My Morning Jacket

what do you guys think of these discs?

I just got them and i'm enjoying them so far, there is some good stuff on there.  Initially i like the 2nd disc better, with stuff like tyrone on it and the demo songs.  but the first disc has some pretty sweet stuff like Rocket Man which turned out really good and old sept. blues and the first song, which i also really liked called weeks go by like days!

Has lil billy ever been recorded, or do we just have the live version?  I wish I could coment on the discs but I won't be able to get them until Tuesday.

I've heard most of the live/rare recordings of the songs on their cds.  I was assuming the other songs were going to be longer than 1:30-2 minutes, but there are still some great songs I hadn't heard.  I'm not a fan of 80's music at all, but it was still interesting to hear jim do those two songs.

why don't you love me, when will they come, and I won't cry are all awesome. probably my favorites

Just finished listening to the first disc and love it! When Will They Come is my favourite right now. Ok, gonna put the second one on now! Will be back with more thoughts :D

I got a good chuckle out of West End Girls.  Tyrone was good as well as the version of I will be there when you die.

I'm glad to be listening to them.  I just love this bunch of guys.  How awesome would it be to get to listen while they practice?  I'd like that. :)

QuoteI was assuming the other songs were going to be longer than 1:30-2 minutes, but there are still some great songs I hadn't heard.

I always thought size doesn't matter....?  ;)

QuoteI got a good chuckle out of West End Girls.  Tyrone was good as well as the version of I will be there when you die.

Haha, yeah. West End Girls is a fun cover :D
I love Take My Breath Away too.
is that Tom Cruise I'm hearing?

I will be there when you die.

QuoteI will be there when you die.

But you don't even know me!

It doesn't matter, O.  You just have to keep a straight face.

I have enjoyed listening to these more as collectibles and windows into the bands early history, more than listening to them like I listen their discs.  Does that make any sense? :)

QuoteI have enjoyed listening to these more as collectibles and windows into the bands early history, more than listening to them like I listen their discs.  Does that make any sense? :)

Makes perfect sense.  Not to discount the fact that there are some awesome songs on these two discs.  It's so incredible that they have songs this good lying around.  I swear they are one of those bands that could cover something like West End Girls or Take My Breath away and it would be fucking awesome..........oh wait, they did, and they are.  Seriously though, having these two albums is kind of like being able to just sit around with the guys and hang out while they fucked around with some music.  I love it.  Thank you Darla Records.  ;D  And thanks for finally getting the cd's to Knoxville TN.

Also, The Artwork and titles are hillarious.  The band has a very unique and intelligent sense of humor and to top it off thier fucking crazy.  I would get embarraced at the record store when they asked what the title of the album was and I had to say "The Sandworm Cometh". ::)

QuoteAlso, The Artwork and titles are hillarious.

I found the artwork rather tragic. That poor fella gets killed by the sandworm!  :'(

I actually laughed out loud when I turned "learning" over and saw the back.

  The sandworm is kind of scarry.  I guess that's why the title is "The Sandworm Cometh" and not "Aww look at the cute sandworm"  

QuoteI actually laughed out loud when I turned "learning" over and saw the back.

What a cruel man you are.

Why has the Maestro been mutilated?   :(

Hey O!  are you anywhere near Wervershoof?  not sure if thats an actual town or not... there is a pretty cool website based there

I think the band could have put out another really great album by just using songs from these two releases and rerecording them and mabey toying with the arrangement.

The Sandworm Gets The Two Toed Smack Down

1. Tonite I Want To Celebtate With You
2. I Just Wanted To Be Your Friend
3. I won't Cry
4. Isobella With The White Umbrella
5. That Someone Else Was You
6. Nothing 2 Me
7. Time Never Gets
8. Weeks Go By Like Days
9. What Will I Do
10. When Will They Come
11. Downtown
12. Good Nights and Happy Trails
13. Somebody Cares about The Maestro
14. Josta Dreams and Bitter Hands

I would have been blown away if this had been the new album! With rerecordings of course, and adding in Lil' Billy.

I am a neerd :P

Oh, honey.  Aren't we all?

QuoteI think the band could have put out another really great album by just using songs from these two releases and rerecording them and mabey toying with the arrangement.

