Are Teenage Dreams So Hard To Beat?

I was never legally old enough to enter the Gold Dollar when it was a functioning rock and roll club. 

From my first visit on June 6th, 1998 (The White Stripes opening for Dura-Delinquent) until my final time through the front door on August 8th, 2001 (my band the Dirtbombs playing as a kick-off to a West Coast tour) I spanned the ages of 15 through 19. For insurance purposes, the bar was a 21-and-over establishment. But whether by carrying amps, playing the drums or just earnestly convincing whomever was working the door that I legitimately had no interest in consuming alcohol...I was able to see no less than two dozen shows there. 

As likely the youngest person to have been a witness/participant in the music scene at the Gold Dollar...I am well aware that I was DAMN lucky to have done so. That may be the coolest thing I am ever even remotely adjacent to and truly embracing it I feel simultaneously both proud and depressed. Most people who peak as teenagers do so as some sort of high school football/cheerleader/big shot on campus bullshit...all things that I was expressly avoiding at that time. Yet, here I am, over twenty years later, still talking about the group that had a half-dozen mildly attended performances within a nuclear blast radius of each other, across five months of 1999 like it's goddamned "Glory Days" and I'm Bruce stepping back from the mic so that the crowd can shout along the words to the chorus. 

Tony Soprano saying "Remember when...is the lowest form of conversation" fucked me up more than any other dramatic dialog in my life. I feel like I am constantly fighting with myself. Fighting to appropriately appreciate and contextualize the past and at the same time, attempting to downplay it, hoping that I'm currently living something that will be worthwhile to recollect in another twenty years. 

While I weirdly never felt like "The Bricks" (a name we'd never called ourselves and were never referred to as when we were actually performing) were a real band, I was, by far, the weakest player in the group of otherwise professionals. I had yet to join the Dirtbombs and prior to my gigs with the Bricks I had played MAYBE three shows in front of a crowd. One of those was a high school battle of the bands. Another in a bowling alley lounge. You know...inconsequential shit. 

While an audience recording of this show has existed in tape trading circles since the performance, this multi-track soundboard recording proved revelatory in what had been unheard to my ears since that night. The opening of "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" shined through with Brendan Benson's striking countermelodies on guitar, all but nonexistent on the audience tape. When the opening lyrics came through, I was confused "Why is Brendan singing?" 

The delivery is unmistakably him, though through years and years of listening on a lo-fi tape I’d never noticed Brendan sang the first two lines… 

 Dead leaves and the dirty ground when I know you’re not around 

 Shiny tops and soda pops when I hear your lips make a sound… 

Only to have Jack jump in, with gusto, guts, glory and the response to Brendan’s call.. 

When I hear your lips make a sound! 

I’m not exaggerating here…when I first heard this, clear as daylight, I choked up a bit. I think it’s beautiful and feels like a truly moving moment just accidentally happened to be caught on tape that night. 

Although I play drums here, I have few clear memories of what went down that evening. Royal Trux, the headliners, were late to arrive. I believe they showed up after we’d finished our set. My mom was there. It was a school night. I was seventeen years old. Pretty sure I got paid. That’s about it. My entire time in the band I was just making a very poor attempt to play drums like Patrick Keeler. Why I thought I could approximate his style is beyond me, and I often compare myself to Billy Yule playing drums in the last-gasp iteration of the Velvet Underground. I really shouldn’t have been onstage or in this band, but am forever grateful and happy that I was. 

The setlist features a couple of songs that aren’t on the Bricks live recording from the Garden Bowl two months prior, which was released as part of Third Man's Vault #15 in 2013. “One and Two” is an original Jack White song that never ended up being used or recorded anywhere else, which is odd for him. I particularly enjoy the slippery bass playing of Kevin Peyok on this song and feel like he may well have been the glue that held the band together. “Candy Cane Children” feels odd outside of the context of the White Stripes, especially as they never really performed the song live. “Ooh My Soul” is sloppy sloppy sloppy and in my opinion, the first two chords presage what would come later via “Fell in Love With a Girl." 

 

All my personal caveats aside, the show is a legitimately fun listen. That weird time in '99 where Jack just seemed like he had so much music seeping out of him that he had to hurry up and start ANOTHER band after the break-up of Two Star Tabernacle and his ousting from the Go...and that band seeming to be COMPLETELY different from either of those outfits or the White Stripes even. I can't help but stress here, besides "Candy Cane Children" NONE of these songs would've been considered "White Stripes" songs at the time of this performance. They were "Jack White" songs that hadn't truly found their form or footing in the duo format. 

Originally included as part of our 27th Vault package back in the first quarter of 2016, the audio here is newly remastered by Bill Skibbe at Third Man Mastering...a facility only blocks away from the Gold Dollar address at 3129 Cass Avenue. 

As part of my duties at Third Man Records, I was able to enter what remained of the Gold Dollar building on "official business" not long after the original release of this show. Clad in a hard hat and joined by folks representing the Illitch family that owned the spot...it was a sad collection of four walls, dirt floor and collapsing ceiling. The idea was to try and see if there was some sort of collaboration that Third Man could spearhead to rehab the building. But damn...all I could think of was that besides the walls, there was no "there" there. As someone who had MANY formative nights in that space and saw more than my fair share of transformative performances on that stage AND could possibly help revitalize it...I was unmoved. I'd rather let the memories exist as they were than invoke a Ship of Theseus experiment. 

Though I did take solace in the fact that I had finally entered the building legally. 

On July 22nd 2019, the structure would meet its ultimate demise in a suspected arson, the news of which no less than a dozen people felt compelled to immediately share with me. Developers reached out to me directly asking if Third Man would be interested in trying to rebuild/recreate the spot. Dare I even mention that there was talk of Third Man getting the building for a $1/year lease prior to the fire? And that we weren't interested then? 

When asked by the Metro Times to comment on the fire at the time I said, "History like what happened at that club, for me, transcends the buildings it happened in. I'm sure there were probably at least five other fires in Detroit today that were far more tragic. Life goes on. This too shall pass. Memories are all that matter." 

I stand by that statement. I think I was unemotional about the fire because I actually had the vague "closure" of being able to walk through that room one last time. Bar missing, mirrors behind the stage desintegrated, finally able to go backstage for the first time (no one ever told me there was a backstage!)...the only sign music ever happened there being a destroyed Half Japanese / Godzuki / Wild Bunch handbill I'd dug out from underneath where the security monitors were. Otherwise...it was just a space, empty for 15 years, left to the ravages of time and the elements and scrappers and squatters and in desperate need of being demolished. You know...a regular building in Detroit. 

So here's to the memory of the Gold Dollar, to club owner Neil Yee for being wise enough to hit "record" so many times, to the sublime summer of '99, to peaking early, to electric nights of loose rock and roll, played for no one you didn't know, figuring it all out in the process, working on mysteries without any clues, crystalline and idealized in my mind, me unaware of how clueless I actually was at the time, feeling like there was nothing but opportunity, potential and promise that lay ahead. 

While youth may be wasted on the young, why are teenage dreams so hard to beat? I think memories, true, deep, stay-with-you-the-rest-of-your-life-because-they're-fundamental-to-your-ever-so-fragile-sentience MEMORIES are only thrust onto those who are both sufficiently eager and receiving. Old guys who only talk about old times have closed off their receptors, failing to continue as memory collectors. Scientists say that humans aren't the only beings that recollect, that rats can have episodic memory, but I doubt those vermin are ever troubled by it. Yet the tenous balance between nostalgia and living in the moment shows no signs of subsiding in my consistently evolving superego...with all indications that my final actions, final words, and final thoughts on this mortal coil will almost certainly be some act of reminiscing. 

I hope when I get older I don't sit around thinking about it, but I probably will. 

You know...glory days. 

-Ben Blackwell February 17th 2021

Dissecting the White Stripes First Ever Live Performance...

The White Stripes

“The First Show: Live on Bastille Day”

All of this is from memory. Sometimes memories are false. But anything here is not purposefully false.

I have far more explicit memories of the show the White Stripes would play a month later, their first “full” show with proper setlists and flyers and more than ten folks in attendance.

To me, I remember this as a one-off, as a lark…that Jack and Meg went to the Gold Dollar open mic with little-to-no warning to just test out what it was like being on stage.

As Jack recalls in the Under Great White Northern Lights interview (some of this may be unpublished…you heard it here first!)

Mr. Historian:  What do you guys remember, I wasn’t there, but what do you remember about the first show you played, open mic night at the Gold Dollar?

Jack: Open mic night at the Gold Dollar, I remember there being maybe just a few other people, like 7 or 8 other people there and Neil the owner, and I think all the other bands were from Downriver they were all from Wyandotte or something.  Which is pretty funny they drove all the way to play open mic night in the Cass Corridor.  It was only a three minute ride for us.   We played three songs.

Mr. Historian (Ben):  What three songs?

Jack: I think "Love Potion #9"

Meg: Yeah definitely.

Jack: Which we changed to "Love Potion #10"

Meg: Was it "Screwdriver"?

Jack: Maybe "Moonage Daydream."  "St. James Infirmary" maybe?

Ben: It wasn’t "Moonage Daydream," I want to say maybe "Jimmy the Exploder."

Jack: "Jimmy the Exploder," "Screwdriver," and "Love Potion # 10"?

Ben: Yeah.

Jack: Anyways I remember the band after us did a cover of "Born to be Wild" [laughs].  And after we were so drunk and wasted, I was sitting there with Neil and they started the song, which sounded pretty note perfect, but then the singer says “get your motor running head out on my asshole!”  Which we didn’t seem to understand what he meant by that [laughs]. Not a typical impersonation of "Born to be Wild", maybe Downriver in Detroit, I don’t know [laughs with Meg].

Ben:  So then after that you guys did, like a month later, you guys played two more shows at the Gold Dollar.

Jack: Was it that week we played or a month later?

Ben: So that first show would have been Bastille Day July 14, 1997.

Jack: Ok.

Ben: And then the shows with Rocket 455, and the Henchman were the 14th and 15th of August.

Jack:  Oh I seem to think we went to go do open mic night the week before we went and did those shows

Meg: Yeah I thought so too.

Jack: Because we were worried that we weren’t going to know what we were doing when we got up there.

Jack:  Maybe Bastille Day was our first practice Ben?

Ben: Maybe?

Jack: I can’t remember, but yeah then we booked the show with the Hentchmen outside the Demolition Dollrods show, we had a copy of the album out in front of the Magic Bag and the Hentchmen walked by.  I said hi to them.  That was the first time we met them. 

Meg: That’s right.

Jack: Remember I gave him my upholstery card.  He wasn’t sure about booking us for the show, but he did say he may have some upholstery work for me in his Piermont wagon. 

Then we booked a show with the Hentchmen first.  And then we booked a show with Rocket 455 after that, because we went and saw Kitty Wells (to Meg) remember? Play at that old senior citizen center?

Meg: I don’t think I was with you.

Jack: Went and saw Kitty Wells with Dan and Tracee from Blanche, we were starting Two Star Tabernacle at the time.  Dan, Tracee and I, and Damien Lang who drummed for the (Detroit) Cobras, and then we went and saw Kitty Wells at this senior citizen community center, and we met Jeff Meier from Rocket 455, so we booked a show with Jeff opening up at the Gold Dollar after the Hentchmen, but we actually played with them first, so they both are always laughing and arguing over who we played with first, where our first show was.  But the first three shows were at the Gold Dollar, that’s for certain.  An old... it used to be a drag queen bar in Cass Corridor.

