As an alum of UC Santa Barbara (Ole Ole Ole, go Gauchos) I’m pretty sure I’m legally obligated to be a fan of singer-songwriter Jack Johnson. He graduated from UCSB in 1997 and played in the band Soil during his college days, opening for legendary bands like Sublime and Dave Matthews Band before they got famous, and while I would attend the university a decade after his graduation, Johnson’s presence on campus was certainly significantly felt. He was a mainstay on the Isla Vista party scene, with his album In Between Dreams getting significant play at laid-back parties, and you could find Jack Johnson posters in pretty much every dorm room at Francisco Torres. Me and my buddies would always geek out and play “Bubble Toes” in the De La Guerra dining hall (a place Johnson famously references when he says “I was eating lunch at the DLG”) and laugh thinking how cool it was we might be sitting in the exact chair Johnson once sat in, and on the beaches of IV (where natural tar seeps up on the beach from the ocean floor) you’d never fail to hear someone say “My feet are all covered in tar balls and scars” as a reference to the lyrics from that same song.
Put another way, Jack Johnson played a pretty significant role in my college experience of which I’ll forever be in love with his brand of low-tempo acoustic rock. Listening to In Between Dreams felt like a trip down memory lane yesterday. And it was certainly worth it.
Standout Songs: “Banana Pancakes”, “Good People”, “No Other Way”, “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing”, “Crying Shame”, “Breakdown”
