It Still Moves revisited

Started by johnnYYac, Dec 26, 2010, 11:22 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

johnnYYac

While good friends are enjoying some live Jim and Patrick tonight, and its snowing hard here in ole NH, I went back in time.  I headed to the oldest pages of The Music section, after noting the release date of It Still Moves- September 9, 2003.  I found this cool article and have thoroughly enjoyed the comments and complaints and arguements of forum members, some long gone.   

I highly recommend, if you've got the time, to travel back into these pages.  I went to the Z release date posts a couple of nights ago and loved hearing the first time experiences of hardcore fans.  I had 6 weeks after I first heard 'em on SNL before the release of Evil Urges to get in all of their back catalog, which I did.  I love the difference in perspective.  Check it out.

(note, if you click on a thread, use your browser's BACK icon or you'll return to the most recent page)
http://mymorningjacket.com/forum/index.php?board=4.2730

Rock without gimmicks (except one)- from the week before the release of ISM
By Tom Moon
Inquirer Music Critic

Of all the methods rock performers use to avoid the "here we are, now entertain us" gaze of an expectant audience, Jim James' ranks among the most inventive.

The singer, songwriter and guitarist of My Morning Jacket - the Shelbyville, Ky., quintet whose revelatory and often astonishing third effort, It Still Moves (ATO/RCA **** out of 4 stars), arrives in stores Tuesday - simply hides behind a curtain of long, wavy brown hair. It cascades symmetrically from his scalp to cover his face and everything down to his waist, and is divided, but not officially parted, by a nose.

When James is behind this low-tech shield, singing his songs of restlessness and crushing doubt with a choirboy's sincerity, it's almost impossible to see his eyes. No matter how the music heaves and roars, James emerges only when he's finished singing. Then, he'll step away from the microphone to engage in some ritual heavy-metal tress-swinging, his head rolling around in lazy circles, his whole body abandoned to the surging rhythm.

From one angle, this impenetrable veil looks like another of the high-concept affectations that dominate latter-day rock, something akin to those faux-mod outfits the White Stripes wear.

But it's also a way for James, 24, to set limits on what he will share. It creates a dynamic that's diametrically opposed to the prevailing archetype of the strutting, extroverted front man. By being intentionally remote, James forces those watching him and guitarist Johnny Quaid, bassist Two-Tone Tommy, keyboardist Danny Cash, and drummer Patrick Hallahan to listen a bit differently. To seek cues not from facial expressions or spoon-fed gestures, as on MTV, but from the way he sings, and the emotional hues he leaves lurking behind the narratives.

Not only does this partial inaccessibility change the listeners' focus, it also gives the band something that's been missing in this age of showing all while saying little: The slightest air of mystery.

Which, it turns out, is a deliberate part of the MMJ master plan.

Like Led Zeppelin and other heroes of pre-video rock, this band is determined to lure listeners, not bludgeon them, into appreciating its substantive sonic contributions - its shadows as well as light, its songs of yearning desolation that stretch out like lonely highways, its balance of brute force against poised finesse.

"I wish it was possible to get people the music without them seeing what you look like at all," James said recently by phone on a rare day off at home before beginning a headlining tour that will bring My Morning Jacket to the Theatre of Living Arts on Oct. 24. "To me, music is about closing your eyes and letting the sound destroy your brain. It's not about gimmicks."

He has sworn off watching music videos because he can't stand the sight of musicians acting - "Is there anything more pathetic than someone trying to look sad?" he wonders - and says that the biggest problem he has with much contemporary rock is the unwillingness of its practitioners to expose anything that shows their humanity.

"You can't believe people when they sing," James laments, explaining that from his perspective, most current rock vocalists appear "afraid to let anyone see their true heart." Compare that cynicism with the approach taken by the greats of yesteryear, he suggests.

"When you hear Neil Young, or Roy Orbison, or Etta James, you can hear how they've been trampled on and ruined. You can't help but feel what they've been through. That's different from today. Most people making music today are actors. And you can always tell when somebody's acting."

