My Morning Jacket
Okonokos (concert DVD)
(hear it)

My Morning Jacket is like a direct crossbreed of Pink Floyd and America. I used to absolutely love America when I was in high school. I had the CD with "I Went Through The Desert On A Horse With No Name". I think it got stolen, along with almost all my other CDs, after my first year in college. I was driving back from Death Valley, where I almost ran out my battery by leaving the lights on, and where I also had to wait for nightfall to drive up out of the valley, in my car full of post-school-year belongings. Finally escaped, I parked and slept in front a gas station, behind which I discovered come morning there lived a person or persons in an RV. Clearly envisioning the axe-wielding horror I was about to face, I drove off without so much as a pee-out-the-door. I drove straight into Las Vegas, on I-15 I would guess. I was to meet up with my family in Bozeman to do some Yellowstoning, as we were used to do back then. The traffic was fast and close, and I felt drowned in civilization. A man in a big car, a square car, the kind that people drove before gas-milage and cost turned cars into mere egg-shells - this man slammed his brakes. I drove a Geo Prism - yikes - I drove a Geo Prism right into his bumper. That was the second in a string of ill-fated attempts at visiting Death Valley.

Me, totalled. Him, not a scratch. My "fault", of course. Anyway, I and everything else had to be shipped home, and the packers must have swiped my crate full of CDs. I always wished I had disregarded my dad's advice and called the police about that. There's still CDs that I loved, but haven't replaced, because I just can't imagine buying them twice.

My Morning Jacket differentiates itself from its 70's forbears, in that one person is largely responsible for the direction of the band. In Pink Floyd, and if I remember correctly in America, at least two people were always writing, singing, arranging, producing, throughout their careers. The tension between David Gilmour, or Syd Barrett, and Roger Waters was always a driving creative force - and of course Nick Mason's drumming sustains them for huge swaths of otherwise mundane tomfoolery. On the other hand, the pendulum-swing of vision which results from that tension creates diversity, which means that the band stays interesting while remaining one unit.

MMJ's songs are all written by Jim James, he's credited with concept and story for the DVD (something about a 19th century man who befriends an alpaca and gets killed by a bear), I imagine he is the producer of the albums, he's the singer, and he takes a lot of the guitar solos. It's fine, I mean, some people have a lot of ideas and need to get them out - and his singing is excellent - but I rather enjoyed the Austin City Limits where Jim James and Connor Oberst and M. Ward and ??? did a "songwriters-in-the-round" kind of thing, backing each other up and sharing their contrasting points of view. Jim James's one song was my favorite, but it was the context which let me hear it properly.

It's a rock band.

bb, 9 apr 08