My Top 2000 Songs #1128: Dondante

As with a few tracks on this list from the Grateful Dead (i.e. "Dark Star") and Phish (i.e. "You Enjoy Myself"), my inclusion of My Morning Jacket's epic "Dondante" here is based almost entirely on its magnificent live version. The studio original, which closes out 2005's arguably career-high Z album, is still pretty great, a merely-7-minute psychedelic opus that starts off a slow, spacey ballad before cutting loose into some arena-ready bombast. But it feels more like the blueprint for something designed to shake the walls of whatever venue you're seeing it at--or, for me personally, to shake the very skies at the open-air Greek Theater in Berkeley.

As performed live, with a few more minutes of breathing room, it's truly spectacular. The atmospheric opening minutes are a little more exciting than on record, and the explosion of controlled chaos four minutes in is just epic, the sound of a band on fire, Jim James invariably sounding absolutely possessed. And they take the extra time to add on some extended Floyd-like jamming, with guitarist Carl Broemel picking up a saxophone--the sort of thing I tend not to love in a rock song, but damn it works here.

They captured that live spirit on the double-live Okonokos, recorded here at the Fillmore that same year and released in 2006; though I'd say the definitive official live version can be found on Live 2015 (the first of a series of archival releases, from 2022), which offers 14-15 minutes of extended drama, plus a few bonus minutes of cool-down just like any particularly grueling work-out requires.

Live 2015 version:

The studio original:

Great live video:

VH-1 Storytellers performance, 2008:

Totally respectable cover from Afterimage: