This morning I said
“It will be rough
The first time
The girls decide
To go trick-or-treating with their friends…
Or not at all”
I just didn’t think
It would happen today
Pap and pabulum for the post-modern proletariat.
This morning I said
“It will be rough
The first time
The girls decide
To go trick-or-treating with their friends…
Or not at all”
I just didn’t think
It would happen today
Mestizo Beat
The smell
Of fresh cut grass
In mid-August
(but ONLY mid August)
Time warps
Dry and dusty
Like soccer try outs
A little scared
About not making the team (everyone made the team)
About seeing your friends for the first time in months (we didn’t keep in touch in the summers)
About running so much you puke (this happened fifty percent of the time)
The White Stripes played fifteen shows in 1999. Only three of those occurred in any approximate vicinity of others (the late September sojourn opening for Pavement) meaning each one of the shows from ‘99 exists in a vacuum, with new songs flying in and different arrangements making themselves known, no real established running order or pacing/tempo/meter/cadence. All but four of these shows were recorded in some manner, which still feels like a tiny miracle given how unknown and unheralded the band was at this juncture.
Outside of the Stripes show from the Gold Dollar, August 14th 1997, this July 30th, 1999 gig is the White Stripes show that I have listened to the most in my life. No doubt I immediately popped this sumbitch into the cassette deck of the ‘95 Ford Taurus on the way home from the show and would continue to come back to it for years. It lives in my head rent free, iconic and memorized and encased in amber, a memory reinforced by the consistent reliving of it over the past twenty-five years that it’s foundationally unparalleled in my understanding of the band.
When I listen now, what immediately grabs me is the piano. The piano!!! Oh man, it felt like a huge coup to get the powers-that-be at the Bag to actually let Jack play the thing, a seemingly “fancy” instrument that lived on the stage but was always covered up when bands of their ilk were in the house. In comparison, the powers that be would not let the band use the projection/video screen (they softened that stance by the De Stijl album release show the following year).
Twenty years after the show, dear friend (and White Stripes roadie in arms) Brandon Beaver mailed me a stack of Polaroid pictures that I had taken at the show. I had completely forgotten about this, because, well, it wasn’t in the recording. They hadn’t informed my recollection, my mind canon of it all. I was surprised to see the piano, this grand (baby grand?) beast covered in the red-and-white stripes of an American flag that was previously used as a stage backdrop as depicted on the cover of TMR-345. The visual of it all is striking, it is visually compelling and indicates a modicum of extra effort that separated the Stripes from their peers at the time.
Couple that with the fact that in the rehearsals leading up to the show, Jack and Meg had repeatedly practiced a cover of the song “Do You Love Me Now?” originally by the Breeders. I still don’t know why they didn’t play it that night…the moments in rehearsal were solid and worthy of being trotted out on stage. It sounded damn cool. The fact that the band never recorded a version of this song is one of the bigger frustrations in the “Shit The White Stripes Should Have Done” list in my head.
The recording here is the first time that a piano or any keys are ever used live in a White Stripes performance and it’s beautiful.
Terry Cox was the sound man on this night. At the time he was the front-of-house engineer at the Magic Stick, so I’m not really sure why he was at the Magic Bag this evening. But with Terry behind the mixing desk, the band got a more-familiar set of ears working in their favor, as opposed to some rando without a clue as to what the band sounded like. The reverb on vocals “Love Sick” is a prime example of the special touch Terry brought to the mix. Reverb on the snare too. Actually, it’s just a shit ton of reverb. The whole show sounds “BIG” in a way that no other recording from this era ever would. God bless Terry.
“Love Sick” here is the Stripes first ever performance of the song, not even two years old by this point, the highlight of Bob Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind album from 1997. It sounds important. It sounds serious. It sounds like it is a harbinger of bigger things to come.
Followed by “Dead Leaves” which, by this point, still hadn’t truly found its form. A piano take on the song is still a rare outing, so even though it is by far the song the band played most in their career, I’m unclear if it was ever done exclusively on piano again.
