Jason Mraz: Influences
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Author: Jason Mraz, Various ArtistsEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: Limited Collector's Edition
Published: 2007
Music Label: 180 Music
Music reviews of Jason Mraz: Influences
Music Review: Find your Rainbow Connection nowhere else...
Rating: 5 Stars
It's like this... Back in his starving artist, San Diego, coffee house days, Jason Mraz made a really cool mix-tape for his girlfriend with himself singing a sweet funny song to her at the end. Mary Jane, Jason's girlfriend, working at Target to help pay the bills at the avocado farm, accidentally left this, her favorite mix-tape ever, playing in the breakroom where Manager Nally found it. Listening and liking, Manager Nally got away with it and burned Mary Jane's mix-tape onto a bajillion CDs. As Mary Jane pined away for her bestest mix-tape, Manager Nally went about selling its copies at Target stores in all sorts of places so he could become Area Manager Nally instead of just Manager Nally. But it's okay because Mary Jane got her mix-tape and so did we... or so it would seem.
"Influences" is purported by Target to be a compilation of artists/songs chosen by Jason Mraz as ones he claims most affected him musically. Hand picked by Jason Mraz, the songs present are all excellent and showcase his strong lyrical bend as a songwriter. We hear songs he might have first heard his parents listening to growing up in the late 70's and 80's, and we get some of his own 90's adolescence with some pop, R&B, jazz, hip hop, and rock sounds that resonate with his own music. But does Jason Mraz really owe as much to this set of songs and songwriters as he does others not presented here??? Hmmmm, let's circle back to that a bit later.
As a full throttle fan of Jason Mraz's music, I knew I'd like what he liked, most influential or not. The "I might have knowns" were "Respect" by Aretha Franklin, "Morning Theft" by Jeff Buckley, "Mediate" by INXS (that could also be construed as a tip of his fedora to Bob Dylan as Michael Hutchins meant to do by writing this particular INXS song), and "Pick Up the Pace" by Young MC. Awesome!
I bought this album, however, hoping to be turned onto some music that I hadn't heard or never gave enough ear to. I was so happy to find some of that, too, like Screenwriter's Blues by Soul Coughing. Biggest of these favorites, though, was In the Name of Love by Kenny Rankin. Particularly, as an influence, the Kenny Rankin song is so spot on... I was just listening along and then this jazzy melody driven funky song sung in the first person with scat vocals over top of an accoustic guitar came on. I actually got up and grabbed the CD case and flipped it to see if Jason Mraz wrote this song. Kenny Rankin? I wondered, is there some other Kenny Rankin out there that's like Jason Mraz's secret Bernie Taupin?! Nope, this was the one and only Kenny Rankin on his 1975 album Silver Morning, two years before Jason Mraz was born. It turns out that Kenny Rankin wasn't always so jazz-loungy. Like Eric Clapton, Madonna, Yes, Kansas, and so many others, Kenny Rankin's sound has shifted to a more ethereal or possibly more academic version of itself or maybe just extremely softer; so soft that I never really heard it until now, not more than trivially, superficially. The best part is listening to more and finding out Kenny Rankin's music from 30 to 40 years ago is so relevant today that it's completely contemporary, while his current music isn't really so much. So, thanks to Jason Mraz and this record, now I'm digging through my parents' 3,000 or so vinyls to try to find where they've stashed all the old Kenny Rankin. Enough about finding Kenny, though, even though that's where the five stars comes from for this album for me... along with one other song I'll get to in a minute.
Getting back to "Influences", it's absolutely obvious that this record isn't a spontaneous list of most influential songs of Jason Mraz's free choosing but more the best songs Jason Mraz could pick out in a catalogue that Target could get access to or thought would best market under his name to Target's target... cut to Jason Mraz thumbing through a Karaoke book. If that's not the case, where's Bob Dylan? Where's Queen? Where's Billy Joel? Where's The Beatles or even just a McCartney track? Jason Mraz sings sexy songs. Where's the sex on this neutered record? Where's Prince? Oh, and where's any Reggae at all? Particularly in his endeavors with We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things and concert jam sessions with Toca, Jason Mraz has gone more than a bit island on us. Where's that sound here? Where's Jimmy Buffet for crying out loud?! Simply put, there are songs and songwriters to whom Mraz has paid copious homage in song and say (okay, maybe not to Jimmy Buffet) that are conspicuously missing here. Meanwhile this album includes music that, as most excellent as it is, clearly had lesser "Influence" on Jason Mraz as an artist. Despite his written explanations for each song's influence, Jason Mraz pretty much says it all (even if it was the sheet music always on his Grandma's piano) by covering Kermit the Frog with "The Rainbow Connection", as his coup de gr?ce final track, which is the only song Jason Mraz actually performs on this album and, next to maybe Happy Birthday, stands out as possibly the most covered song ever (eg. Blondie, Jim Brickman, Caroline's Spine, The Carpenters, Peter Cincotti, DAT Politics, The Dixie Chicks, The Dresden Dolls, Estradasphere, Fifteen, Ed Helms, Kiki and Herb, Left?ver Crack, Aaron Lewis, Kenny Loggins, The Loves, Sarah McLachlan, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Jane Monheit, Jason Mraz's grandma, Willie Nelson (who didn't write it), The Pussycat Dolls, Lea Salonga, Justin Timberlake, Tay Zonday, and who knows who else but now definitely by me this Tuesday night at SPE in Evansville, Indiana. ;D ) On the other hand, if it really was his earliest memory with grandma on the piano as the album insert reports, which since Jason was 2 years-old when it first debuted as a duet with Debbie Harry on The Muppet Show and didn't make a comeback as a cover song for several years makes it seem a bit unlikely. But maybe Grandma kept herself that current with her piano sheet music and the trendy Muppet Show platform for launching otherwise unrecorded duet singles with Blondie in a pre-VCR era. Still, I'd have to admit that Kermit the Frog was very influential in my life at one point, so let's maybe not rule out Kermit so quickly as a Jason Mraz influence. Whatever.
Anyway, by accepting that this isn't the most influential set of music for Jason Mraz but more like what I called it to start with... a fantastic mix-tape put together by Jason Mraz with what he had available to him at the time... you'll be happy all the way home. As much as it isn't what Target might have had us believe, Jason Mraz's hand in picking these songs is clearly visible, because they really are quite good individually and together and reflect his brand of good tempered comedy and never taking himself too seriously generosity. So, rest assured Mraz fans, this album is worth every penny, even if only to hear Jason croon out Kermie in the end... Willie Nelson style.
Description of Jason Mraz: Influences
1)ARETHA FRANKLIN Respect, 2)BILL WITHERS Use Me, 3)SEALS & CROFTS Summer Breeze, 4)JEFF BUCKLEY Morning Theft, 5)KENNY RANKIN In The Name Of Love, 6)DARYL HALL & JOHN OATES I Can't Go For That (No Can Do) 7)MICHAEL FRANKS Night Moves, 8)INXS Mediate, 9)SOUL COUGHING Screenwriter's Blues, 10)THE GLOBETROTTERS Rainy Day Bells, 11)YOUNG M.C. Pick Up The Pace, 12)JASON MRAZ Rainbow ConnectionSinger-Songwriters CDs
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