Well, lets see — The White Stripes are a two-piece from Detroit, guitar and drums. Meg White on drums and Jack White on guitar, brother and sister they say, others say differently, and they play a blues-riffed rock and scream. The man pumps into the microphone and fists the guitar like Marc Bolan crossed with the lead singer of the Three Kingsmen. They've got that kind of 50's bursting through the 70's feel.

It's a show. How can two people rock out a full house at a large venue? Its a gimmick if you want to be pejorative and I would not — because the music is intense, and intensely fun. They've got no axe to grind over what groove to feed the fans. The fans they want to rock and roll and have a good time but they don't know how — it's a mixed-up convention these days for rock shows. So when someone just doesn't give a fuck for convention and just has an involved and dogged good time up on the stage, dressed head to toe in a red jumpsuit and burning a sweet guitar, then a good time is had by all.

The show began without hesitation. Meg took the stage and sat behind the drums, sticks ready to click into motion. Jack walked up, the lights burst red, and on came a screaming guitar. Meg played a static, steady beat, and sans fills, the drums seemed like a foil. Rock star posturing lit up the air. That voice — he has this tortured singing voice that breaks and cackles and clips and rises before bursting in constrained violence. Perhaps he could singe your ears. What the fuck am I talking about. Have you heard The Makers? Maybe you should listen to those guys and put on Louie Louie too and you'll get it. It's White Guy Fright, it's white noise strife. Whatever — but for those first three songs it was a shtick. He was really frigging though... Well, New York likes a show. They don't have to feel connected, like Chicago, or entertained, like Los Angeles. They like a show and a performer who can keep up the energy without playing to be a fool. For that they want someone who is real and not a fake. A true freak, if you will.

That fourth song hooked the audience and brought home the money. The crowd loved it. Stay or go, stay or go and no one left. The yahoos at the back of the bar yowed it up. I heard a tag-along proclaim, "I am really enjoying myself. Thanks for bringing me!" Rapt faces peered up to the stage. I snuck up to the front corner then perched in an aisle. Down waddled a massive mammarily-enhanced woman. There was nowhere for me to go. She plowed straight into me like a cart of punching pillows running over a pedestrian, then leered at the impact and veered away. It was insanely packed in there. I had to leave the aisle. I went on the stairs and the bouncer asked me to leave. I ducked to the back of the large venue and people stood and stared and no one moved. No one moved. They were all staring at the stage. I jumped up the stairs and to the bar on the balcony.

I ordered a wine. I was wearing a Frank Black & the Catholics shirt. On the front, in red affix, a silhouette cowboy points a six-shooter at a quarter-moon. Some hot chick comes up to me to talk, "Why are you wearing a communist symbol?" she says. Good question, girl, what the fuck is communist about cowboys?? I opened my jacket so she can see. "Oh. Why is he shooting at the moon?" "Because guys want to conquer the moon, and if they can't then they want to threaten it." She says, "It's Aphrodite-esque." This woman was clueless, and maybe quite desperate. Whatever it was, she was the only one in the whole place not enraptured by the performance. I think she wanted to feel, you know, connected with the cool dude buying the wine. She wanted to get it on. What a drip.

Where was I? Mudhoney. There's another reference point. Also the lead singer of Six Finger Satellite. The White Stripes like to give credit to Blind Willie McTell, an old blues guy, but I don't buy it. Instead there was that Rolling Stones cover, Stop Breaking Down, which as you know, is an old blues-rock cover itself of Muddy Waters, I believe, but let's just references the Stones anyway. And there were moments of The Beatles, and a sweet Van Morrison derangement to open the second encore.

Second encore? Indeed — the crowd didn't know what exactly this band was and they wanted more. The second encore sucked after the opening. Poor Jack after an hour plus on stage furiously jacking that sweet guitar couldn't get it up that second time around. After a tortured finish he gamely and childishly waved goodbye and said "Thanks, thanks for wanting us." Or something. He never let on that it was a game, or a show, or that that last number sucked. New York loved him even more. And they should.

