NYC Roseland Show

[JohnnyRage]

Hey jibboodude, Can I borrow $100 bucks?

[fitzcarraldo]

i don't think it's so useful to compare to other shows as there are always nice little touches.

Amen.

[dhollensbe]

I'd watch them play the same thing every single night of my life.

and your favorite movie is probably groundhog day... :P

[LaurieBlue]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/arts/music/02jack.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

December 2, 2006
Music Review | 'My Morning Jacket'
The Steady Sound of a Jam Band That Wasn't Really Jamming at All
By KELEFA SANNEH
Take a few steps back. Turn down the volume. Squint. If you do all that, it's easy to see My Morning Jacket, from Louisville, Ky., as some marvelous, mutant kind of jam band.

The group's most recent studio album, "Z," is a shaggy and lovable disc propelled by hazy grooves and glowing guitar lines. It was released by ATO, the record company founded by Dave Matthews and friends. The band's sets have become perennial highlights at the jam-centric music festival Bonnaroo. The new My Morning Jacket live double album and DVD, both called "Okonokos," were recorded at the Fillmore in San Francisco, which helped nurture an earlier generation of jammers. And on Thursday night, the band played for more than two hours at Roseland Ballroom, in front of a sold-out crowd that cheered every guitar solo.

This was, for the most part, a triumphant show. My Morning Jacket's ascent has been slow and steady and, in a way, utterly predictable; ever since 1999, when the band released its first album, word has slowly spread. And "Z," its first album with a new guitarist (Carl Broemel) and keyboardist (Bo Koster), felt like a turning point: the songs were weirder and riskier. ("Off the Record" begins with surf-rock, evolves into some Southern-rock variant of reggae, then adds a jazzy instrumental coda.) And those songs were at the heart of Thursday's set.

About that jamming, though: the longer the band played, the clearer it became that these weren't really jams at all. The band's leader is Jim James, who writes the songs, sings the songs and sometimes plays lead guitar, too. The other members rarely undermine his authority: instead of knocking the songs off kilter with ad-libs or digressions, they pull together, marching in lock step behind the guy with the glorious, melancholy voice.

In fact there were few surprises in Thursday's show. Though it sounds loose at first, "Z" is a tightly composed (and, at 47 minutes, relatively short) album, and onstage, the band recreates the songs pretty faithfully. The guitar solos generally had the same shape, and sometimes the same notes, as those on the CD. And in "Lay Low," which begins with a greasy guitar figure and a stiff-legged drum-machine beat, the crowd roared when Mr. James and Mr. Broemel locked into a dual riff, just like on the album version. They clearly weren't making it up as they went along.

You might say that the members of My Morning Jacket have traded freedom for heft. Thursday's best songs, like the show-closing "Anytime," sounded positively monolithic; instead of taking time to mess around, the members simply hurtled toward the end. And then there was "Run Thru," a song that builds as deliberately, as inexorably as this band's career has. A slow-motion guitar line eventually builds to a crashing, trudging climax. And part of the fun is its predictability: you just wait, as the band builds momentum, knowing that before too long the noise will die down and the song will seem to end and then that guitar line will come back to life, sounding even slower than it did before.

[el_chode]

i don't mean to be a negative nancy...but i thought the roseland show really lacked their usual energy. it wasn't a bad time at all, and it converted my ladyfriend into a fan, but i thought some songs sounded extremely labored, especially off the record...like it was just a beat or two too slow. they started out really strong, and they ended really strong though.

which brings me to my question: what was the deal with someone being electrocuted? jj said something about that before the encores.

also, roseland's soundman sucked because the guitars weren't loud enough to give me goosebumps. and my last complaint is that they didn't do that sweet intro to lowdown like on the okonokos track.

i was at the bonnaroo show (which was the best performance of my life), so maybe its an unfair comparison.

[el_chode]

B'Roo '06 (obviously), but even nights like Irving Plaza 2 back in June of '04.

Anyway, they're still great all the time, but I didn't think this show ranked with some of their best.

i agree. a few days after the irv show they headlined bamboozle back when it was something worth seeing and rocked my socks off there too. i can't say enough about 'roo 06 though.

[bridget]

I feel like I'm following everyone around here going, "come again?" but electrocuted?

One of my good friends who's in a band once got electrocuted through his lips - his lips on the mic - and he still has a bit of PTSD. Like a pitcher who really hurls it in there, only to catch a line drive to the face, my friend finds that he can't get totally lost in a song like he used to. There's a place in the back of his brain that's always ready to jump back.

Long story short - who do you think got shocked?

[el_chode]

no idea...it was either shortly before the encore (i like how they take 2 second encores where they like take a sip of water instead of leaving the stage) or it was during the encore and he mentioned something like "thank yall for supporting us...it's been a long night, we had an electrocution back stage..."

it was hard to understand, because again, the roseland sound guy sucked i thought.

i dunno who did, but for some reason i want to say it was tommy only because he seems like he would do it by accident.

