BONNAROO 2011

[johnnYYac]

MMJ Bonnaroo poster thread: http://www.mymorningjacket.com/forum/index.php?topic=14829.0#new

[johnnYYac]

Oh shit!  Did YOU let your daughter go?



Courtesy of http://christwire.org/2011/05/bonnaroo-a-festival-of-heroin-gay-sin-docking-mud-orgies-and-black-magic/

[ericm]

Oh shit!  Did YOU let your daughter go?



Courtesy of http://christwire.org/2011/05/bonnaroo-a-festival-of-heroin-gay-sin-docking-mud-orgies-and-black-magic/

I don't know what's funnier; the article or the comments afterwards. ;D

Gotta hand it to ya Mr. YYac, you do manage to find everything out there on the interwebs. ;)

[Anu]

The Movie + The Live Set = MMJ Dream day. Friday was phenomenal. Will write more & post sometime soon.

[Goose24]

The Movie + The Live Set = MMJ Dream day. Friday was phenomenal. Will write more & post sometime soon.

The movie was really great and I was glad that I got to see PHJB perform a couple tunes after since I wasn't able to make their full set since I was waiting to get in the pit for MMJ. I was quite upset that Jim didn't show up though!

[ms. yvon]

anu!  i was at movie & show but didn't see you.  did you also see mavis?  (that set she played in 2007 was the highlight of the weekend for me.)

friend of mine sent me the NY Times article about Bonnaroo from tuesday's paper:  giant photo under the headline is of jim playing his acoustic guitar.  the author of the article showed a lot of love to mmj's set & to PHJB, describing them as "Bonnaroo's binding glue."

i didn't find the fest-wrap article online, but here is a write-up re: mmj's show on saturday:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/11/bonnaroo-my-morning-jacket-on-main-stage-for-first-time/#more-206773

[Anu]

Yvon! I am so sorry I missed you! Mavis had one of my favorite sets other than the Jacket!

Here's something like a proper review:

Field of Dreams: the Jacket's Victory Dance

As dusk quickly approached, though, we found ourselves on the crowded walk towards What Stage to grab a spot for the Jacket's 8pm slot, seeking a particular piece of lawn where we could spread out and dance. Leaving the pit and the several rows after it to the patient folks willing to press, we really got a sense of the vastness of the main Bonnaroo venue by laying our blanket halfway back, with the VIP section just behind us and the waxing moon above. Seeing this band for about the tenth time brought layers and levels of emotion based on how their music meets me on a spiritual plane and in sheer anticipation of how they'd weave in the new songs that I'd been listening to for about ten days since Circuital had been released.

The opening one-two of "Victory Dance" and "Circuital" perfectly tones the crowd to connect with the new tunes – from the spine-chilling trumpet solo that kicked off the set as though "Taps" were playing in the belly of our common memory to Jim's otherworldly wail at the end of "Victory Dance" to the comforting way the new record's title track tracks our cellular responsiveness to the Jacket's versatile jangle and sparkle.

Immediately switching gears to three soaring hits from 2005's Z, the setlist immediately attracted anyone who wasn't already reeling towards bliss. "Off The Record" opens slowly before slinking into lyric and hook and a danceable refrain that had the mass of thousands grooving along joyfully; then, suddenly, at midsong we meet the kind of whacked and wicked jam that makes the Jacket the Jacket, that stretches every player in the band to follow its tangly riffs into the manna of meaning as Bo Koster's keyboards carry us to the misty mountaintops of rock and roll bliss. Followed by the fierce glory of "Gideon" and the playful abandon of "Anytime," the party was fully underway, with James then greeting the "ocean of humanity" by announcing the occasion as an entirely surreal, mind-blowing, and "magical honor."

At Roo, the everyfan's festival, many bands forget their roots as fans, arrive just in time to do their set, and leave with similar haste. That's not the case with My Morning Jacket who have been like pillars of the whole Bonnaroo project since its earliest years, always hanging out to catch other artists and really taking things to the next level with late-night sets of legend in 2006 and 2008.  For two hours on Friday night, we got to give the Jacket their due by giving them such a premier place in the schedule, and the Jacket just poured the love back out on us.

Even though only a handful of tracks from 2008's excellent but polarizing Evil Urges have remained in the set, the journey that injects "Smokin' from Shootin'" into a snippet from "Run Thru" (a 2003 track) and then collapses into the arms of "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, Part Two" undoubtedly torques listeners into a state of rotation and levitation that leaves little doubt that this band has no qualms about bending the tilt of the universe for the time that it's onstage each night.

Intentionally or inadvertently, My Morning Jacket give a ton of credibility to the narrative that the moment of Circuital signals a retro movement all about returning to the band's roots by playing more songs from the 2003 pre-breakout album It Still Moves than they do from either Z or Evil Urges. And even though I did miss hearing "It Beats for You," "Wonderful," Librarian," "Dondante," and "Evil Urges," to name a few, neither the focus on the new album nor on the older, jammier jams from earlier in the century in any way diminished the devastating beauty of the entire evening for me.

From their funkiest and freakiest with newer tracks like "Highly Suspicious" or "Holdin' On To Black Metal" to the culminating guitar-god pyrotechnics of "Dancefloors" diving into "One Big Holiday," My Morning Jacket made my night and my weekend with what may have been one of their career's most important sets to date. For me, it meant watching and dancing from a vaster vantage point, from a different distance and angle, from a more mature but no less appreciative perspective. As far as I can tell, the latest album embraces all these added textures in what is already a many layered rock and roll masterpiece of a musical vocation.

http://www.interference.com/15086-bonnaroo%E2%80%99s-decade-of-dust-dreams-jacket%E2%80%99s-sonic-beauty-the-sightings-of-ben-sollee-so-much-more/