James is not an actor, not by a long shot. He grew up Roman Catholic, and remains spiritual despite finding "big holes" in the religion. His songs are laced with roadside mysticism, and phrases you'd find in a hymnbook ("on heaven's golden shore we'll rest our heads"). They're inner-directed but not self-obsessed, and at times they show a novelist's gift for sketching the human condition through fragmentary, seemingly disconnected scenes.

Raised on what he calls "the good records," James obviously soaked up not just the sounds but some of the extramusical values embedded in recordings by Young (Harvest is among his favorites), The Band (Music From Big Pink), Zeppelin (Physical Graffiti), and others, and let them seep into his own enigmatic, spirit-seeking traveling songs.

Where many retro-minded current rockers flaunt their scholarship, viewing imitation as a badge of honor, James takes a more organic approach to the history. He explains that he has lived inside those classic records, heard them over and over, until they've become part of his DNA.

As a result, his influences are rarely grabbed whole. Instead, they're threaded into the thick weave of his songs, sometimes manifest as traces of the blues, or the rafter-rattling ambitions of prog-rock, or the confessional honesty of country.

The result is music of sharply contradictory currents: A swirling, atmospheric evocation with strong bone structure and resolute beliefs, a sound that's steeped in classic-rock history, yet somehow timeless.

At times on It Still Moves, James sings as if he's trying to rectify rock's current crisis of belief - its lack of commitment - with one anguished falsetto cry. And the musicians of My Morning Jacket back him up. They treat rock with what often sounds like deep reverence, as a way to explore the great puzzles, if not a potential road to salvation.

Though his voice is bathed in echoes and odd reverb, James has a pure, needling tone that has, accurately, been compared to Young's. He can sound like he's petitioning the angels or plotting something diabolical, and he's unafraid to talk about the music's effects on him.

A song called "The Way That He Sings," from the 2001 At Dawn, is his account of being devastated and uplifted by a particularly haunting singer. And "Golden," from the self-produced It Still Moves, tells about the rush of anticipation that travels through the room just before a concert starts, then marvels at performers, and the bars that host them, for the ability to "make the time just disappear."

That earnestness and awe spreads through all of It Still Moves, from the Stones-ish stomp of "Dancefloors" to the gorgeously harmonized, impossibly slow "I Will Sing You Songs" to "Easy Morning Rebel," one of several metaphysical songs that suggest James has more in common with Sartre or Nietzsche than with Lynyrd Skynyrd or any of the subsequent cardboard-cutout "rebels" of Southern rock lore.

Even when the words are clear, it's not always easy to understand James' intent. Sometimes his lyrics are endless streams of odd images ("for the past I'm diggin' a grave so big, it will swallow up the sea"). Sometimes they're the rantings of drifters who have been on the road too long. James says that the meanings can change a zillion ways, and that for him the urgency of communication is more important than the words.

"All my favorite singers, I could care less what they're singing about. It's that life force you feel from them, and I feel it the same in everything I love. You can get all the content hearing their voice, the quality of it, the age and the pain in it."

The same can be said of James' vocal work.

Unguarded where most rock singers are cautious, James has that rare knack for communicating nuance beyond whatever vulnerability or tenderness or intimacy is stated in the words. Like Janis Joplin or Jeff Buckley, he's one of those conduits for pure, unfiltered expression who sing up at seagull altitude, where it's possible to soar without thinking too much about it.

The music he makes is, like all great rock, about the feeling, about trusting the feeling or running from it, about ultimately not being able to escape the feeling. And you don't have to look into his eyes to know he means it.

