I made my way downtown to see John Mayer’s free outdoor concert at the Yonge/Dundas Square today. This was the second show in two days in celebration of Best Buy’s grand opening of its flagship store at Bay and Dundas. I am pretty impressed that they brought both John Mayer and Beyonce to Toronto, and for free to boot.

As I was walking to the subway station, I realized that I had forgotten my ear plugs. Oh well, it couldn’t be that bad right? plus I didn’t expect a free concert to go very long (maybe half an hour?). I did some quick CD crawling from Bloor before arriving at Yonge & Dundas by 3PM. There was still an hour to go, and I had been meaning to buy Continuum (i.e. John Mayer’s latest) at Best Buy so I headed over to their new store. It was $9.99 and I had been struggling to get it at this price for awhile. First I had hoped to grab a flyer and price match with Futureshop, but Best Buy doesn’t deliver to my neighborhood. Next, I tried to buy it online, even paying an extra 99¢ for shipping, but I had to call their billing department about a $11 purchase on my credit card. Yeah right.

The mass of people at Best Buy actually wasn’t that bad, I had to line up for maybe 15 minutes but I was in and out of the store, and back at the Y&D by 3:30. It was then that I actually walked around a bit, and received my $5 coupon at Best Buy (and my Best Buy flag). Doh, should have walked around first.

Anyways, I walked around for a bit, taking some photos, before I started being an asshole. The square was kind of filled already with people lingering around, but I wanted a better spot. I didn’t make it down for the VIP wristbands so I was out of luck there, although there was a HUGE, unfilled area for VIPs. Maybe, I should have came down and tried for a wristband on Thursday. Anyways, I cut through a lot of annoyed people, and zig zag’d around a couple of times before finding a spot about 10 rows from the front. The benefit of being solo is that it’s so much easier to find a space for 1 without annoying as many people (although people did complain and glare at me before I found my good spot).

John Mayer made us wait for about 20 minutes before he came out on stage and played. He mixed it up pretty well, with some hits (Georgia, Daughters, No Such Thing — the finisher), 3 or 4 of his new tracks including Waiting On The World To Change, and both Gravity and Vultures that were crossovers from the John Mayer Trio. The concert actually seemed a lot like his Trio work, and whenever he played songs from his new album, he would switch out his guitar. He used an acoustic for all his old songs, and his bandmates didn’t do a lot on those.

I was surprised actually that he played for a bit over an hour! I would have appreciated some earplugs as my ears were ringing for awhile afterwards. I wanted to hear Neon or 3×5 but he played neither, although No Such Thing was good. Afterwards, I ran into Ian and Chris Lawrence, and apparently Chard was also there. But, I didn’t feel like staying around so I headed back home. I didn’t even make it to the autograph signing session at 6PM! I’m not a true fan.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: concerts, corporations, freebies, toronto