the jacket @ the watt on the 'tunes...

good morning, dear readers. i hope that you slept well.

let me begin this morning by telling you about this incredible free podcast i found on itunes last night: my morning jacket live at the team clermont pabst blue ribbon ball at the 40 watt in athens, ga. incredible, right? for those of you that don't fully get it, let me explain some the moving parts to you:

most importantly, my morning jacket is an incredible, incredible band. they are great practitioners of what i like to call the rawk, which can be defined as simple unabashed sonic joy played out of one's guitar, bass, and drums. and lack of a throaty singer is a rawk deal- breaker. we're talking led zeppelin here, people. we're talking the who. we're talking jane's addiction. we're talking the ramones and we're talking sleater- kinney.

it pains me deeply that the jacket did a run of new year's shows here at the fillmore-- by far the greatest musical venue in the western hemisphere, including the aforementioned watt-- just before i moved back from athens. and that just as soon as i did move back to my beloved san francisco, this show was announced. it's almost like i'd spent every sunday morning in church for absolutely nothing. then i remembered i hadn't been to church on a sunday morning since before i started masturbating [and feeling guilty about it automatically afterward]. in any case, thanks a whole helluva lot, jesus.

you see the pbr ball is a weekend- long, annual event put on by my old friends at team clermont. team clermont [full disclosure: i interned in their office one winter] is a company that basically gets indie rock and, occasionally, bigger- name acts [think r.e.m.] played on college radio. they have great contacts with dj's all over the country and they leverage those relationships basically, kind of like a corporate lobbiest would, except without all the soul- selling, exclusive country clubs, and dead hookers. some records i remember working on back in the day were grandaddy's 'the sophtware slump,' 'the mermaid avenue volume II' record, and one by the apples in stereo. and eminem was on the cover of rolling stone. and i was sent to the post office a lot.

anyway they've been, by all standards, phenomenally successful*, and the ball is a celebration of that. i think my first one was in 199-8? 9? i remember i took my girlfriend at the time, brittany, that trans am played, and that i borrowed a bow tie from lucas and never returned it. i still have that bow tie, in fact, i think.

and every year it's held at the 40 watt, the world- famous rock club where [albeit in a different time and place] r.e.m. got their start. some of my favorite live music moments of all time happened on its stage: sonic youth on the 'murray street' tour, the flaming lips** on the 'yoshimi' tour, 3/4 of r.e.m. playing 'so happy together' by the turtles with the entire crowd singing along during a doug haines benefit. i think i did a shot with gwen o'looney*** that night.

i guess the point is that listening to these shows this morning has jogged all sorts of sense memories for me. athens, ga was a great place to live. and i guess part of me wishes i'd held on for just two more months so i could've seen this show. knowing my wife is going to read this, i should stipulate that i'd rather be nowhere with her than anywhere else. and that the show gods have been incredibly generous [despite whatever that jesus guy has said about me behind my back]. but goddamn, man. that would've been some awesome- tasting cake. check it out on itunes.

~lee.

*deservedly so. i wish the best to those guys.

**funny story about that flaming lips show. i knew this exotic dancer named 'kahlua' around this time [2001?] from bartending and whatnot. and when the lips came through town, maxim magazine gave them $500 to do whatever they wanted to with, and maxim was going to write an article about the results. so, brilliantly, they [the lips] got some baby pools, filled them with pepto bismol, and had my friend and some other chick go to town in them on stage during the show amidst the confetti and bear suits and all the other weird shit they had going on. it was a hilarious sight. almost as fun was seeing it in maxim a couple of months later [i read it for the articles].

***gwen o'looney is fucking rad.