I have to be honest here and say that I've never really quite got the whole "jam band" thing. At least not in the modern context.
Yet, this is most often exactly the sort of band that My Morning Jacket have been characterized as. When I ran into an old friend of mine at a MMJ concert about a year ago — mind you, this was a guy who I'd been through many of the rock and roll wars of the seventies with — he greeted me with the ever-familiar stoned "whoa, dude," and then proceeded to give me this assessment of Jim James and company:
"Fucking Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead meets the Allman Brothers, dude."
Well, alrighty then.
While there may be some truth to that sumnation of My Morning Jacket, I would for the most part have to disagree. The similarities are of course obvious. The band is certainly known for its phenomenal three hour plus concerts, that have a tendency to lean towards the free-form and otherwise improvisational. Being from Kentucky, there is also the occasional southern-rock Allman-esque twinge. But for my money, the comparisons end there.
Since I don't do LSD, I tend to stay awake at MMJ concerts for one thing. And I've yet to run into a semi-naked hippie chick selling tacos from a mud-caked oil-pan there.
What My Morning Jacket does as a band is something that — while certainly drawing on the improvisational spirit of bands like the Dead and the Allmans — is a unique entity unto itself. My friend actually got it sort of right when he included Pink Floyd in his stoned, yet semi-accurate critique.
This aint Phish. And these are not merely "jams." Although they often serve as launch points to further musical exploration, these are actual songs.
Article comments
1 - BH
Try not to make is so obvious that you stole the CD. It's not "Hard & Suspicious", it's Highly Suspicious.
2 - Glen Boyd
An honest mistake that I thank you for pointing out. Just for the record, I came by the album equally honestly. The record company sent me an advance, in a plain sleeve without the titles printed on it. We music writers get a lot of music this way.
So, how did you happen across your copy?
-Glen