Issue date: 2/19/07 Section: Features

Media Credit: Photo courtesy of Nikki Marino

The lights dim. The crowd falls silent for a sliver of a moment and then roars with excitement.

Out walks John Mayer in his "ready-to-jam" pose. In the midst of his Continuum tour, he stopped at the U.S. Cellular Coliseum in Bloomington Saturday night, welcomed by thousands of screaming fans.

Despite the lack of parking spots and mounds of snow, the concert was packed with college students and older folks alike.

Looking amongst the crowd, it was obvious the people in attendance were there for more than simple entertainment.

It seemed as though everyone in the audience knew every word to all of Mayer's songs and did not skip a beat.

Mayer's signature smooth voice aroused the crowd the second he began to sang. The lighting added to Mayer's dramatic and original voice. Blues and reds enveloped the stage, spotlighting the singer. A clever design that resembled his old "Room For Squares" album cover, with squares and lights of different shades, lined the back of the stage. Occasionally, the increasingly blurring smoke coming from the stage took the focus off the mood when the light shined in the crowd, practically blinding the audience.

The perspicuity of the performance itself was what kept the audience engaged. While performing the tunes the audience expected, both from the past as well as his new CD "Continuum," Mayer still put his own live twist on old favorites.

While playing an old hit titled "Why Georgia" acoustically, Mayer made it interesting by adding slightly different tunes and emotion. This conjured many fans' memories of the "old" John Mayer.

"To play a song like Georgia, [which was] written seven or eight years ago, and to feel like I just wrote it yesterday is amazing," Mayer said in reaction to the audience's involvement.

What is extraordinary about the singer is that he is capable of writing and performing different genres of music, combining them into something awe-inspiring, and doing it exactly the right way every time. From pop to blues, Mayer makes each song and style his own.

The audience's interests shifted suddenly part way through the show, however, when a fan spotted Jessica Simpson in a section blocked off within the audience. Fortunately, Mayer's music eventually drew the crowd back in to what they were originally there for.

The transition back to the music was effortless, in part, because of the exceptional sound quality of the venue.

Continued...

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