the concert ticket trade
Flyleaf, Great Lake Swimmers, Elvis Costello, and more.
By GOING ON SALE | April 03, 2007

Voicing dissent

Letters to the Boston editor: March 23, 2007
I have no beef with your story “ Culture War .”
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | March 21, 2007

Making a connection

Phil Ayoub follows his Heart
He has a fan club and an MBA, which might not make all that much sense.
By BOB GULLA | March 07, 2007

The flying Scotsman

Paolo Nutini soars across the pond
“I don’t usually come across as all that interesting in interviews,” admits 20-year-old Paolo Nutini over the phone from a gig in Stockholm.
By MIKAEL WOOD | January 29, 2007

Sex, Iraq, and pop culture

The war for our attention
How many times a day do you think about sex? How many times a day do you think about the war in Iraq?
By ELLEE DEAN | January 11, 2007

Laughter from space

Buddy Guy’s royal blues
A History of Violence was a tense mob movie, but that title could also serve a documentary about Buddy Guy’s guitar attack.
By TED DROZDOWSKI | December 12, 2006

Larger than life

Two kinds of triumph from Jay-Z and the Game
Although predictions that Jay-Z, in his comeback, would pull in the biggest sales numbers of the year were proved wrong (at 680,000, his Def Jam release Kingdom Come ranks third behind Rascal Flatts and Justin Timberlake in 2006), that’s hardly the story worth telling.
By MATTHEW GASTEIER | December 06, 2006

Technopolis lost

A development dream that didn’t come true
It was a grand vision. Maybe even a noble one. “TECHNOPOLIS.”
By MARTY D. WOLFAND | December 06, 2006

Mr. Crafty

Brett Rosenberg solves a few problems
When Brett Rosenberg and I meet for an interview in Porter Square, we keep getting distracted by the sight of Al Kooper walking past Bruegger’s Bagel Bakery. Brett Rosenberg, "Absolutely Not" (mp3)
By BRETT MILANO | September 21, 2006