I've figured out why MMJ is not immensly popular..

[el_chode]

Like most of the stories here I have been unsuccessful in creating other jacketheads (parents dig them and love that I love MMJ)  the fiancee really really likes them, not as obsessed as I but still, she enjoys listening when I put them on. (Smokin from shootin is her favorite song)

I think that because we are all SO in love with MMJ, we want to share that love.  If people don't dig it as much as we do then we take it personally.  Don't push to hard my brothers and sisters... I enjoyed MMJs music for a few months then I saw them at Radio City and EVERYTHING changed.  One must really see them live to fully "get it"

I'm bringing my fiancee's brother to the next show nearby, as a musician he should really get into them.

I don't push it unless the situation calls for it because if I were on the otherside of things, it'd piss me off and make me want to NOT check'em out

[rusty95]

Just wanted to add somethin'

I created a toon on world of warcraft about 6 months ago named Yimyames.  Last night a random person asked me if I was a mmj fan.

it made my day  ;D  

10 million people playin and someone after six months finally commented on my name ;D

[songdiver]

BINGO!

Yeah, last time they let the best band in the world become popular...Beatles...a fucking revolution happed.  This time the wave will be bigger, and takes us all with it.

You have reached enlightened status, hooray!

MMJ is sponsered by the revolution
Jim for president for 2012

come on, too many people know about mmj, I think it's time to explode.  
you can't keep this kind of love a secret from the masses any longer...they deserve this love and we have been selfish for not sharing it enough.
rejoice

[songdiver]

i agree, people don't like to be challenged, at least not the masses.  The people who do like this kind of music though almost immediately jump ships into the smaller boat.  I have completely switched people from off to on from only one or two bands.  My Morning Jacket has made many people i know personally make a complete switch, going from listening to music on the radio over 75% of the time to avoiding radio at all cost (unless it is independent) and I'm not talking just musically either.  People who like My Morning Jacket immediately start becoming paranoid and start wondering if this life was real?  It can't be real, can it?  I feel so happy at a MMMJ show, and then we all wonder, "why can't i be this happy all of the time?"  That is the secret and why the revolution will happen; people are starting to ask questions...waking up...i said just enough

And other things, like political activities, love in place of love, quantum mechanics, what is fate? what is God? Am I God?  People are waking up and this music is going to make our break your value system because you will have to make a choice that is difficult: are you going to be an individual or a part of the oneness of everything?  Well, what are you going to do?  "Are you feeling lucky punk."  My Morning Jacket fans stops and ponders the questions, and retorts boldly: "I want to be one with myself and with the rest of the universe...they are one in the same."

The peaceful loving type that thought good music ended at pink floyd will really flip out at how good it is and how the vibe still feels real, but instead of attempting to make fun of it like a frat kid, the person asks "THEY STILL MAKE MUSIC LIKE THIS?"  To the hipster kid, it sounds like an insult...but NO, it is a very good reception because that means it is reminding them not of THE MUSIC necessarily, but instead "THE FEEL" of music.  I CAN FEEL MY MORNING JACKET...the people on the radio make me feel numb, dumb, and obediant, just as the government (corporations) wants.  But MMJ is getting too big to contain, and now there are lots of other bands who are on the same freq or wave who are "preaching" the same things..."these singalong songs will be our scriptures," - the hold steady.  

MMJ is the Velvet Underground of the NOW and Future, but with more technology and soon, much more in terms of resources.  

You have solved the matrix
I love coming on here and see all the happy people who just felt the power of being a human being when music is hitting the right chakras.

[jdbartender]

 I would have no problem if MMJ got REAL big, as long as it didn't change the music... The problem is - if they were to be accepted by the mainstream, the music would have to change to a certain degree...

For example, KOL didn't get mainstream success until they released "Only By The Night" - and this album is far more poppy then any of their previous albums.   Aha Shake is probably their best work, and the mainstream would never embrace it... It would just go right over their heads. So in order from KOL to break, they had to change the music.

