Shaking my head

I don't really have a gift for words. Yes, I know word, good words, 10-cent words (although apparently inflation has made my students have no concept that a 10c word is a "good" word. For them, maybe a $10 word). I can string along complete sentences and impose my rhythm of huff and gruff and gesticulation that I have in the real world. But I can't encapsulate the emotion. I can't render the evocative je ne suis quo of the human condition with words. Someone like Kent Peterson, although he doesn't write with poetic sense or even intention perhaps, has that quality to capture the essence, in his case of cycling. I find that when I try to "evoke" it sounds stifled, passe, trite.

Yesterday evening, from 5.00 to 11.30 I had perhaps my best night of experiences in my entire life. Our local boys My Morning Jacket played a local show during their Evil Urges tour (recent release). This group started out in local clubs, while recording in a grain silo, and has since developed into perhaps the best live rock group in the country. They'll play Madison Square Gardens on New Year's Eve in NYC this year. Their recordings started out with country rock/jam band vibe and have since mutated, er, developed into a multi-faceted do-it-all sound: rock, club, soul, funk, you name it. Evil Urges has been panned by some critics and praised by others, but you don't love MMJ for the recordings; you do for the ridiculous live shows. I've seen them twice, with the good wife seeing a 3rd show when they opened for our biggest fav, Wilco. A friend of ours, a non-characteristic party hound engineer, recently attended Bonaroo in TN and of the 3 stages and hours and hours of music, MMJ by far brought the house down, all in the middle on the night during a 4-hour show.

The show last night took place on our Riverfront Great Lawn. This area has been used before, like during the Los Lobos show we saw earlier this summer. Last night's crowed, though was HUGE, 10,000 strong. It transformed into an "event". Sure, there was many non-MMJ fans; I'm sure there was lots of "to-be-seen" folks there, but who cares? The crowd was pleasant and courteous and the vibe was just so great.

The wife and I started out at El Mundo with a meal of enchildadas and a daquari or her and swordfish fajitas and 2 blueberry limeades for me. The boys stayed at Mom's so we had a date dinner. Although Mundo can amazingly crowded with the many "pretty" people of the 'Ville. You know, the 25 year old set that needs to seek out others who have shopped intently for their accessories along with.... Move on. We met our friend 'D' after dinner and headed down to the riverfront.

We were greeted by enormous, ENORMOUS, crowds down there. We walked to the entrance only to find that the entrance line wrapped around the corner. We started seeing many familiar faces. We tend to go to shows for music. Many others in town saw this as a "to be seen" event. I found out tonight (Monday) that the mother of one of 'L's classmates went, and she is the last person I could imagine with a bunch of hippies down on the riverfront. We grabbed some beers upon entering, fortunately getting in a short line- one that would metastasize later (I'm sorry for the word choice, but it's apt).

Hizhonorforlife, Jerry Ambramson

Jimmy James jammin'. His sister works at Breadworks, a place I mention all the time on the blog.

As much as I want to wax poetic and poetic and poetic, the work week has started and I've run out of gas, or at least time. Just imagine, though, this scene. We're facing the stage, due north. To the west, a brilliant pink, purple, orange sunset through the 2nd street bridge. As the sky darkens, Polaris due north, with the handle of the dipper doing it's business. Cassiopeia is doing her thing to the NE. While the sunset is still burning, the full, perfect, brilliant alabaster white moon comes creeping up from the ESE. Directly behind us, hovering over the new riverfront condo is a brilliant and extremely bright Jupiter. the temp is a perfect 80F humid free. The vibe is beautiful. The music is outofthisworld rocking. During "Aluminum Park" off the newest album 100s, if not 1000s of small glow sticks go rocketing in the are. they're personal fireworks. Simply amazing. truly behind the musical. the community of it. just perfect. Peace.

'D' has the pics, which can now be found at his flickr site cdale's MMJ. I especially like the full stage rock shots and the Squallis Pupeteers. If MMJ comes to your town, take a stab. It's a beautiful vibe.