The Sandworm Gets The Two Toed Smack Down

1. Tonite I Want To Celebtate With You
2. I Just Wanted To Be Your Friend
3. I won't Cry
4. Isobella With The White Umbrella
5. That Someone Else Was You
6. Nothing 2 Me
7. Time Never Gets
8. Weeks Go By Like Days
9. What Will I Do
10. When Will They Come
11. Downtown
12. Good Nights and Happy Trails
13. Somebody Cares about The Maestro
14. Josta Dreams and Bitter Hands

I would have been blown away if this had been the new album! With rerecordings of course, and adding in Lil' Billy.

Yeah, that'd be a fascinating album. However, I also really like some of the lo-fi sounds of these songs. They really shouldn't rerecord 'Downtown' or 'I Just Wanted To Be Your Friend', those songs are perfect as they are! But maybe I'm just a lo-fi nerd. :)

If I'd be a real shitty fan, I might say that I would like an album with these songs better than I like It still moves. Hmmm.....  :-/

So from the linear notes of disc one I'm taking it that a couple of the tracks were originally recorded in Jim's dorm room in college. Can anyone validate this? The notion is blowing my mind. Imagine if you lived down the hall.

O, can you explain your qualms with It Still Moves? I mean, I know it's on a major label and all of that, but it's still so solid.

The main two I would like to have worked on and rereleased are Nothing 2 Me and What Would I Do.

Nothing 2 Me- I just don't like the recording, I like what the drums are doing but I would like to hear Jims vocals on top of them instead of burried under them. The harmonica is HOT!  Does Jim play?

What Would I Do- This might be my favorite song on both discs if it was rerecorded and they tweeked the arrangement to make it more of a complete song than a good idea.  Has anyone deciphered what is being said at the end of this song?

Lyrics seem to be

Oh what will I do
When nothing happens to me
All of my life
Is running around like machinery
tugging and pulling my coat
tuggin and pullin
Come on get up
get up and get ready to go
get up
get up and get ready to go
get up
get up and get ready to go

I'm willing to guess it's not so much that O has qualms about It Still Moves as it's the fact that if they did release all these songs on one album it would have a very TN Fire feel, and if I recall correctly this is his favorite MMJ album.  Which would also explain his lo fi prefrence.  I also happen to think the lo-fi quality has always been a large part of the charm of the band.  At Dawn is the best produced and recorded album I have ever heard....ever! However, I would not trade It Still Moves for another At Dawn.  I'm really excited about how the band will go about recording and producing the next album. I really think Jim gets into this side of making a record.

I just miss that sound of Jim making little weird songs in his bedroom on It still moves. I also like the "southern rock"-sound, aside from that, but I think it'd be a shame if they dropped the tiny melancholic songs from their records... In other words, Sweatboard was right. :)

Now, I can agree with your opinion on those two songs, Sweatboard. I talked about this with Mister Tree, a guy I met on this forum but who doesn't visit it that much anymore, how we both like Sparklehorse, not just for his songs, but also for the sound of his records. How he uses a combination of lo-fi and hi-fi recording sessions, sometimes even in one song. I consider that to be perhaps the most ideal way of how a record should sound.

I don't know, I guess I just love to hear Jim goof around and experiment. :)

Has anyone noticed how 'I won't cry', wich I really like, sounds a lot like 'Heartbreakin'Man'?

"She ain't gonna love me 'till I'm gone" --> "Twenty times I wish you'd understand"

Could 'I won't cry' be the blueprint for 'Heartbreakin'Man'?

This sucks I wanna buy the discs so bad but I'm under strict orders from mrs grim not to buy myself anything until after xmas.

QuoteThis sucks I wanna buy the discs so bad but I'm under strict orders from mrs grim not to buy myself anything until after xmas.

I'm here to commiserate with you, ben.  The new baby = hospital bills, increased food bills, child care, etc.  No money left over for music.  I've been easing the pain by making mixes from my older cd's, though I'm left hungry for new music.  

I'm hoping Christmas will bring a bonanza!

I am SO digging Tyrone!  ;D
I think I like the orange disk better than the black/gray one...so that would be Learning over Sandworm??

O, I'm thinking you might be on to something with the I Won't Cry/Heartbreakin' Man idea. A blueprint makes sense. I'm digging it.

