Rocky Mountain Highs

[ms. yvon]

some personal comedy from the trip:  i arrived in town not having booked a room.  the previous 3 nights i'd spent in places with NON working wireless internet service.  so.  

i found a good spot close to the venue, but it was booked up for last night.  i booked a room for saturday night, and went to find a place up the road.

for $39 i got a room which had no towels, no blankets, no pillow cases, no tv remote, no bedside lamp, no clock, but had evidence of a smoke detector torn from the wall (wires still dangling), and soap chips left on the sink and tub from a previous lodger.

and this morning i was woken at 7am by a woman outside my door screaming "YOU FUCKER!" at someone.

awesome.


note: i was able to get blankets and towels by calling the desk. another bonus: in this non-smoking room, there was an ashtray on the table. oh, and the office closed at 10pm, so i couldn't arrange for a wake up call.

still: $39. sweet.

i am posting this from the comfortable confines of the better, more convenient hotel with towels, blankets AND working wireless internet.

and a view of a residential street.

now, i've booked a return flight for 8:30 am tomorrow.  i don't anticipate getting to sleep before 3 tonight.  let's see how things go   :D

[bridget]

I'm lovin' your stories, ms_yvonn. Keep 'em comin!

[ahydell]

Man...last night was my first "full on" show by MMJ.  Previously only seen them as an opener.  Freaking unreal...I'm still in shock.  Can't wait for tonight...

[ms. yvon]

*now perfoming limbering exercises*

[JohnnyRage]

Wowee Mutha Fucking Zowee!!!

My first Bear.

My first Cobra.


On a side note, 6th avenue is a bitch to catch from the venue heading west!

[Anu]

Mile high city, indeed. This band has a rather cosmic sense of how to play a rock show for 150 freaking minutes, 930-midnight, no real break before the encore, insanely heroic.

I hate to say it, as good as it was, Friday was like a rehearsal, a buildup, a preparing of the sacred space, preparing to throw us to the next level.

There were tapers, so it will live forever.

We had a family all along the first railing. Shout out to Yvon and all of our crew and everyone who danced and got a little funky and freaky!

Will try to calm down enough to write a real review.

Safe passage Jacket people.

[sweatboard]

Well, ALLLLLLLLLLLLLRRIIIIGHHHHHT!!!!!!!  Sounds like they ended this thing in style and it sounds like some peeps got the post show buzz.  



 

"The TITANS Of Rock Tour" My Morning Jacket Winter 2007.

[ms. yvon]

setlist is posted!

looking over my scrawled set list for the night it is cluttered with exclamations (DAMN!  EN FUEGO!, etc.)   ;D

one thought before i head off to packing/nap/airport:  looks like they cleaned out the bus tonight:  all the fillmore props made fresh appearances and were tossed to the crowd!  the enormous cowboy hat, the feather boa (!), the skeleton chest plates...the one thing that resurfaced but stayed on stage was a personal favorite:  the marshmallow gun.  oh yes.  put to use most effectively by patrick.  when the marshmallow gun comes out, you know it's a party.

and this:  tonight the atmosphere and lighting kicked my ass.  dude.  WELL DONE, GENTLEMEN!  *deep bow*

glad to see the band looked to be feeling better tonight!

christ.  i have to go to bed.  i knew logging on here would mean trouble.

must.  log.  off.

GOODNIGHT KIDS!

anu, great meeting and keeping the groove lively with you and your family!  safe travels all.   [smiley=vrolijk_26.gif]

[Anu]

Yvon, thanks for posting that setlist. My version had tons of holes. The encore was like a second set -- 55 fucking minutes.

Can someone please confirm that they did in fact play Run Thru? At around the 135 minute mark, I think I started to hit the runner's high meets boxer's dementia. It was just so freaking intense, and I somehow didn't click with this song even though I had been waiting for it all night long.

This is next part is going to be preaching to the choir, but it's my notes to a piece I want to distribute more widely to the non-Jacketed among us. ):):)

While I am generally skeptical of competition and comparisons and generalizations and platitudes, I am about to lay them down plain and simple.

And while I hate to break it to the fans of other bands, I have seen the future of rock and roll, and its name is My Morning Jacket.

As students of great rock themselves, the Jacket channel their classic influences in a spiritual, non-derivative way. They are rock stars in terms of theatrics but not pretension or ego. We can hear the echoes of Radiohead, Neil Young, Lynard Skynard, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, and so many more.

On stage in strange costumes, Jim James holds court like a science-fiction action-figure protagonist carrying his band of brothers into ever more majestic and mystic moments of pure sonic poetry. This is what rock and roll was supposed to be in their bedrooms when they were fourteen and as it has been engraved on the souls of teenage air-guitarists everywhere. No-fucking wonder Cameron Crowe put them in a movie playing "Freebird." Because that filmmaker appreciates the mix tape of the soul like few others in Hollywood, as evidenced by the story of Almost Famous and the cheesy but priceless ending of Elizabethtown.