The fact that my heart's beating is all the proof you need.

johnnYYac

Another article, which I love because, a couple of nights ago, I was watching The Last Waltz and realized The Band may be a more apt comparison to who MMJ are, and this article says the same thing.

pitchfork media review of it still moves:

http://pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/m/my-morning-jacket/it-still-moves.shtml

My Morning Jacket
It Still Moves
[ATO/BMG; 2003]
Rating: 8.3
It's that moment every indie kid irrationally fears: your favorite band gets the call-up to the majors. I can't believe how many people I still hear referring to this as "selling out." Years ago, I might have agreed, but in making the move to one of the Big Five (or Big Four, as the case may soon be-- Warner and BMG announced a potential merger today), most bands actually make less money. These days, it's the ultimate sacrifice: putting yourself deeply into debt and into a rigorous touring/promotion cycle for the shot at making a serious statement backed by a real budget. Granted, the very faint possibility of commercial success exists, however slight, but for the most part, it's just a natural extension of their careers, and a practical way to build on the audience they've cultivated releasing records on tiny labels with limited distribution. While I don't think I could personally condone it-- they're putting everything on the line, after all-- I don't know that it's as condemnable as it was in the 1990s, when bands were doing it exclusively for a shot at the mainstream.

After coming to prominence with California-based indie Darla Records, My Morning Jacket have entered the BMG fold on Dave Matthews' ATO imprint, but you won't know the difference-- Jim James' high, lonesome croon is still recorded in a grain silo, and the band's sound is still a cathedral of reverb. Rest assured, the faithful will have no problem kneeling here. The Kentucky quintet gets about 30 comparisons a day to The Flaming Lips (mostly because of James' falsetto), but they're much more logically the successors, a few years late, to the legacy of The Band. All the elements are there: the rural wistfulness, the stately arrangements, the enigmatic vocals, the character added by the lack of note-for-note precision, the fact that you'd be hard-pressed to definitively label exactly what it is they do.

Last year's exploratory Chocolate & Ice EP left quite a few open questions about the band's future direction, many signals of which could be found in the 24-minute electro-funk centerpiece "Cobra", but It Still Moves almost immediately affirms that the spacy Southern psych they built their name on remains their bread and butter. "Mahgeetah" is full of the long, drawn-out vocals that last year made "Can You See the Hard Helmet on My Head?" such an affecting and seemingly meaningful question, and it also carries over the texture of that song, building a small epic out of the same elements. The band reacts to each verse differently-- once with explosions of glimmering arpeggios, later with Johnny Quaid's brilliantly understated guitar solo-- before bringing the whole thing to one of those thunderous conclusions that makes classic rock live albums such a guilty pleasure.

"Golden" trots through a glowing haze of reverb on Patrick Hallahan's steadily brushed beat, its lilting finger-picking and ghostly harmonies falling somewhere between The Band's stately Canadicana and The Byrds' "Ballad of Easy Rider". "One Big Holiday" doesn't look like much from the lyrics in the liners, but when James grabs hold of the opening line, "Wakin' up feeling good and limber," and draws it out in his singular way, it feels about a million times more weighty than it actually is.

The reverb at the album's midpoint reaches such titanic proportions that James' drifting vocals rival Sigur Rós' Jon Thor Birgisson for shear ethereality on "I Will Sing You Songs". It's like listening to a song while in the throes of a lucid dream. "Easy Morning Rebel" puts your feet back on the ground with its swinging arrangement and Memphis horns (actually played by veteran Stax session men-- a frill made available by major label dollars). The band leaves James alone in his silo to close the album with the searching, desperate "One in the Same", a song that finds him seemingly trying to sort fragmented memories into coherent thoughts. When he hits the lines, "It wasn't till I woke up/ That I could hold down a joke or a job or a dream/ But then all three are one in the same," it should put a lump in your throat.

And with that, It Still Moves strums to a close, an album by turns beautiful and possessed, by others raucous and fiery. If you're standing by the record racks trying to choose between this and the band's other major achievement, At Dawn, flip a coin-- either way you win. My Morning Jacket have made the move to the bigs in tremendous style, and as far as I can tell they haven't compromised a thing to be there. If there's one major flaw I could point to here, it'd be the album's length-- 74 minutes is a long runtime for any record, and as a result, the album is usually better off listened to in chunks, but it's a small concern considering the riches that await inside.