But as we have seen from bands like Phish and Radiohead, you can still get huge, without having to appeal to the top 40 audience.  Just keep cranking out great tunes, and great shows, and the fans will come!

[Haldon]

I've been playing them a lot for my girlfriend.  She loves Phone Went West

i got excited

then i made her watch My Morning StraightJacket with me....she didn't get why I thought it was so great

i got upset

I put on more Phone Went West....

things got better


I love MMJ.  Part of me wishes that everybody embraced them and loved them as much as me.  That would mean the band would be crazy succesful, and I'd be happy for them.  But another part of me likes that they aren't huge and that they can still play at smaller venues and I can still get good tickets for the shows.

[br00ke]

i have to agree with the sentiment of "right where they should be" ... they can sell out shows yet we can still see them relatively easy. it does, however, make me cross-eyed how more people don't love this band. the majority, if not all, of my live-music friends are phish fans and they are many .. but there are very few of us (5 maybe) that love MMJ, it's plain crazy to me!

oh well .. more jacket for us. and i gotta say it's quite refreshing to not worry myself nuts about getting tickets to a show. MMJ to me is a perfect little bubble that i'd like to nurture & protect. i wouldn't be surprised to know the guys are pretty happy with where they are too   ;)

[DaFunkyPrecedent]

They have gotten bigger over the last few years, but looking at the big picture, they arent that popular. They're still in the middle sized, GA outdoor venue stratosphere, and Im not sure theyll ever play outdoor amphitheaters as headliners. When you got skillz like MMJ and kill it at Bonnaroo, you cant play 1000 person venues forever.

...as for Barn Animal Collective Noises, dont even get me started

You mean Euphoric Animal Collective Harmonies?

[jdbartender]

Animal Collective...

Are they creative? Yes... Do they step outside of the box... Yes... Do they bring something new and different to the world of rock music... Yes.

Are they ear pleasing to listen to? ..No... Not even close.

This is where they missed the boat.. Good effort, but just not enjoyable to groove to..  And regardless of whether or not you "get it", it doesn't really matter... Music is supposed to evoke pleasant feelings on some level, and from where I stand, AC tunes don't have that quality.  

[tdb810]

If I may chime in here...  I've been very frustrated that some of my closest friends- guys I grew up with and shared music with- really don't like MMJ.  I've tried to share some classic MMJ with them and the response has been tepid.  

Part of my fear is that my obsessive love for MMJ is too much for them to take.  They don't see the thrill.  Its part of the reason why I encouraged them to check out My Morning Straightjacket on American Dad.  It mirrored my experiences in so many ways.

I also wonder if they are jealous of the fact that I've found something in music to be passionate about while they're stuck in the mainstream.

One other question is age.  At 42, I think I'm older than the typical MMJ fan.  Does that factor into the question?  

I think we need to recognize that, based on the fact that we're posting regularly to an MMJ forum, we are a cut above the casual music listener. While some of these friends can't get into MMJ, its not as if they have a passion for any particular band or type of music.

Well, I've had the flu for a few days, so I'm not sure I'm making any sense.  I look forward to seeing what others say about this topic.

PS  Does anyone else think we may need to consider an intervention for Sticky?  ;)

You are totally making sense! I have had similar experiences when sharing mmj with friends, my age (39) and younger....I am always mystified when people don't totally jump out of their skin when they hear songs like lay low, dondante, obh.....and i truthfully get annoyed ;)
But at the end of the day, I really just want to keep them all to myself anyway, and would be devastated if I ever heard them on mainstream radio.  This music has way too much meaning for the shit they play on radio these days.  
Obsessed, and can't wait for the next shows to be announced! ;D ;D ;D

(also in full agreement on the intervention bit, but don't want to get into it with him again)  :P

[wftdmatt]

my theory is that anyone who doesnt like mmj just hasnt heard enough of them.  :D

[miss gradenko]

I don't know if age is a factor at all. WB and I have only been able to get three people to listen to MMJ, two of them being our parents. But, selfish as it may sound, I am kind of glad that they're not huge here, because that means we can still get the good spots at shows when they come to play hehe.

