My Morning Jacket - I'm Amazed (Live on Letterman)

MOTM Jim James of My Morning Jacket

You know I've been thinking this week about my earliest remembrances of time keeping an awareness of the passage of moments that led to my father walking through the door each day at the same time much like the man who dropped the hammer off the roof and each time he did, while his daughter stood watching below, the sun would rise but when her father died, the sun rose just the same though she did not expect that it would (an illustration of David Hume's strange brand of empiricism as taught by Dr. Craig Keen) it's not that I came to expect things to happen because of the predictability of some events in childhood it was just the predictability I came to rely on, anyway, I suddenly remember that as a youngster my days were punctuated by regularly occurring events and each day was predictable except on vacation weeks or my summers, for the summers I would float in the pool and watch the trees grow, I felt gifted, then I would blink and the trees would grow again blink/grow blink/grow and repeat because I could not keep from blinking no matter my best effort to stop....I think music has so much to do with our earliest understanding of time as more of a real thing, a measurable distance sort of related to the cool metronome of ticks that pile up if you happen to pay attention and maybe it was the beginning of the record or the first note of the song and then the resolve of the song but a formative understanding of time passage came through the song and when I loved the song enough I would return the needle with precision into the gap, the 0 between songs, so as not to scratch or smudge the sound 3:18 was about right, then again and again I could burn a whole hour down blinking and listening to the B side song of a 45 (ahem Tina Turner, if you must know) just as building with Legos for a child builds an understanding of how construction into the surrounding space however high and however wide music was the score for the everyday, space and time, and here I am, still preoccupied with space and time, able to run nearly a half mile in the time it takes that song to wind down, there is much about the sport of running that is concerned with time and if you consider trying to become competitive, the sky's the limit and of course your effort put forth; when I chose Jim James to be the MOTM it was for so many reasons but I'll be honest, one was the photo you see of him with that Flying V, good god, and of course something else that is so unique about him in My Morning Jacket is his vocals, often, when I completely let myself become absorbed is his music, his vocal tone takes a position of an instrument where I don't can't or am unable to understand his voice but yet there is melodic quality that is so awesome I made my 9 year old Elijah stop and listen and he just looked at me but I had my eyes shut and I was saying like 'see?' and 'hear that?' and 'shhh' and 'right here!' until finally he saunters off I think Eli is still working on his sense of time or something because My Morning Jacket has been playing the house for 3 days and you'd have exactly a hard time missing the genius in Jim James, his writing is fantastic and the influence of Neil young seems especially obvious when his vocals were recorded kinda like singing into a deep well, especially his acoustic recordings -he's big into the Beatles you can tell the complex characteristics of his songwriting but he can't help he's such a great song writer and writes pretty much all of it for My Morning Jacket- finally among the most organic of processes the one that produces his type of art and it gives me a charge - the flying V helps not far to look to find an old soul rocker - he is the one that draws me very quickly i don't try to listen past the chilly undercurrent of a super intense falsetto he's easy to love just an indi guy with a raw non ego very open plan to the vocals SIde note: Yim Yames (a moniker of his) has a neat solo album out of covers that are acoustic and quite delightful http://www.yimyames.com also check out monsters of folk http://monstersoffolk.com