Weeks Go Bye Like Days and Tonight I Wanna Celebrate with You need to make it into the live rotation.  Ok, here is the question; if you could pick 5 songs off both albums to make it into the live rotation for the next tour what would they be.

1. Tyrone (So HOT!!!!!!!!!!)
2. Tonight I Wanna Celebrate With You (Should Open Shows)
3. Weeks Go By like Days
4. I Just Wanted To Be YO Friend
5. Isobella With The White Umbrella

here's a recent article with some stuff about the early recordings...

http://www.dailynebraskan.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/11/29/41aaafb3b1409

QuoteThe group was an unknown band from Kentucky when these songs were recorded and now they are perhaps one of the most promising groups in the music industry

My friends, this is amazing.  Feel the love!

I got The Sandworm Cometh.

Love.

I don't have either of them yet. :(   :(
I hate the Christmas season. I never get to buy anything that I want. I used to love buying gifts for other people, but I kind of despise it now because there are so many things that I want and I haven't bought hardly anything for myself in so long.
I;ll stop bitching now. I don't have any thoughts on the early recordings. I don't know why I even opened this thread. It's just making me sad. :(

Oh no, 'wiggum.  :) <-- That is for you.

I'm diggin M White Rabbit a lot at the moment. BTW,What does M stand for? My White Rabbit? Morning White Rabbit? Mo White Rabbit? Mackdaddy White Rabbit?

Metamphetamine White Rabbit?

MMMMMM! White Rabbit  :P

I just received both CD's in the mail and have listened to them nonstop. I would have to say the only quality song that i have never heard is "i just wanted to be your friend". beautiful song. i've heard 60% of songs previously but still good ones. "weeks go by like days" is also another classic. just wish some of the tracks were longer than a minute and a half.

Gasp, the eternal skeptics at www.pitchforkmedia.com have reviewed the new releases.  Actually, they liked it more than I thought they would.


"If you're a My Morning Jacket fan, you likely know that the band have lots of unreleased material, old tapes, and reel-to-reels scattered around the silo propped against rusting farm equipment and crusted with the hardened wax of a thousand candles. And you probably figured out that unreleased material sounded rough and raw, all those songs saturated in reverb and tape hiss. And you knew scattered among that scattered archive-- long stepped over, or used as coasters for countless beers, or as ashtrays, or piled 10 high for footprops-- there were bound to be a few gems. You were, more or less, right all along, as these two mini-biographies from the band's original label, Darla Records, attest; both are subtitled "early recordings, b-sides, covers, y mas" (that's if I'm reading the scribbles along the spines correctly), which is an adequate product description, albeit one that omits a few live versions, several alternate takes, some half-assed doodles, tape experiments, and distractions on a bored Sunday afternoon.

Most of these songs, as you could probably guess, feature just Jim James, the voice of My Morning Jacket, either strumming a guitar or playing rudimentary drum rhythms. He ostensibly compiled these tracks for Darla and divided them onto two separate disks. The first, Chapter 1: The Sandworm Cometh, almost has the easy flow of a proper album, beginning with the relatively polished "Weeks Go By Like Days", a full-band track from the Darla 100 comp and ending with a faithful cover of Elton John's "Rocket Man", which is particularly affecting here because James sounds like he's singing from the void of outer space.

In between those two stellar tracks are alternate takes of "They Ran" and "Evelyn Is Not Real", which would end up My Morning Jacket's debut, The Tennessee Fire, with better arrangements; strong rarities like "I Just Wanted to Be Your Friend"; some strange, short doodles ("What Will I Do?" and "Isobella With the White Umbrella"); a fuzzed-out version of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit"; and, best of all, a ragged rendition of Santo & Johnny's "Sleepwalk" that leads into a live, slowed-down version of the Tennessee Fire track "Olde Sept. Blues". Surprisingly, the collection holds together remarkably well as you glimpse the band's creative process through its discarded recordings.