[ynwa]

i think that mmj would be one of a relatively small number of bands that could handle making it big.  when it boils down to it, if the members are strong enough in their convctions of what they want to be, then there are no worries in the form of record execs forcing a pre-conceived formula for success, aka, selling out.  i can't see jim james lowering his standards just to sell more records.  rather, i picture him singing eyes shut, heart on sleeve, nothing else matters more in that very moment each and every time.  he means everything he sings and that, folks, is something you cannot fake.

from my own personal experience, you can talk up a band til you're blue in the face but that only works in certain circles.  you have your different niches of friends and acquaintances & some will bite, some won't.  nowadays, i prefer to pipe in mmj as background music when i've got a smaller group of people hanging out, casual style.  "z" has proven to be the most widely accepted album and in almost every single success story, someone has asked, "who is this?" during "off the record".  this has happened, i'd say, at least 3 times for sure.  "into the woods" (the creepy carnie music song) doesn't fly often, so i take that opportunity to restart.  i've got people's attention & leave the rest to the professionals  8-)

[thebigbang]

The most obvious thing is that the rock music industry isn't generating any long term superstar acts like Pearl Jam and U2 these days. Marketing and label influence aren't what they were.  Teen and tween pop stars can be minted in a day by Disney, but they don't last. Lady Gaga is a current marketing phenomenon for a very slightly older audience, but things like that happen less and less.
The fact the My Morning Jacket plays with a lot of genuine soulfulness and earnest, heartfelt tunes alongside their more aggressive rockers does not appeal to many folks in our cynical, jaded era of emotional detachment.

Also, now that the MMJ guys are in their 30's they are old dogs in the music industry marketing schemes, whereas Kings of Leon were still in the marketing sweet spot with their ages and were willing to market their image a little more it appears, and that has helped elevate their position in the pecking order.

Now there is still a chance that mega-stardom will grab these guys. The media world, all of it and all of its audiences, is fragmented like  at no other time in history which makes it hard to cross all these chasms.  But I think musically MMJ's greatest analogy is Led Zeppelin, a band who put Tangerine and Immigrant Song on the same album, the delicate Going To California between Four Sticks and When the Levee Breaks. And became the biggest money making band in the world.

I don't begrudge MMJ any success, but I do know that every level they go up the star scale, the less and less I can afford to see them very often. And I miss the drink a beer with the band days. But that's the price of success for fans and the band.

[thebigbang]

Below is a feature article in a Philadelphia paper about Jim and the band from 2003.  If you read Jim's quotes in the story, you'll see that he is fessing up to the honesty and not afraid of revealing human emotions other than anger or detachment.  This was posted in a thread several years ago that I happended across tonight.
BTW: This reviewer gets the MMJ thing. Completely.

The link is no longer active.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/entertainment/6708218.htm

Rock without gimmicks (except one)
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.

[danz]

great article, thanks for posting.

so i guess the reason is that our generation is too scared to appear honest, thus music like this, is in a way, too genuine - we are in the age of computers(curtains), makes sense....

[ynwa]

what a fantastic article!  thank you for posting it bigbang.  i think it's pretty remarkable that he was so together @ 24 years of age.  funny that the only major change in him since then seems to be that he cut his hair.

[ALady]

That's a truly amazing article.  Thanks for posting, bigbang!

[AMightyCaporal]

really really incredible article! thanks so much for posting!

[TheRoof]

As much as I spread the word of MMJ, I am SO glad the "radio spoon-fed" populous has not caught on.  Maybe that's me being selfish, but as long as they get the proper credit (and funds) they deserve I am content.

No matter what anyone says.....massive fame and fortune changes things and personalities and I want the band to continue explore their endless boundries of various genre's of music with no external pressures or demands


OK, I am selfish...I believe the Jacket creates music just for me and I don't want people who cannot COMPLETELY appreciate their abstact art for the sake of radio-play