Something Like Triceratops
The last two John Mayer albums have been chock-full of straight blues tunes. "Queen Of California", "Speak For Me", "Wildfire", and "Dear Marie" are all basically 1-4-5, and about half of the rest of the songs on both records are some variant of that, usually with a more complicated pre-chorus. Finally, there's "Something Like Olivia", which is an absolutely conventional blues song that is interchangeable with a thousand other songs from "Tush" to the solo parts of "Stolen Moments".
So what's special about this video, and how does Mayer's treatment of the blues --- waaaaaaiiiiiit forrrrr ittttt --- apply to automotive journalism?
Nobody who has ever picked up a guitar would doubt this for a moment, but John Mayer is virtually a perfect storm as a blues/pop/rock guitarist. He is easily six foot three so the instrument is easy for him to manipulate; he has monstrous hands that make it easy for him to do in a single position what it would take most people two or three different hand positions to accomplish. I don't have small hands --- I wear between an 11 and 12 glove most of the time --- and I can't reach most of his standard playing positions. He's also a thoroughly educated student of music; although he didn't stay at Berklee very long, he certainly got the most out of his association with Tomo Fujita and the rest of the staff.
Most of all, however, Mayer is a brilliant guitar arranger. Here's a relatively off-the-cuff thing he did after Prince's death:
Most people couldn't do that at all, and the ones who could might take a week to arrange it. Mayer simply understands the guitar better than almost any other pop star, and he has that understanding because he's put in his time practicing and studying. He's not a "guitar player". I'm a guitar player. He's a musician who happens to play a guitar.
No surprise, then, that his solo arrangement of "Something Like Olivia" is so complex. It's basically a three-minute class in how to play the blues by yourself without ever leaving dead air in the performance. It's not something that you could cook up without a genuine understanding of music theory. If you want to be able to play like this, you have to practice the physical motions of playing but you also have to be able to hold all the possibilities of the fretboard in your head.
Which brings me to automotive journalism. For whatever reason, I've been contacted a lot in the past month or so by people who want to write about cars. Most of them don't really want to write about cars. They want to drive cool cars and take expensive trips and show a supercar off to their Instagram followers. So they can fuck off. We already have wayyyy too many people in automotive journalism who have zero ambition in their lives other than to be given things that they haven't earned in exchange for providing a clear-channel for PR spin directly to the readers.
If, however, you hold the "writing" half of the equation in equal esteem to the "about cars" half, then you'd better do your homework. That means reading the very best autowriters from the past fifty years. It also means reading in general, to build up your awareness of how stories are constructed, supported, and delivered. Last but not least, it means writing as much as you can and being as self-critical as you can be without freaking out. You should also be at least minimally competent in vehicle operation. If not, then you'll wind up writing embarrassing garbage about not being able to maintain LeMons pace lap speed in a SRT8 Challenger and blaming it on the car.
It's great to have talent, and it's great to work hard at stuff. If you can manage both, then maybe you can be the John Mayer of automotive journalism. The difference between John Mayer and the John Mayer of automotive journalism, of course, is that the real John Mayer doesn't have to give the supercar back at the end of the week.
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"Something About Triceratops" is a song I used to sing to my son as a loose variant of "Something About Olivia":
Well Triceratops is taken But some meat like that can be found from time to time. Well Triceratops is taken But some meat like that can be found from time to time. I'm thinking something like Triceratops Could keep me satisfied.
There's only one T-rex out there who gets to Chew on that three-horn's hide. There's only one T-rex out there who gets to Chew on that three-horn's hide. I'm thinking something like Triceratops could Help me through the night.
No I'm not trying to steal No meat away from no dino. No I'm not trying to steal No meat away from no dino. But if Triceratops itself was at my door It would be dinner time don't you know