At the end of that second encore the lights came up and I spotted a blond shaggy-haired bear of a dude with some sort of silver necklace and silver necklace paraphernalia. He looked like a Lord of the Rings character. I gamely ask him, notebook in my hand, "how did you like the show?" He says, "I liked it a lot." I say, "Have you seen them before?" and he says, "Yeah, I put out their records." And I say, "What label is that?" and he says "Sympathy for the Record Industry." And I nod and he turns away to another conversation and I am laughing to myself. That was probably the guy running that label — and it's a fairly well-known label – and what kind of heel am I? I see him later on when I somehow get Meg White to autograph my album.

Downstairs where the bar and the bathrooms and the coat check converge, kids were scrambling to a nook by the exit where the CD's were being sold. There was a line. Everyone was buying discs, one, two — a half-dozen. They were stocking up for the rock cold war shelter. It was nuts.

Look, let me backtrack here and tell you something. A friend of mine, a rather well-known female alternative rock drummer, told me about this band. So the first thing I did was jump on Napster [this being January 2001] to begin a massive swapfest. I picked up a good ten tunes by the White Stripes and played them and played them and then played some Hot Snakes too. Jolene — that was the best. Then Astro. "Maybe Jasper does the astro. Astro, astro, astro. Maybe Lily does the Astro. Maybe Jackson does the astro. Maybe Mama does the astro. Maybe Tesla does the astro, maybe Allison is AC/DC."

Yeah, its stripped-down, and you feel this kind or raunchiness permeate. And what the fuck is he talking about anyway? So I have all these Napster tunes and I feel a little guilty because, you know, this is a struggling band perhaps and alternative rock has always held a special place in my heart — did I tell you that even the bouncers were banging their fingers to the music and craning to see the show? — so I wanted to somehow give back some well-deserved money.

I published a magozine once. It had a color cover and was printed on quality stock. It was interesting, funny and well-made. 40 pages, cost three dollars. Three fucking dollars. There is a famous alterna-record store in New York called Kim's Underground. I gave them my zine. They didn't want to sell it for me. I told them to keep a few copies anyway. That fucking zine sat on their zine rack for two fucking years. It was too good a publication to take down and throw away but no one wanted to purchase it (it was well thumbed-through, mind you). 15 year-old pink-haired Japanese punker kids would hop and skip through that store and buy a 15 dollar copy of a KMFDM album because someone told them it stood for "Kill Mother Fucking Depeche Mode" and they'll read a fucking magazine for two minutes, and put it down. And instead of spending 3 bucks for some entertainment they'll spend fifteen for something they don't know shit about.

Record store economics suck. People don't know what's good. So yeah, Sympathy for the Record Industry. Right on. It's all a crapshoot. Of course I made my way through the swirling crowd and bought an album. Fuck the middlemen — these profits were going straight to the band and the label. Good for the good guys. And you realize that Napster made me do it.

I bet you want to hear what The White Stripes sound like now. Well — go see them. But let me play prognosticator. The band could use some more oomph. No, wait, that's not quite right. Jack and Meg can rock out — no doubt — but unless they are content to stay on their message of "simplifying the complicated so it becomes beautiful again" (my paraphrasing —but read the album notes for De Stijl) they may lose out on an opportunity. Or maybe not. It could depend entirely on Jack's voice. Can he keep up the pace the band is setting now?

–Tony Leonardo
Feb 26, 2001

The magic of the internet: post-editing! I just excised a false prediction. if you're curious, send an email and ask me what it was. But now . . . cut to June 2002. They're huge now, the White Stripes. I hear them on K-Rock when I dare to turn on the radio in the car. They're playing sold out shows across the world and playing in venues three straight nights. I saw them a couple or more times. Great ecstatic noise. The White Blood Cells album is now a standard-bearer and they'll probably be ripoff bands soon. And you know what? Its all good.

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