To experience Jacket power in such intimacy two nights in a row is profound. To tell of its cinematic and religious qualities is point others to the sounds. But of course this means that the career should take these guys to the next level next time—which means I must cherish this closeness and ineffable camaraderie now. Someday they may hold stadiums rapt, and I can only pray they keep the same playful seriousness in tact.

Meanwhile, mainstream radio ignores them, so we know it is through the albums and the shows, the internet and places like the theatrical screenings of Okonokos that we can gather like a tribe, each of us wearing the morning jacket of his or her choice.

In the last few years, I've seen the Flaming Lips, Tool, A Perfect Circle, Coldplay, U2, Scissor Sisters, the Killers, the Mars Volta, the Black Angels, the Black Keys, a wide array of awesome people at the 'roo from Bonnie Raitt to Radiohead to Matisyahu and many more.

Over the years, I've seen a serious catalog of live rock shows including acts as diverse as Rush, the Stones, REM, the Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Grateful Dead, Operation Ivy, Fugazi, the Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, Kiss, GWAR, you get the idea. Too many to name, truly.

And frankly, and honestly, and I can only say this heartfully after Denver MMJ for two nights, I've rarely seen a band put on a live show like the Jacket. Best live band on the planet right now.

Best old school rock band of our time. Great by any standards. Big words, yes, and deserving of them this band is.

Wildly, they're still relatively underground. In perspective, I still can't get over how cozy the venues they sell out are. With 5 albums behind them, these late twenty-somethings are the music fringe's best kept secret, even after owning a share of what the American rock festival means from Coachella to Bonnaroo to Lollapalooza and many of the smaller festivals and on and on.

Who plays 2 hours or more every night? Who switches the setlist every night? While some nights are mirrors, at least one song will inevitably change. But the two-night stand in Denver shares with the fans some otherworldly shape-shifting ecstasy much like I imagine the multiple nights at the Filmore were.

I don't wish to rag on other hard-working acts, but the serious, traveling fans are paying your freaking bills for heaven's sake! Give us some love, give us some variety, stop settling for 70-minute sets produced every night on auto-pilot.

The Jacket have set a new standard for nailing each song as if the earth depended on it and playing each show as if it were their last. Other bands, please take some notes.

The crossover appeal to jam band fans everywhere should not be understated, but it should not be misrepresented or misinterpreted either. The Jacket groks the integrity of the song and gives its live rendition the space to breathe, but not the space to grow like mold into boring, self-referential, cock-rocking whateverland.

They take us to the outer galaxies and back, sure. Yes, they can sustain a musical thought for more than ten minutes, and they can get tweaky and freaky and geeky in the most gifted manner. But they return to rock's mission statement in a way that's both refreshing and chilling, understanding a vocation to write and perform rock songs—not to randomly splash sounds on the sonic canvas.

MMJ has something so sincere to offer, frothing with showmanship but not showing off. I love how tight and completely communal the shows are now, but I imagine bigger things for these deserving guys. It's not a secret I can keep.

If you love rock and roll and everything you thought it had lost through thirty-some years of shitty sell-out commercialism, go see the Jacket. At this point, I should confess, that asking me about this band is like asking a nun about Jesus.

See you in Florida in March?

[sweatboard]

 "asking me about this band is like asking a nun about Jesus."   :D

Brilliant stuff there guys.  It's like we all speak the same language or something.  

I hate thinking about them playing arenas.  For their sake and ours I think the level of exposure they have achieved at this exact time is probably the perfect amount.  

[Anu]

My Hair on the Bear

This is Anu and Viva last night at the second My Morning Jacket show at the Ogden Theatre: http://babyraindance.blogspot.com

At the end of Golden, I threw my golden wig to the stage. I got a knowing, amused look from Two-Tone Tommy. A song or two later, the hard-working stage tech took the goldilocks mop and placed it on the bear's head. Looking for a picture of my hair on the bear.

[JohnnyRage]

I'm stuck in Colorado Springs because of the ice in Dallas, but it was well worth it!