[LaurieBlue]

http://tarajonespages.blogspot.com/2006/12/thursday-night-i-took-much-needed.html

http://www.glidemagazine.com/hiddentrack/?p=124/

http://koenma47.blogspot.com/2006/12/gig-my-morning-jacket.html

http://mcgrupp.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_mcgrupp_archive.html#116500311321718654

http://superdeelove.blogspot.com/2006/12/worlds-colliding-in-best-of-ways.html

http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2006/12/my_morning_jack.html

http://lnnline.blogspot.com/2006/12/dane-cook-my-morning-jacket.html

[mackhazel1]

the slip talked about the electocution incident before MMJ came on stage maybe it happened during the sound check

[Pepper_Lyon]

i am somebody..and i dig machazells scrote

[CC]

roseland is now in the gallery...

[LaurieBlue]

http://hippophooray.blogspot.com/2006/12/what-wonderful-band.html

[LaurieBlue]

http://www.thefader.com/blog/articles/2006/12/04/greatest-show-on-earth

[LaurieBlue]

http://www.hightimes.com/ht/entertainment/content.php?bid=260&aid=3

[LaurieBlue]

http://www.earvolution.com/2006/12/my-morning-jacket-shines-in-nyc.asp

Tuesday, December 05, 2006
My Morning Jacket Shines In NYC
By: David Schultz

My Morning Jacket has reached the stage of buzziness where they can simply do no wrong. Lauded in nearly every musical circle for the last couple of years, My Morning Jacket has killed at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival with a 3½ hour midnight set, brought crowds to the arena early during their summer stint opening act for Pearl Jam and have had fellow rockers Grace Potter & The Nocturnals running ragged to catch them play over the summer. All windows of immunity someday close, usually with an accompanying backlash. For My Morning Jacket, still riding the critical and commercial success of their 2005 release Z, that time has not yet come; nor does it seem imminent. Sometimes the world works out right.


MMJ have owed a visit to the Big Apple for quite some time. Due to complications from pneumonia befalling lead singer and guitarist Jim James, the Louisville, Kentucky rockers had to bail out of their last scheduled appearance, a New Year's Eve show at Madison Square Garden with the Black Crowes and North Mississippi AllStars. They made the most of their return by quickly selling out the roomy Roseland Ballroom. Unlike some other sold-out shows at the venue, Roseland felt sold-out: on the outside, the scalpers seemed a bit more prevalent and a lot more confident in their ability to unload extras; on the inside, the standing room - a little more claustrophobic, the beer lines - a little lengthier, the balconies and raised side stage - a little more populated.

Entrancing on record, My Morning Jacket are equally captivating on stage. Casting ominous silhouettes behind a gigantic translucent screen, the band opened the show appearing larger than life, easing into their opener, "One Big Holiday." A flute away from looking like Ian Anderson, Jim James was the focal point of the show; the crowd hanging on his every movement while he bounced, loped and swayed across the stage. While lead singers and front men always garner the most attention, they are nothing without a quality band behind them. Along with James, charter members Patrick Hallahan (drums) and Two-Tone Tommy (bass) and relatively recent additions Carl Broemel (guitar) and Bo Koster (keys) create an intriguing mix of sleepy psychedelia and dreamy blues. James' haunting voice deftly creates the same aura as Neil Young, giving a doleful feel to surreal carnivalesque dirges that call to mind Robbie Robertson and The Band. On "Off The Record" they incorporate a reggae beat before devolving into a seventies-era Stones groove. Going back even farther, their set closer, "They Ran," adhered to the more restrictive structure of the sixties soul standards, relying on James' vocals to convey the song's power.

On some level, MMJ look like a raw, hairy group of savages but there's a lot of finesse to the songs, especially how they play them. When they jammed, they met at the drum stand, much like Pearl Jam used to do in their formative years. Playing off each other as well as playing with each other, James and Broemel used Two-Tone's rumbling bass to take "Dondante" to lofty dimensions. During the relatively sedate encore, capped by impassioned if not hurried runs through "Mahgeetah" and "Anytime," Broemel showed true versatility. Remaining primarily on guitar for the main set, he contributed heavily to the country-blues feel: beginning the encore on the pedal steel guitar accompanying James on a duet of "Tonight I Want To Celebrate With You" and then breaking out the saxophone for "Nashville To Kentucky."

The cavernous Roseland Ballroom, which doesn't always provide the best acoustics, was not the best match for My Morning Jacket's straightforward style. On the surface, it felt that some intangible was missing from the performance. However, My Morning Jacket doesn't lack passion, they don't lack skill, they don't lack for quality songs and they surely don't lack for a mighty crowd response. Rather, the nagging feeling resulted from the fact that MMJ's gimmick-free style of playing each song as hard as they can didn't belong in a ballroom, they belonged in a much larger arena.


// posted by schultz @ 9:54 PM

[BH]

http://www.hightimes.com/ht/entertainment/content.php?bid=260&aid=3

Maybe they should lay off the weed and concentrate more on the MMJ catalog and less on the word transplendent. ;)

[el_chode]

http://www.thefader.com/blog/articles/2006/12/04/greatest-show-on-earth

does anyone else find it perverse that my chemical romance was even mentioned in the same article as as mmj? i mean aside from both having 3 word names beginning with my, i think that's as far as they go.

its nice seeing the mainstream press recognizing the fact that mmj is hte best live band period. and if they're saying that after the roseland show, they have no idea what they've been missing out on.

[LaurieBlue]

http://media.www.sjuhawknews.com/media/storage/paper763/news/2006/12/08/

[CC]

more roseland in the gallery.