The Listomania I make the lists, you shoot them down. Quid Pro Quo.

90. My Morning Jacket – Gideon

For me to really love a band, they have to kick ass live. I can like a band ok if they’re not great on stage. But to be a band that a recommend to others, that I will actually buy the albums of, that I will want a shirt or an action figure or an $80 special edition vinyl set of (yes I have all these things), then they have to be able to do it live. It’s the mark of a real band. In the olden days, it’s all there was – if you couldn’t play live, well then, you weren’t making money. And, in an age of Myspace breaks (Lily Allen) and record deals before shows (Arctic Monkeys) and overly synthesized stars (take your pick) I think mainstream music has lost sight of the importance of live music.

My Morning Jacket kick ass live. So much, in fact, that after my first time seeing them, I excitedly told my friends I had just witnessed the best live band I had ever seen. It was Lollapalooza 2006, and they only had an hour set, but god damn. They did with that 60 minutes on a shared staged what other bands can’t aspire to do in two hour headline gigs. I have seen them twice more since then, in wholly epic settings. But I will never get over the sudden and stark realization that I was seeing possibly the world’s best live band, and they were melting the faces off of hordes of unsuspecting festival-goers who had expected to stand around twiddling thumbs until Death Cab came on next.

Oh yeah, and their music is brilliant too. Example A – “Gideon” from the band’s 2005 breakout masterpiece Z, an album that prompted Rolling Stone to call My Morning Jacket “America’s answer to Radiohead.” The song is a gorgeous, alternately twinkling and towering howl against the war in Iraq, the religious right, and the global view of the U.S. as a nation of lemmings. With a glimmering guitar intro, the band quietly pushes out into an ocean of muted noise, a place where Jim James’ elegant tenor floats over waves of noise. James murmurs, coos, and howls stirring words over building guitars and pounding drums and, in this video, aching strings. And when he sings “Listen, listen/Most of us believe this is wrong” I can't help but feel like I want Jim James speaking for me ALL the time. I’ll say it. I’d vote for Jim James. And then just as quickly as the band has drifted into a sea of shimmering tones, the gang kicks it into high gear and James lets out a skin-tingling yelp. Then the band proves my point, you know, the one about kicking ass live. Just watch that. Watch how they are a band, not a couple guys on stage dicking around on their instruments. That there is a BAND. I’m not even going to describe what happens from 3:10 on. Just nod and enjoy. I can only hope that young bands take this as their example and start out the right way – working their asses off to be a real, live band.