[ms. yvon]

My Hair on the Bear

This is Anu and Viva last night at the second My Morning Jacket show at the Ogden Theatre: http://babyraindance.blogspot.com

At the end of Golden, I threw my golden wig to the stage. I got a knowing, amused look from Two-Tone Tommy. ...

hey!  a cameo:  that's my railroad striped-overalled back between anu & viva there.   8-)

and that look from tt-t. when your wig landed on stage was comedy.   ;D

[ms. yvon]

i'm back in california, and looking over my notes from last night.  let's just start at the top...
i was standing in the first raised section of the venue at the center--above the pit, but not too far back (after friday night's experience with some bush leaguers in the pit, i was all about that raised level.  and the floor service.   [smiley=beer.gif] )

there was a small railing in front the stage at the center tonight.  last night the aforementioned bush leaguers were almost on top of the stage (and me  [smiley=tongue.gif]) perhaps trying to work the knobs on jim's guitar.  that combined with the enthusiasm of the "last show" crowd,  probably resulted in the barrier being brought out.

saturday was a great night for elvis p. in dearland!  the band seemed to benefit from a night of not travelling.  the crowd really dug them tonight.  there were some hysterical kids in front of elvis p. at one point ep introduced a song as being a phil spector type of thing, this kid gave a "woooo!"  ep looked down at him, laughed and said, "you're into phil spector?"
they opened with the beautiful polynesian sounding tune.  jim slipped out from backstage to take a seat behind the drum kit and play along.  
they played a different set from the previous night including a gorgeous stripped down song that featured ep on guitar and the dearland gents singing along.  they dedicated it to mmj, who were all peeking out from the wings for the end of the set.

mmj's set

--it beats:  tt-t and patrick drive this tune.  i love being able to watch these guys simultaneously.  they create this sweeping, swirling rhythm for this song.  
--next to gideon on my  set list i wrote:  ! patrick woo!   ;D
--carl ripped it up during the dark
**at this point in the set it became apparent that the lighting was ratcheted up even further tonight (these lamps go to eleven)
--the stage effects durning lowdown were spectacular.  there was so much smoke on stage that the band disappeared, but depending on how it was lit, they would reappear as silhouttes or totally visable.  this was all happening very fast.  staggering, really.  this all wrapped up with a high soft non-spot on carl at the end.  this is where i'd written "DAMN." in my notes.   :D
--wordless:  gorgeous!  and again re:  the lighting design i have written here:  EN FUEGO!  
--i will sing:  love the present bass at the top of this song.  those first couple of notes push you back on your heels.  the langor of this song stunning.  this was the first song that i'd heard by mmj, and it still kills me.  they ended it with the big sonorous outro they've been playing lately.

--cobra.  cobra!  the groove in this song gets right into your blood.  (i was singing this song from the time i got on the rental car return shuttle, until i checked in for my flight this morning. ) jim twirling a pistol on one finger, then two pistols on both hands.   :D  during an instrumental break he was twirling them in front of bo who was laughing quite a bit.  also, jim added a gun to the hands clasped pose he's been striking for the vocal portions.  

the after show music led off with, "we'll meet again."  

at the end of the night we all filtered out onto colfax and into the falling snow:  dancing, grinning and singing.  as few of us making our way to the pub down the street, the band's bus came around the corner, heading to the venue for load out.  jen struck a lunge and threw some quality rock and/or rolls signs to the driver, we all waved and yelled.  the driver honked the horn, threw both arms in the air and let out a yell in the bus!  woooo!   ;D


**i have to bail out here and go to bed (again).  i'll see if there's anything in my notes that doesn't get covered by someone else tomorrow.  what with the ice storm, i wonder if the crew and band got to where they were going today.  hmm.**

[the jenerator]

thnx yll for the details--not that i could really ever forget, seriously, is it just me, or do they get better every time.  concurrance with concern over next bout being arena style..lets hope for at least one more tour in the intamacy of our small GA venues.  anu, i think tha ryan got pics of your wig on th bear, so I will send them on when I get them---oh yeah, the run thru was real, very real--and let's just once again say a big thankx for the cobra--i cannot help but start with the hips and move to the head whenever ihear the beat of this song!  glad it has been revived from the archives!  thx ms y for helping me find an outlet for my post show depression--i don't know why i never thought about getting on the forum here; guess when you spend the life at the computer for work, it seemed hard to sit here for fun...
until next time--

[LaurieBlue]

http://www.interference.com/stories/id171725.html

[LaurieBlue]

http://julioenriquez.blogspot.com/2007/01/my-morning-jacket-ogden-theatre-01-13_7818.html

[Philip S. Hoffman]

i posted a couple of photos here, there is a couple of jim james, the band, and elvis perkins

www.julioenriquez.blogspot.com

cause=time

[ahydell]

I hate thinking about them playing arenas.  For their sake and ours I think the level of exposure they have achieved at this exact time is probably the perfect amount.  

I couldn't agree with this statement more.  Small venue (5K and lower cap) is the absolute best for these guys.

[sweatboard]

**at this point in the set it became apparent that the lighting was ratcheted up even further tonight (these lamps go to eleven)


Classic.