-Joe Tangari, September 18th, 2003
The fact that my heart's beating is all the proof you need.

johnnYYac

Born this day in 2003...

Happy 12th Birthday, It Still Moves!
The fact that my heart's beating is all the proof you need.

Lonndown27

Fuck yes it does  :smiley: STILL my favorite studio record!
(MMJ): 8/2/12+8/1/13+10/07/15+12/29/17+12/30/17+12/31/17+8/21/2022::::(JIM): 11/5/2018

buymycar

Before clicking on this thread, I thought it was going to be an update on the remixed It Still Moves Jim mentioned in this interview:

http://mymorningjacket.net/index.php/topic,19265.0.html

rincon2

Funny in both reviews no mention of Steam Engine. Arguably their career defining moment.

rdylanoconnor

Quote from: johnnYYac on Dec 26, 2010, 11:22 PM
While good friends are enjoying some live Jim and Patrick tonight, and its snowing hard here in ole NH, I went back in time.  I headed to the oldest pages of The Music section, after noting the release date of It Still Moves- September 9, 2003.  I found this cool article and have thoroughly enjoyed the comments and complaints and arguements of forum members, some long gone.   

I highly recommend, if you've got the time, to travel back into these pages.  I went to the Z release date posts a couple of nights ago and loved hearing the first time experiences of hardcore fans.  I had 6 weeks after I first heard 'em on SNL before the release of Evil Urges to get in all of their back catalog, which I did.  I love the difference in perspective.  Check it out.

(note, if you click on a thread, use your browser's BACK icon or you'll return to the most recent page)
http://mymorningjacket.com/forum/index.php?board=4.2730

Rock without gimmicks (except one)- from the week before the release of ISM
By Tom Moon
Inquirer Music Critic

Of all the methods rock performers use to avoid the "here we are, now entertain us" gaze of an expectant audience, Jim James' ranks among the most inventive.

The singer, songwriter and guitarist of My Morning Jacket - the Shelbyville, Ky., quintet whose revelatory and often astonishing third effort, It Still Moves (ATO/RCA **** out of 4 stars), arrives in stores Tuesday - simply hides behind a curtain of long, wavy brown hair. It cascades symmetrically from his scalp to cover his face and everything down to his waist, and is divided, but not officially parted, by a nose.

When James is behind this low-tech shield, singing his songs of restlessness and crushing doubt with a choirboy's sincerity, it's almost impossible to see his eyes. No matter how the music heaves and roars, James emerges only when he's finished singing. Then, he'll step away from the microphone to engage in some ritual heavy-metal tress-swinging, his head rolling around in lazy circles, his whole body abandoned to the surging rhythm.

From one angle, this impenetrable veil looks like another of the high-concept affectations that dominate latter-day rock, something akin to those faux-mod outfits the White Stripes wear.

But it's also a way for James, 24, to set limits on what he will share. It creates a dynamic that's diametrically opposed to the prevailing archetype of the strutting, extroverted front man. By being intentionally remote, James forces those watching him and guitarist Johnny Quaid, bassist Two-Tone Tommy, keyboardist Danny Cash, and drummer Patrick Hallahan to listen a bit differently. To seek cues not from facial expressions or spoon-fed gestures, as on MTV, but from the way he sings, and the emotional hues he leaves lurking behind the narratives.

Not only does this partial inaccessibility change the listeners' focus, it also gives the band something that's been missing in this age of showing all while saying little: The slightest air of mystery.

Which, it turns out, is a deliberate part of the MMJ master plan.

Like Led Zeppelin and other heroes of pre-video rock, this band is determined to lure listeners, not bludgeon them, into appreciating its substantive sonic contributions - its shadows as well as light, its songs of yearning desolation that stretch out like lonely highways, its balance of brute force against poised finesse.

"I wish it was possible to get people the music without them seeing what you look like at all," James said recently by phone on a rare day off at home before beginning a headlining tour that will bring My Morning Jacket to the Theatre of Living Arts on Oct. 24. "To me, music is about closing your eyes and letting the sound destroy your brain. It's not about gimmicks."