The tension here is palpable. Between “Dead Leaves” and “St. James” someone shouts something in the crowd. At 2:04 and again at 2:07. You can just barely hear it. Wouldn’t be a stretch to think they’re screaming “Fuck you!” Whatever is said, Jack responds with “You’re a liar,” echoing Dylan’s retort at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966 to a member of the crowd shouting “Judas!”
Couple that with the intro to “Astro” where Jack extemporaneously sings “I’m gonna kill my brother Jack” from Meg’s perspective, to the tune of “Three Little Fishies” a child-like number 1 hit from 1939. I recall Meg responding to this moment with a dismissive laugh, but still, I remember feeling uncomfortable. It was awkward.
But at some point, it all changes, the air is cleared, so to speak. Everything feels…understood? Accepted? Light-hearted even? Having thought about this many times over the intervening 25 years, I just know that while the first half of the set embodies a tension, the second half emboldens a joy throughout. Listening now, I smile. I feel happy.
As Jack is ready to end the performance with “Broken Bricks” you can hear Kevin Peyok (The Waxwings, Jack White and The Bricks) and Ko Shih (The Dirtbombs, Ko and The Knockouts) repeatedly yell “SAME BOY!” while Jack is thanking the opening bands the Greenhornes and Clone Defects.
Isn’t it great when folks request an unreleased song? Kevin would know the song from playing it with the Bricks just three weeks earlier, but even so, the three Stripes performances of the song earlier this year were already enough to embed it into the consciousness of fan/friends in teh crow. And with an “aw shucks” manner Jack responds “You wanna hear ‘Same Boy’? Alright I’ll play that.”
Come the encore of “You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket”, another Stripes live debut that wouldn’t see a studio release for another FOUR YEARS, it all is sweet and dare I say wholesome. With just Jack and the piano, here is a worthy reminder that there’s no such thing as an off performance of “Pocket” as the tender emotion is palpable whenever it was performed and only more so if it was just Jack playing it.
With Jack asking “What do you want to hear?” it’s worth noting how rare it is to hear him openly take a request, especially in light of already taking one with “Same Boy.” Funnily enough, we don’t hear anyone yell anything in response. At the culmination of a blistering “Broken Bricks” Jack sheepishly gives notice that the gig is over…that he broke a string and that Meg has mono.
Kid
No more than twelve years old
Takes a running start
And jumps
Arms stretched to the heavens
Six inches short
Of the low-hanging security camera
I forgot
That I used to do this too
speaking the same language. Even if speaking vaguely or in code, everyone understands fully.
So while I cannot speak for the rest of the 100 or so folks that were at the Magic Stick on April
17th, 1999, I can speak to how *I* felt.
For establishing purposes, exactly 25 years ago, on April 17th, 1999 the White Stripes played in
the middle of a bill with Gore Gore Girls opening and the Compulsive Gamblers headlining. I
was sixteen years old.
Barely a month earlier, it appeared that the White Stripes were done. With their cessation being
reported in the Detroit News, the fact that a DAILY newspaper was covering such undergroundcountercultural gossip still feels beguiling. Yet in the span of a few weeks, the Stripes had
played a triumphant non-farewell show (March 13th, 1999) and were most definitely soldiering
on, while Jack White’s other current musical concern, the Go, had unceremoniously kicked him
out.
I guess this was relatively big news in the small world of Detroit garage rock. In hindsight, it
seems pretty insignificant. So when the Stripes roll into “Astro” at the tail end of their set and
Jack substitutes in the names of his former bandmates in the Go “Bobby”, “Marc” and “John” as
“do(es) the astro” the feeling in the air, to me, was “oh man, he’s giving it to ‘em.”
To follow it up with the ending verse impromptu singing “Maybe someone has an ego!”
and “Why don’t you do what you want to, girl?” (with what I would interpret as foreshadowing of
future attack-like songs as “There’s No Home For You Here (Girl)” and “Girl, You Have No Faith
In Medicine”) and it all had the allure of an up-to-the-minute newscast, made up in real time, for
the couple dozens friends and scenesters gathered there that evening, all of whom knew the
score.
