my morning jacket is one of those groups that sort of snuck up on me. id heard about them for a while but for some reason, i thought it was going to be some sort of mtv punk group that i hated, a la fallout boy. so imagine my surprise when i heard their album z for the first time. not even close to anything i thought it would be. then i discovered the rest of their catalog and was fortunate enough to see them at the state theater last fall, and that just sealed the deal for me. definitely a top show ever. we actually got really lucky that we even got to see them because just 3 days after our show, the group was performing another show in, i think, chicago? or somewhere around there, when singer jim james slipped and fell and had to cancel a bunch of shows in the next few weeks (i actually have no idea how many shows were cancelled).

basically if you ever have a chance to see them live, you take it and ask questions later, at which time you wont have to ask any questions. the group is a bit of a regular at bonnaroo having played 5 or 6 of the 8 years the festival has been around. the other interesting fact that comes to mind is that singer jim james (im not sure if its the rest of the band or not) makes an insanely weird cameo in the insanely weird biopic (pronounced by’-oh-pic, not by-ah’-pic) “im not there”. it took me probably an hour to realize that all the weird characters were supposed to represent a stage in bob dylans life, but seriously, that movie went right over my head, and i usually like weird movies. but i definitely remember being more confused when suddenly my morning jacket was in the old west singing a song.

there were literally millions upon millions of songs i could have chosen from their repertoire and i would have been content. but in the end, the lucky winner was “it beats 4 u”. the first reason i chose this song is because it is awesome and i think it sums up mmjs sound quite nicely. the second reason is the use of text speak in the song title. the third is because i like to think that the whistler near the end of the song is andrew bird because really who else can whistle like that in the world? but then i also think it would be a random pairing…….

……so i just looked it up, and it turns out that andrew bird AND m. ward both appear on this album, and that andrew bird has also appeared on about a million other albums. without further ado, enjoy the show.

my morning jacket – it beats 4 u

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