He has sworn off watching music videos because he can't stand the sight of musicians acting - "Is there anything more pathetic than someone trying to look sad?" he wonders - and says that the biggest problem he has with much contemporary rock is the unwillingness of its practitioners to expose anything that shows their humanity.

"You can't believe people when they sing," James laments, explaining that from his perspective, most current rock vocalists appear "afraid to let anyone see their true heart." Compare that cynicism with the approach taken by the greats of yesteryear, he suggests.

"When you hear Neil Young, or Roy Orbison, or Etta James, you can hear how they've been trampled on and ruined. You can't help but feel what they've been through. That's different from today. Most people making music today are actors. And you can always tell when somebody's acting."

James is not an actor, not by a long shot. He grew up Roman Catholic, and remains spiritual despite finding "big holes" in the religion. His songs are laced with roadside mysticism, and phrases you'd find in a hymnbook ("on heaven's golden shore we'll rest our heads"). They're inner-directed but not self-obsessed, and at times they show a novelist's gift for sketching the human condition through fragmentary, seemingly disconnected scenes.

Raised on what he calls "the good records," James obviously soaked up not just the sounds but some of the extramusical values embedded in recordings by Young (Harvest is among his favorites), The Band (Music From Big Pink), Zeppelin (Physical Graffiti), and others, and let them seep into his own enigmatic, spirit-seeking traveling songs.

Where many retro-minded current rockers flaunt their scholarship, viewing imitation as a badge of honor, James takes a more organic approach to the history. He explains that he has lived inside those classic records, heard them over and over, until they've become part of his DNA.

As a result, his influences are rarely grabbed whole. Instead, they're threaded into the thick weave of his songs, sometimes manifest as traces of the blues, or the rafter-rattling ambitions of prog-rock, or the confessional honesty of country.

The result is music of sharply contradictory currents: A swirling, atmospheric evocation with strong bone structure and resolute beliefs, a sound that's steeped in classic-rock history, yet somehow timeless.

At times on It Still Moves, James sings as if he's trying to rectify rock's current crisis of belief - its lack of commitment - with one anguished falsetto cry. And the musicians of My Morning Jacket back him up. They treat rock with what often sounds like deep reverence, as a way to explore the great puzzles, if not a potential road to salvation.

Though his voice is bathed in echoes and odd reverb, James has a pure, needling tone that has, accurately, been compared to Young's. He can sound like he's petitioning the angels or plotting something diabolical, and he's unafraid to talk about the music's effects on him.

A song called "The Way That He Sings," from the 2001 At Dawn, is his account of being devastated and uplifted by a particularly haunting singer. And "Golden," from the self-produced It Still Moves, tells about the rush of anticipation that travels through the room just before a concert starts, then marvels at performers, and the bars that host them, for the ability to "make the time just disappear."

That earnestness and awe spreads through all of It Still Moves, from the Stones-ish stomp of "Dancefloors" to the gorgeously harmonized, impossibly slow "I Will Sing You Songs" to "Easy Morning Rebel," one of several metaphysical songs that suggest James has more in common with Sartre or Nietzsche than with Lynyrd Skynyrd or any of the subsequent cardboard-cutout "rebels" of Southern rock lore.

Even when the words are clear, it's not always easy to understand James' intent. Sometimes his lyrics are endless streams of odd images ("for the past I'm diggin' a grave so big, it will swallow up the sea"). Sometimes they're the rantings of drifters who have been on the road too long. James says that the meanings can change a zillion ways, and that for him the urgency of communication is more important than the words.

"All my favorite singers, I could care less what they're singing about. It's that life force you feel from them, and I feel it the same in everything I love. You can get all the content hearing their voice, the quality of it, the age and the pain in it."

The same can be said of James' vocal work.