As the song concluded, you faintly hear a request for the Go song “Meet Me At The Movies” to
which Jack replies on mic “Somebody wanna hear “Meet Me At The Movies?” It’s the wrong
band!”
The Stripes performance, overall, is just so different from any single show they’d ever played
before or would play after. First ever appearances of gems like covers of Iggy Pop’s “I’m Bored”
and Earl King’s “Trick Bag” (done in the style of the Gories) alongside Jack and Meg’s first ever
performance of “The Same Boy You’ve Always Known.” They also cover Brendan Benson’s
“Crosseyed” for seemingly the only time ever with Brendan himself smack dab front and center
watching the proceedings.
Interesting little moments abound…the show-opening “I’m Bored” is quickly scuttled as Meg’s
bass drum pedal snaps. She coordinates a quick replacement with Deb Agolli (drummer for
openers the Gore Gore Girls) that precipitates Jack’s solo take on “Trick Bag”
(For years my recall is that I was up there helping Meg attach the borrowed pedal to her kick
drum. But just now, at this moment, I’m half-thinking that I watched it from the crowd. In my
head, I see Deb, coincidentally wearing red and white, behind the drums with Meg. But I also
see myself crouched down, futzing in the dark, helping Meg. The video of the show conveniently
shows neither myself nor Deb onstage during any of this. There’s a possibility my memories are
lies)
But once all is back up-to-speed, Jack just starts “I’m Bored” from the beginning.
There’s a simplicity to taking the song from the top, an innocence to it, a “we’re gonna do this
right” stick-to-it-iveness that I tend to think most bands would not actually endeavor. Most bands
would just move past it and try to pretend that they never even attempted the song in the first
place, let alone start their set with it.
And that’s just one of many reasons why the White Stripes were objectively great from such an
early point in their career.
Other treats include an early run of “The Big Three Killed My Baby” that does not start with the
trilling three scratches of the guitar. Seemingly every version performed afterwards would start
just like the album recording…with those ominous trills. Jack introduces Meg as his little sister.
Jack also, for the first time we’ve documented, signed off the show with a “My sister thanks you
and I thank you.” Little Easter eggs all of them.
And while there’s no real evidence here to point to proving so, we all know that this is the
evening that Jack White would pay a couple hundred bucks to Compulsive Gambler’s Jack
Yarber for his red Airline guitar that in short order would become an iconic piece of the White
Stripes imagery.
My favorite moment of the entire show unfolds in the middle break of “Astro” where Jack drops a
curveball…
What did the hen dog say to the snake?
No more crawfish in this lake
Just a hair, just a little bit, just a hair, just a little bit
Well what did the woman who came to the side,
one hand on her leg, one hand on her thigh
Good lord, have mercy, good lord, have mercy
This is a slightly altered take on George Johnson’s version of “Jack The Rabbit” as featured in
the 1978 John Lomax film The Land Where The Blues Began. Johnson was a gandy dancer, a
now-obsolete job of manual railroad track maintenance. This is a work song, plain and simple,
Johnson’s repeated lines of “just a hair, just a little bit” actually instructions to the rest of his
crew in regards to which increment or degree they should be adjusting the track. It’s chilling, it’s
got unforced attitude, it’s beautiful.
In sharing this clip with Jack this week, twenty-five years later, he said he had absolutely no
recollection of what it was or where it even came from.
But it felt so familiar, both then and now. Like a nursery rhyme I’d heard my entire life. Like
something EVERYONE had heard their entire life, certainly everyone in the room. Like it was
meant to be there, that it had always been there, and would always be there, smack dab in the
middle of “Astro.”
The point I’m trying to make is that for these fleeting moments on this night, the demarcation of
stage and floor were largely irrelevant. What was happening wasn’t a band playing for a crowd.
What was happening was a conversation, an education, a therapy, a laugh, a finger-pointing, all
wrapped into one. And so much of it, hell, maybe all of it, happened just that once, seemingly to
be experienced only by those in the room. Fleeting.
So should you give a shit that this is effectively a spruced-up audience recording? Not in the
least. Just sit back and enjoy all the swirling different factors and reactors that melted together
to create a one-of-a-kind evening a quarter of a century ago.