It’s time to testify! I, Benjamin Squires, do hereby solemnly swear that this is the Best Live CD/DVD of 2004 from a Concert I Attended. OK, that’s not saying much, because how many chances do you have to own an officially released recording of a concert you’re at? How many times can you listen to the crowd after each song listening for your whistle, catcall, or “You rock!”? So let me try again. . .
I, Benjamin Squires, do hereby solemnly swear that Jason Mraz’s Tonight, Not Again: At the Eagles’ Ballroom is true to the live experience. The concert that night was tight, rocking, jazzing, swinging, finding Mraz in perfect voice, and the band flexing, duking, dodging, diving, and everyone coming out as the champions of the world. And I really was there. If you go to the 1 minute, 48 second mark in the DVD, you can see my forehead, hands raised pointing to the stage, along with the arms and parts of the faces of my friends, Josh and Jeremy.
So many concert albums are cobbled together from recordings throughout a tour that you’re never sure if the recording really captures what it is like to see an artist live. Some of those albums that pull together various experiences will at least own up to this, list when and where each recording was made, and may even end up showcasing the changing nature of each evening/venue. However, the cowards give you a live recording which only lists “from the European/North America tour of 2003” and leaves you wondering how many different sets it took to come up with the 12 pristine tracks presented for your digital listening pleasure.
There’s no curtains to hide behind on the Eagles’ Ballroom stage when Jason Mraz came to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 28, 2003. The goal that evening: bust open the roof while filming one evening from one concert for a future CD/DVD release. So that brings us back to my testimony.
I, Benjamin Squires, do hereby solemnly swear that the concert presented on the CD/DVD was not made through tremendous amounts of recording, editing, computer magic. Rather, that evening besides the cameras and some longer pauses between songs, we really weren’t aware of the filming process. There weren’t any re-records; there weren’t any false starts. As the DVD Extra “Stuff We Left Out” shows, even the few songs that didn’t make it on the CD/DVD weren’t left out due to the fact that the band tanked on them or Mraz’s voice went bad; they are live gems reserved for those live experiences.
Therefore, this is the Best Live CD/DVD of 2004 from a Concert I Attended, but it is also one of the best live recordings you’ll ever find—a brave step for Mraz’s sophmore release, but one that finds him firmly establishing his prowess as a jazz-singer/songwriter-hipster-rocker.
Mraz’s live show brings out the jazz qualities in his music which isn’t always apparent on the debut album, Waiting for My Rocket to Come. Mraz will remain at the end of the American Band Rock section of the Spectrum due to his rap-singing, placing him near other rap-singers like Wes Cunningham and the Barenaked Ladies. Mraz loves to pile up the rap-rhyming schemes in his lyrics. However, based on the live show, Mraz could just as easily be placed in the Jazz-influenced Rock section right next to John Mayer. “Tonight, Not Again,” the show/CD/DVD opener, is all about scat singing, floating melodies, jamming, and strumming as the band builds introduces the song and the night’s set.
“1000 Things” is a rock song with a chorus of syllabic singing. He is bold to include these overt jazz stylings in the world of pop rock, often reluctant to get too far away from that pop rock sound. The DVD features vignettes in between each song—interviews, behind the scenes footage, commentary, etc.—which include Mraz explaining that many of his lyrics come through scat singing. Taking the melody, improvising with nonsense syllables, he starts to hear what the melody has to say. Hearing this description of Mraz’s writing process, I can then hear how this jazz-focused style of creating a song imbeds itself into his music even on the rockier bits. On “The Right Kind,” Mraz leads the crowd to this same discovery of the song, doing a scat exercise with everyone in attendance.
Mraz may sing about being a “Curbside Prophet,” but given all of the scat singing, he’s also like a “Curbside Mel Torme,” risen from the dead to continue spreading the word of singing without words, pulling out the whole wide range of sounds from a sequence of chords.