Unguarded where most rock singers are cautious, James has that rare knack for communicating nuance beyond whatever vulnerability or tenderness or intimacy is stated in the words. Like Janis Joplin or Jeff Buckley, he's one of those conduits for pure, unfiltered expression who sing up at seagull altitude, where it's possible to soar without thinking too much about it.

The music he makes is, like all great rock, about the feeling, about trusting the feeling or running from it, about ultimately not being able to escape the feeling. And you don't have to look into his eyes to know he means it.



Johnnyyac, thank you for (1) moderating this forum with incredible and poignant posts and (2) for reviving this thread. I loved reading this critique especially with so much ISM listening under my belt. This guy nailed Jim, IMO. He saw him as a genius, which he remains to this day. Feel blessed to have such amazing music from this band in my life.

johnnYYac

Quote from: johnnYYac on Sep 09, 2015, 11:26 AM
Born this day in 2003...

Happy 12th Birthday, It Still Moves!
And, so, another year passes... and we were blessed with a great reissue!  It, indeed, still moves me. The best of the best.

Happy 13th birthday, It Still Moves!
The fact that my heart's beating is all the proof you need.

Lonndown27

Quote from: johnnYYac on Sep 09, 2016, 01:20 PM
Quote from: johnnYYac on Sep 09, 2015, 11:26 AM
Born this day in 2003...

Happy 12th Birthday, It Still Moves!
And, so, another year passes... and we were blessed with a great reissue!  It, indeed, still moves me. The best of the best.

Happy 13th birthday, It Still Moves!

HAPPY 13th ISM!!! You're the album that helped me realize who the greatest band of all time was and I was pretty confident about the Jacket since 2004...it's been such a long time, without any doubts ever....such a weird, long strange journey
(MMJ): 8/2/12+8/1/13+10/07/15+12/29/17+12/30/17+12/31/17+8/21/2022::::(JIM): 11/5/2018

Cameron


meltingaway

"HAPPY 13th ISM!!! You're the album that helped me realize who the greatest band of all time was and I was pretty confident about the Jacket since 2004...it's been such a long time, without any doubts ever....such a weird, long strange journey"

Me too, word for word

wow 13 years and still enthralled with this band

Lonndown27

Quote from: meltingaway on Sep 09, 2016, 09:05 PM
"HAPPY 13th ISM!!! You're the album that helped me realize who the greatest band of all time was and I was pretty confident about the Jacket since 2004...it's been such a long time, without any doubts ever....such a weird, long strange journey"

Me too, word for word

wow 13 years and still enthralled with this band

hell yes Meltingaway!

It's just too true!

i mean just the songs off ISM, if spread out throughout 4 or 5 albums, could've sustained this band for their entire career:

Epics (that if only one of these was written by another band, would've been the song they banked on night in and night out....MMJ have like 8 of these masterpieces):
STEAM ENGINE
RUN THRU

Jammy Balladry:
I WILL SING YOU SONGS
ROLLIN BACK

Unbelievable Timeless Songs, Perfect songs that nobody can dispute:
GOLDEN
MAHGEETAH
ONE BIG HOLIDAY

Towering rock and roll:
MASTERPLAN
EASY MORNING REBEL
DANCEFLOORS

Moody singer songwriter brilliance:
JUST ONE THING
ONE IN THE SAME

they could've literally banked on this album their entire career....

thank god they didn't though and we get a masterpiece EVERY ALBUM.

Goddamn, I love this band
(MMJ): 8/2/12+8/1/13+10/07/15+12/29/17+12/30/17+12/31/17+8/21/2022::::(JIM): 11/5/2018

mscarlyw

Wow! I can't It Still Moves came out in 2003! It doesn't sound like a 2003 release. It has more of a contemporary sound and production. I prefer It Still Moves over Z. Any one else feel that way too?

