John Mayer and Sheryl Crow played the Pacific Coliseum last night.
Marjorie Fair opened the evening. Managed to catch the last two songs of their pop-rock set.
John Mayer and his band came on next. He started with Belief, followed by a solid rendition of Bigger Than My Body. For his set design, there was a backdrop of squares that would light up differently during songs. The pattern resembled the cover art for his debut album, Room For Squares.
Mayer as always displayed his strong blues repetoire and improvisation skills throughout his 1hr 15min performance. His extended intro to Vultures, and the song itself, were really well done. I find that John is a very underrated guitarist and musician, since most people who judge him too quickly only know his music through radio hits. What they don't know is that he also attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and has jammed with the likes of Buddy Guy, Herbie Hancock, and B.B. King amongst others.
Slow Dancing In A Burning Room, Gravity, and In Repair were also some highlights and featured some solid jams in them.
Setlist:
Belief
Bigger Than My Body
Vultures
I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You)
My Stupid Mouth
Why Georgia
Slow Dancing In A Burning Room
Daughters
Good Love Is On The Way
Gravity
Waiting On The World To Change
In Repair
Sheryl Crow then took the stage and closed out the co-headlining show on this night. Her and John are in the midst of a North American tour and are both taking turns headlining shows.
Accompanied with Crow onstage were a backing band along with a four piece string section that nicely added to the sound. Sheryl played a decent set musically, with some good performances of My Favourite Mistake, Redemption Day, and Strong Enough.
What really lacked though was the energy in the room during her performance. We had a very mellow Vancouver crowd on this night that didn't want to stand during the show. I find that's okay in some intimate theatre performances, but when you're at an arena rock show and you see most of the people on the floor and in the stands sitting down for the headliner, that's kind of a problem.....though I must note that we did have an older audience demographic for the most part attending the show.
Still, the responsibility lies in both the artist and the audience to make something of the concert and performance. It's the artist's responsibility to work the crowd and get them involved in the show, physically and/or emotionally. At the same time, a performer feeds off the energy of their audience.....so it becomes the responsibility of the crowd to reciprocate that energy back onto the stage.
It didn't really make sense when Sheryl got the crowd to sing a few lines, hear mostly silence from the audience, then have her go through the motions and say "You guys are great!".....wtf.....no we definitely were not.....and this happened a few times during her set.
It wasn't til the encore that people actually decided to get on their feet and somewhat applaud her and the band. Sheryl's Led Zeppelin cover of Rock N Roll at the end was fun at least.
Setlist:
Change Would Do You Good
Hard To Make A Stand
My Favourite Mistake
First Cut Is The Deepest
Mississippi
Good Is Good
It Don't Hurt
Redemption Day
Home
Strong Enough
Real Gone
Steve Mcqueen
Soak Up The Sun
Everyday Is A Winding Road
If It Makes You Happy
Rock N Roll
***
Found a copy of When Harry Met Sally for $1 yesterday. Best dollar I've spent all week.
