Jack Johnson
UCLA
Sunday, August 31st

Let’s put it this way: Jack Johnson has never been about excitement. His folk-pop with lil’ reggae touches have made him the current superstar of mellow music.  That said, he still has quite the following, and this summer has seen him playing arenas, amphitheaters, and other outdoor venues.

While he could’ve easily sold out UCLA’s indoor Pauley Pavilion (perhaps even two nights), he instead played right outside on the campus’s Intramural Field before a crowd that, according to police, hit around the 17,000 mark. The setting made for an easy-going end to summer with an oceanside, beach atmosphere for the last show of his tour, even if it was a little inland.

The surfer-filmmaker-troubadour is a far cry from pop spectacles with pyrotechnic gimmicks or even the passion-pumped church of rock celebrations like Brothers Bruce and Bono, but having met him a few times, he’s a heck of a nice guy — very sincere and earnest when it comes to the environment. That’s why there’s a “little village” of booths on the field devoted to green organizations and projects, plus his tour strived to be eco-friendly too. He’s all about leaving a smaller carbon footprint during his time on the planet — all of which makes him hard to dislike, even if his show is kinda low-key dull at times…unless you’re a mega fan.

And there were plenty of those fans at UCLA:  Collegians, of course (it looked like a Sunday date night) plus moms and dads with little ones who couldn’t wait to hear his Curious George soundtrack tune, “Upside Down.”  (Did he play it? But of course.)

Johnson’s mixes up his sets a bit with every concert he plays, though there’s a core of songs he always plays, currently ranging from the “oldies,” like the still-appealing “Flake,” to numbers from his current album, Sleep Through the Static, on his own Brushfire Records through Universal.  Most of his songs, acoustic-based, are still daydreamy, romantic musings like “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing” or “Wasting Time,” but he does ponder the state of the world too — he just isn’t loud in his protests.

Lots of women danced on the grass, twirled, and wriggled slowly to the music, while boyfriends and husbands watched on, and his band occasionally jammed in a Grateful Dead-like sort of way — organic with a loose groove.

Johnson also brought out Zach Rogue of Rogue Wave to sing a song; the Oakland-based outfit, signed to Brushfire, was one of the openers.  Its indie-spirit pop-rock tried to tap into some U2 fire but couldn’t muster the spark.

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