Bang, Bang Goes The Night

Guest poster Kyle Murray describes a transcendent evening with My Morning Jacket @ The Berkeley Church, March 31, 2008

Having no idea what to expect, I showed up with a couple hundred of Toronto’s hippest, to catch this larger than life band in an amazing venue. Waiting in line to get in and to make sure my name was actually on the list, I watched as people try to bribe and/or plead their way in. Had some of these people not been so adamant that they had to attend, I may have mentioned that I had one extra spot to give away. It’s difficult for me to get my regular concert going friends out on a Monday night. So when the unassuming, polite guy walked up to me, standing by my lonesome and asked if I had an extra — I told him to get in line with me.

Through the security checkpoint and into one of the coolest setups I’ve seen in a while. The stage was small, a velvet rope showed us where we could stand and we were surrounded by about a half dozen high definition cameras. The whole show was being taped for a Sun TV live concert series; I stood at the front behind the Steadicam guy. The crew taping the show was ridiculously professional, never in the way and it actually looked like some of them were enjoying themselves.

The band exploded on to the stage, commented on the beauty of the venue; even pointing out that the widow’s watch opening above us was where our souls would be headed that night. They weren’t wrong. If anyone had a bad time at that gig, it was their own doing. My Morning Jacket played for over an hour, mixing songs from their upcoming album with different versions of some of their classics. The 21-year-old girl next to me was dancing just as much as the 40-year-old dude behind me. Coats began hitting the floor, beer bottles got stuffed in denim back pockets and we were all happily bumping into each other. When the hair started whipping around on stage, the audience reciprocated. The energy level was amazing.

When I thought the grin on my face couldn’t get any bigger, the head honcho Jim jumped off the stage just inches from my face. The cameramen scrambled and it looked like the velvet rope wasn’t going to contain us, but the vibe had been so great for so long I think we consciously decided as an audience to not push, to just enjoy.

All in all, it was a fantastic show. My only complaint would be that there was only one type of beer being sold and it’s not one I would normally buy. How’s that for a complaint? I went to a concert at a church and pretty much had a spiritual experience, that’s pretty cool.

— check out Kyle's regular gig, Six Pix over at Cuzoogle.