straight up chasing paper.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

The Real Deal.

So Steve already typed up a wonderfully thorough review of last night's My Morning Jacket concert, but I thought I'd give it a try too. Honestly, it was just freaking awesome- such rock and roll goodness! The Slip opened up, and for once, I actually really enjoyed an opening band and I look forward to getting to know their music better. They were a good compliment to and warm-up for MMJ. The only downfall was the odd twitchy Slip fan who was in front of me and kept dancing/convulsing. Dude wigged me out.

Anyway, MMJ didn't start out with a rocking version of One Big Holiday as I had hoped, but it was still awesome nonetheless. The great thing about seeing a band live is appreciating songs you never really dug before- like What a Wonderful Man for me, which they played second, I believe. By the time they got around to One Big Holiday, I was so excited, I screamed my head off. That may be my favorite song to see live ever. I love it so fricking much- it rips the roof off the place before the lyrics even starts, and then rocks it out so hard after. The crowd goes fricking nuts the second you hear that guitar start, and then everyone just screams. "Waaaaaaking up feeling, gooood and liiiiimber".... This was definitely the highlight of the show for me.

They played more older stuff than I expected, lots of stuff off of It Still Moves, and a song or two off of At Dawn and The Tennessee Fire. As Steve mentioned, we got to hear Phone Went West, which is classic MMJ (if there is such a thing) and pretty unexpected, so that was badass. Other awesome songs included Off the Record, Wordless Chorus, Golden, Lay Low, and well, everything. They played Mahgeetah second to last, and that was my second favorite song of the night I think. You hear a song so many times you almost become numb to it, and that damn song sounded sooooo good last night. Totally reminded me why I love it. The whole show was so darn good. There was honestly a point last night, during the wicked Lay Low solo I think, where I dorkily thought "Life doesn't get much better than this". Jim James is a truly amazing preformer. You definitely get the impression that he's quiet and shy and smart and pensive, but when he's on stage, he just commands the crowd and rocks it so much. I honstly don't know ho he does it every night - it looks exhausting! Anyway, I don't get to go to concerts as often as I'd like anymore, so I'm beyond glad we went last night. So beyond worth the price of admission, the drive to Cleveland and back, my tiredness today. :)

I know there aren't that many My Morning Jacket fans out there, which of course I think is too bad. I think I may need to give out copies of Z for Christmas to everyone! So let me make the plea one more time: I really think there aren't that many "Important" bands out there now. So much music lately is all hype and blogs and the new "it" band (not criticising at all- I get into that too), but here's a band that's been out there producing consistently good albums for many years now. They tour their ass off, they're so earnest and they seem like genuinely good guys. Embrace the long guitars solos, the howling, the slide guitar, the trippy keyboards, the thumping bass and drums. Other people can explain why they're so good and important much better than me, but basicaly MMJ is going to keep putting out mind-blowing albums, so you might as well just get on board now.

Plus, the wooly mammoth? If that's not enough to convice you of their awesomeness right there, then I don't know what is.

Another funny part of the evening- Paul finding out he beat Maggie in fantasy football this week on the way home. He was all, "I'm more than 30 points behind- my dude would have to explode and Maggie's break his ankle to even win." When Steve checked his phone and saw the score, Paul was in disbelief. When asked if he was happy, Paul replied "Why, because while I was at an awesome rock concert seeing one of my favorite bands play, my recently acquired running back scored more than 30 points while Maggie's scored none and my team came from behind to win, vaulting me to first place in our league? Yeah, I'm happy." A good day for us all, indeed.

Carrie at 12/05/2006

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