Live in concert, coupled with interviews on the DVD, break apart that solo act myth built around a guy whose put out a seemingly solo album with his the only name on the cover. As much as the songs are Mraz, the music really is developed and pushed ahead by his band. Toca Rivera, the background vocalist and percussionist, looked like a ringer when I saw them live, someone who just joined Mraz for the tour. Turns out he has been with Mraz from the beginning and is a key piece to developing Mraz’s sound.
Bill Bell’s lead guitar works like another background singer, whooing and aahing and even screaming to accompany the vocals. On “Common Pleasures,” you’ve got jazz combo pleasures, the band’s nightclub jazz jam shoved head and kept on its toes by Adam King’s drumming, a tight, marching snare.
The band add so many different pieces of styles (funk, jazz, electric hard rock, soft rock), but none of it obscures Mraz’s singer-songwriter, coffee shop, folky core. On the DVD extras, you can get a taste of that coffee shop sound in footage from the United Kingdom tour where the band was stripped down to Mraz, Rivera, and bass player Ian Sheridan—the original three.
The jazz, soul, and funk sounds are brought even more strongly due to the help of special guests, The Chicago Storm/Ohio Players Horns. A treat on the CD/DVD, and a tremendous surprise when seen live, John Popper of Blues Traveler joins the band on stage to add harmonica for “Curbside Prophet” and “Too Much Food.” A ringing endorsement of a young artist by an established artist, you can see how much Popper just plain enjoys Mraz’s music as he makes that harmonica wail. For “Curbside Prophet,” Popper helps you hear how the Virginia country groove hits that funk.
Part of Mraz’s charm is his geek cool. He wears trucker hats—cocked to the side, ghetto style—and buttons like “I Love Sex.” He takes himself seriously as he sings, but can just as easily poke fun at himself. He uses toying, direct questions in his songs—direct questions brought out all the more live in concert—like asking “Do you want this love?” on the song “Tonight, Not Again,” making him similar to self-assured, insecure, pleading questions of the New Radicals without being so crass. (The other connection to the New Radicals is the lyrical territory of “The Remedy (I Won’t Worry)” being similar to the balance of pointed rap-sing and earnest chorus on the Radicals’ “You Get What You Give”). Mraz is a guitar player compelled to sing with his hands—flapping and jiving like a jazz singer or a rapper. And that rapper attitude comes through on songs like “Too Much Food,” ready to take on Eminem like in Eight Mile.
While at the concert, we were only aware of a few cameras, but mini cams on band members captured even more than we imagined. It is a bold move for the second release, but a DVD like this, with well-produced interview segments, pulls together all the information about Mraz that would usually be scattered across many articles. This helps fans make a connection to a new artist early in his career. The “International So & So” DVD extra is a great look at Mraz’s tour of Japan and the United Kingdom.
The one hard part of Mraz’s concert is that on songs like “Unfold,” despite opening up to a blazing solo by Bell, the song really is an extended jazz rock song, best heard/viewed in an intimate jazz club, not in a crammed, standing crowd at a rock venue. While there’s no doubt that bouncing and waving my hands in the air with the rest of the crowd was the exact place for half of the show, I could have taken half of the show to a jazz club, sipping a martini, watching this modern day Torme perform his magic.
But as you’ll see on the DVD, mainly the crowd was extremely pleased with their evening in Milwaukee with Mraz. The Eagles’ Ballroom is truly a great venue, and the evening rocked. Watch “You and I Both,” a sing along of sorts, and you’ll front row shots of the crowd knowing every word. Especially watch for the Noah Wylie look-alike in the red hat, so expressive as he sings along, with just enough of that wink-and-smile which is never far away in Mraz’s songs. I, Benjamin Squires, do hereby solemnly swear that while you can’t see me, I’m in that crowd doing the same thing.
Thanks to Jason Mraz and Elektra for the review copy.
P.S. “After an Afternoon” sounds a lot like the worship/praise song “Meet with You.” I’m not saying anyone stole anything. I’m just saying it’s kind of an odd connection to make, and as Mraz played those opening chords, I almost started to sing “I’m here to meet with you” before realizing that it probably wasn’t the song Mraz was about to sing!