Lonndown27

Quote from: mscarlyw on Nov 29, 2016, 10:11 PM
Wow! I can't It Still Moves came out in 2003! It doesn't sound like a 2003 release. It has more of a contemporary sound and production. I prefer It Still Moves over Z. Any one else feel that way too?

me too but not by a mile or anything, but by a fair stretch. I've witnessed nearly every Z song, in only two MMJ shows, but not even half of the ISM songs....i would love to see a live show where they played Rollin back, Just One Thing, Steam Engine, Easy Morning Rebel and Dancefloors for me. I enjoy the ISM songs live much more, too. The Z songs seemed to be encapsulated perfectly on OKONOKOS and have been given much time, care and play time. I think it's time to put things like Wordless and Off The Record to the side for a while and use those as rarities, while inserting Easy Morning Rebel, Dancefloors and Rollin Back as mainstays for the next tour  :beer:
(MMJ): 8/2/12+8/1/13+10/07/15+12/29/17+12/30/17+12/31/17+8/21/2022::::(JIM): 11/5/2018

APR

Quote from: mscarlyw on Nov 29, 2016, 10:11 PM
Wow! I can't It Still Moves came out in 2003! It doesn't sound like a 2003 release. It has more of a contemporary sound and production. I prefer It Still Moves over Z. Any one else feel that way too?

I do, and I prefer ISM over any album ever made.

parkervb

Quote from: Lonndown27 on Nov 30, 2016, 02:03 PM
Quote from: mscarlyw on Nov 29, 2016, 10:11 PM
Wow! I can't It Still Moves came out in 2003! It doesn't sound like a 2003 release. It has more of a contemporary sound and production. I prefer It Still Moves over Z. Any one else feel that way too?

me too but not by a mile or anything, but by a fair stretch. I've witnessed nearly every Z song, in only two MMJ shows, but not even half of the ISM songs....i would love to see a live show where they played Rollin back, Just One Thing, Steam Engine, Easy Morning Rebel and Dancefloors for me. I enjoy the ISM songs live much more, too. The Z songs seemed to be encapsulated perfectly on OKONOKOS and have been given much time, care and play time. I think it's time to put things like Wordless and Off The Record to the side for a while and use those as rarities, while inserting Easy Morning Rebel, Dancefloors and Rollin Back as mainstays for the next tour  :beer:


put OTR to the side? blaspheme! I've never once been bummed when they start riffing on the intro and the final 1/2 of that song live stands up to any jam they do.  I'm all for more EMR, Dancefloors and Rollin tho!
Don't you ever turn it off

dookie shoot bandit

Quote from: parkervb on Dec 02, 2016, 11:05 AM
Quote from: Lonndown27 on Nov 30, 2016, 02:03 PM
Quote from: mscarlyw on Nov 29, 2016, 10:11 PM
Wow! I can't It Still Moves came out in 2003! It doesn't sound like a 2003 release. It has more of a contemporary sound and production. I prefer It Still Moves over Z. Any one else feel that way too?

me too but not by a mile or anything, but by a fair stretch. I've witnessed nearly every Z song, in only two MMJ shows, but not even half of the ISM songs....i would love to see a live show where they played Rollin back, Just One Thing, Steam Engine, Easy Morning Rebel and Dancefloors for me. I enjoy the ISM songs live much more, too. The Z songs seemed to be encapsulated perfectly on OKONOKOS and have been given much time, care and play time. I think it's time to put things like Wordless and Off The Record to the side for a while and use those as rarities, while inserting Easy Morning Rebel, Dancefloors and Rollin Back as mainstays for the next tour  :beer:


put OTR to the side? blaspheme! I've never once been bummed when they start riffing on the intro and the final 1/2 of that song live stands up to any jam they do.  I'm all for more EMR, Dancefloors and Rollin tho!

Still get pumped every time the live intro starts. Definitely a song I don't mind at every show.
But also agree that EMR needs more lovin live

APR

I think OTR is always great live.  That's a keeper and crowd pleaser.  I agree about cutting back on Wordless and It Beats in general.  And in favor of EMR and especially in favor of Rollin' Back, which I have never seen after 40+ shows.  Please Rollin' Back one of these days (because it is an amazing song with incredible lyrics not just because it is rare)!!