My Morning Jacket 5/1/10 at Merriweather

Sat night. My Morning Jacket. My brother-in-law was in town and we were looking for something cool to do and I saw that MMJ was playing at Merriweather Post Pavillion. I knew two things about MMJ: 1) They were rumored to be good live and 2) I had listened to about 15 songs of theirs and had no clue if I liked them or not. Still, seemed like a good idea.

So, Derek, KC, Andrew, and I went. And it was more than a good idea. It was probably one of the best ideas I've had in a while. See, most of the tracks that I had heard of MMJ were from some beat up CD that Matt A. had given to Christina called "Random Tracks I got From Kyle." This was as of 2002. The music was spare, mellow, and the vocals were pretty weird. Well, from the opening chords of the concert, I realized that I needed to unlearn everything I knew about the Jackets.

There's no better way to describe the first half of the show than a straight up slab of awesome rock and roll. Loud, grooving, dynamic, melodic, and most of all, spontaneous. Excellent guitar work, excellent solos, dueling guitars, all the stuff that I've just seen on VH1 classic rock concerts, but never in person (and the solos and jam sessions didn't descend into laughable self-indulgence as some of those classic rock band concerts do). Then there was this shift to a more psychedelic half of the concert, where the guitars were layered and textured and every song was a slow build to awesomeness. It was like I was in a Cure concert or something. (Well, at least the Cure concert I saw in Hyde Park where every song featured a slow build to awesomeness via guitar layers and textures.) Part III was when they brought out the Preservation Hall Jazz Band of New Orleans and it all turned into some big band extravaganza (which is cool to me in concert, but not in recordings).

Jim James was impressive. (Derek astutely commented that he looked like a cross between Lindsey Buckingham and a Walmart greeter. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but he obviously thought that one through, so I'm going with it. See the picture above that I found on someone else's blog about the concert and tell me if Derek is right.) Good vocals, good guitarwork, good stage presence.

Here's how I can tell that I really loved the concert. If I don't know a band, I'll usually dislike them in concert. I usually only really like a concert if I know all of the band's stuff. After the concert, I have been listening to MMJ as often as possible. I am a MMJ convert thanks to the concert. That's how good it was.

The Postscript: From the time I first began attending concerts at seventeen, I've always thought, "If I were a band, I would provide a free sonic souvenir to everyone at the concert. Give them a copy of the concert right after the show." Thanks to the ubiquity of personal recording devices, my dream has become a reality. Some guy recorded the whole thing and posted it on the web, so I've been listening to the concert over and over. It's a great recording and it really does help bring back the memories. All hail the internet era.

Setlist

01. Kentucky Derby call > intro >
02. One Big Holiday
03. Gideon
04. Off The Record
05. I'm Amazed
06. Mahgeetah
07. Tonight I Want to Celebrate With You
08. Golden
09. What a Wonderful Man
10. Lay Low
11. The Way That He Sings
12. Wonderful (The Way I Feel)
13. Carried Away
14. Steam Engine
15. Smokin From Shootin >
16. Run Thru >
17. Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt. 2
18. Anytime
19. E: Wordless
20. Carnival Time *
21. Dancefloors
22. Move On Up

Concert recording:
http://www.archive.org/details/mmj2010-05-01

Or

(you can listen to each song from the concert, but can't see which song is playing...)

Good review of the concert from the Sun: http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/midnight_sun/blog/2010/05/concert_review_my_morning_jack.html