Chapter 2: Learning is even more scattershot, both in its songs and in its tracklist. That subtitle is very likely a disclaimer, a tongue-in-cheek caveat to fans who might otherwise expect too much. The demo versions of album tracks like "Just One Thing" and "Death Is the Easy Way" anchor this volume, but other tracks uproot it. The three frontloaded covers are straightforward, but unlike "Rocket Man", they're also unimaginative and almost unlistenable. James peppers the band's straightlaced reading of Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" with sound clips from Top Gun, which apparently passes for clever. That song is followed by an even greater disaster, an almost note-for-note cover of "West End Girls", on which James mimics Neil Tennant's half-spoken delivery without displaying the slightest awareness of the Pet Shop Boys' devastating decadence.

But covers are half-serious undertakings anyway, especially on a hodgepodge compilation like this, and besides, James' rendition of "Dream a Little Dream" is almost charming-- that is, until he starts puppy-whimpering at the end. Similarly, the full-band version of Hank Williams' "Why Don't You Love Me" is a hoot until the drum solo coda, which in the liner notes James calls "Hot!" but which might be better described as "Incredibly annoying!" This percussive sound spoils "Nothing 2 Me" as well, burying a signature My Morning Jacket melody under six feet of reverby drums. This sort of self-sabotage can often sound fascinating if it serves a larger purpose, but here it sounds self-indulgent, juvenile, and-- quite frankly-- openly hostile, as if James is daring you to keep listening. Granted, he gives you good reason to endure all the shrill noise with songs like the live version of "Bermuda Highway" and "I Will Be There When You Die/Sunrides and the Girls Scream", but that only seems to make the lesser songs all the more grating.

At their worst-- which is much of Learning-- these two hodgepodge volumes will interest only the die-hardest of fans, those who probably already own the Darla comps and the European-only EPs. But at their best-- which is most of The Sandworm Cometh-- they offer a compelling if not altogether listenable chronicle of a band with an already prickly creativity and only a nascent idea of what works and what doesn't. Taken together, they're about what you might expect from My Morning Jacket's early stuff, give or take."

-Stephen M. Deusner, December 16th, 2004

wow, nice things from the Pitchfork folks....the apocolypse must surely be near!

that's cool--my life insurance is paid up! ;)

I thought the review was great, I loved the images the writer painted in the opening paragraph, very cool.  He also nailed one of my complaints about Nothing 2 Me and Jim being buried under the drums.  I also have to agree with the clips from top gun. I giggled the first time but they are unlistenable the second time through.  I don't agree with his knock on the drum solo on "Why don't you love me", They are HOT!! I do agree that the problem with the "West End Girls" cover is that it's way to accurate.  Then again, having a fairly good understanding of the band, I can see how the hummor lies in the fact that it is a straight take.

Yeah!! I got these for Christmas, and I really dig both discs.  Like others, I think West End Girls and Take my Breath Away are amusing the first time, but I have been skipping them in subsequent listens.

I had heard a lot of these songs, and I love 'em: "Tonite..." and "When will they come" are 2 of my faves.  I also love Sleepwalk/Old Sept Blues.  And some I hadn't heard and love: Nothing 2 Me, demo of Evelyn, & the Hank Williams tune.

Oh so good!!

nother review up at erasing clouds:

http://erasingclouds.com/1221mmj.html

Quotenother review up at erasing clouds:

http://erasingclouds.com/1221mmj.html

Yeah, but JESUS, get the ALBUM NAME right.  SandWORM.

Reading that review, I got the idea that the 'mainstream pop' sound, as this reviewer calls it, really suits our guys. I mean, the sound of O is the one that is real isn't all that far away from the sound of these covers, is it? Damn, I'm getting all excited by the idea of MMJ making a disco album now! :)

(just for the record, because my post doesn't make sense anymore, he changed it so that it's the correct album title.  Good work!)

I haven't been able to give these a full listen, I've just been snopping arund with the thirty second samples in iTunes, and they sound pretty promising. I love the little MMJ I have (It still moves and the Chocolate and Ice EP) and I ordered AcousticitsuocA and At Dawn yesterday. I shuold've ordered one of these, as they sound really interesting. I'm excited to hear Jim sing without reverb. Even though his vocal reverb is absolutely amazing, the couple of songs where he doesn't use it sound quite good, and I want to give those a listen. It's interesting how much the reverb changes things.

I like em.
...but I honestly believe I would listen to Jim James sing the alphabet 400 times in a row without complaining!  :D