>OK, maybe Mayer turns out to be the next "Bruce". If he's talented and 
>thick-skinned, maybe he'll survive the star-machine. Talented or not, it 
>still smells of big-label, backroom spin doctors manufacturing the "next
big 
>thing" (Hootie, where are you?).

He might've been tweaked a bit by the "big-label, backroom spin doctors,"
but he paid at least a few indie dues, courtesy of Aware Records.  As did
Hootie, for that matter.  (On a related note, it's really unfortunate that
Hootie got labeled as a lite-rock band for yuppies, because they used to
play around Hampton Roads all the time, and they always gave incredibly
tight performances whenever I saw them.)  I guess you can easily argue that
Aware Records is responsible for helping break some of the most white-bread,
not-very-alternative-at-all-but-nonetheless-still-called-adult-alternative
music acts in recent memory (their "Aware Greatest Hits" features tracks
from Mayer, Five For Fighting, Vertical Horizon, Hootie, and Edwin McCain),
but they've also helped break Better Than Ezra, the Verve Pipe (who've
worked with both Andy Partridge and Adam Schlesinger), Shawn Mullins (now
working with Matthew Sweet), and Guster...so they can't be all bad.