Band Scene VIII: They were new...in 1995

Naturally as with any web surfer, I have dangerous tendencies to Wikipedia (yes, that is a verb) random people, bands, places to find out the truth. I'm sure many people will disagree because while Wikipedia is not necessarily the 100% truth, it is close enough in Layman's terms. One such person I search for on the occasional basis is John Mayer. Anyway, it turns out one thing I had not known about him was that he was part of a band in high school called Villanova Junction, after the Hendrix song. Instinctively, I searched for John Mayer on bt.etree.org, the largest collection of free live concert recordings on the web. After figuring out what a .shn file was and decoding using xACT and encoding from WAV to MP3 in iTunes I finally had the first listen. Wow, 10 years ago Mayer was ripping it up just like he does at a live show. The format of the VJ songs are quite different, as he doesn't sing, so the lyrics offer a different tone. The vocals are reminiscent of Dispatch, and the rhythm section is a solid-no frills foundation for every song. The same soulful bluesy riffs can be heard, especially in "Saturday Morning Feeling" and the intro to "Sky Blues". Oh yeah, the best part is this was a demo only released on cassette? It doesn't get much more homely than that. Just to think this guy now has a handful of Grammys...