Anyway, folks have said it before, but it cannot be stressed enough…damn-near EVERYTHING that made the White Stripes “THE WHITE STRIPES” exists right here, day one, without waver. Yet they had absolutely NO idea it would ever get this big. From another interview I did with Jack back in 2003…

BB: I remember you saying, when the White Stripes first started playing “Two Star Tabernacle, I can see us getting really huge, the White Stripes, maybe we’ll do a record or two, be some kind of cult band.”  It’s kinda changed since then, don’t you think?

JW: I don’t remember saying that, but I guess it’s just the opposite.  The Two Star 45 is like a cult thing.  The White Stripes have become some insane institution…in some sense.


The idea of a two-piece band, wearing red-and-white, with a childish approach to their art was solidified on this day.
They were childish because of the extent of Meg’s skill on drums and because of Jack's intent on guitar. 

When TMR obtained multi-track masters of a bevy of White Stripes and Jack White-related live performances from the Gold Dollar, this show was, unshockingly, not available. The master of this performance exists as a cassette copy, mixed live by bar owner/sound engineer Neil Yee and handed to Jack immediately after the performance. Important stuff.

From there, this tape was deemed LOST (by me anyway) for a few years. In the pic below (pulled from the legendary White Stripes / Arthur Dottweiler video clips) you can see a big huge metal Coca-Cola sign on top of the refrigerator. That sign was there forever. It wrapped around all three exposed sides of the fridge. Behind THAT was an old-fashioned metal bread box that held all sorts of badass historic tapes. Not gonna lie…the lone complete copy of the Vegetarian Cannibals master was in that box.

Anyway, when the cassette was unearthed (I wanna guess 2002 or 2003) I remember listening to it and Meg not being terribly pleased with her performance. But she had literally been playing drums for no more than four months, and not on some insanely dedicated rehearsal schedule.

To start the whole performance with “Alright, uh, we’ll just bore ya for two or three songs…” is beautiful. What a start, a disclaimer! Jack’s solo after the second verse sounds like he forgot he had to play one at that point. But the way he exits that portion, with some chugga riffing and a sweet descending measure is excellent and would not appear on the rendition one month later in the first full show at the Gold Dollar on August 14th.

Also, THAT show is burned in my brain because Jack let me make a copy of that cassette early on. For the longest time, that was the ONLY recordings of the White Stripes I had to listen to. So the version of “St. James” from that show is primarily what I think of when I imagine that song.

The last verse struggles for a second to find footing amidst what could be a fake false ending. I would’ve liked to hear it play out with just Jack’s vocals and drums, but this boy will be left to dream.

“Jimmy the Exploder” is what I thought was the band’s “hit” single at the time. So much so that I was quite surprised when Jack told me that “Let’s Shake Hands” was going to be the a-side of their first single. They’d barely even played that song at that point. But Jack let me in on the secret, “I think ‘Jimmy’ is too good for the single. We’re saving that for the album.”

The album? “The balls on him” I thought. No one’s around trying to put out a White Stripes album in early 1998. But as is usually the case, he was totally right and exhibiting just the appropriate amount of foresight. This is why I would wallow in the barely-functioning independent rock and roll underground for years before being brought along for the TMR ride back in 2009.

Jimmy heroes about as complicated a drumbeat as Meg would tackle in the first few years and despite starting off rocky, I like the way that she inverts the beat around the 23-second mark (and the 50-second mark) as it is reminiscent of Scott Ashton's badass stutter beat on the Stooges "Dirt" at the 5:03 mark.

As Jack declares at the ending, "Jimmy the Exploder" is about a monkey who explodes things that are the color red. Or is it things that AREN'T red? "Green apples are gonna be exploding now" lyrics throw me off and I realize that in the intervening 20 years I've argued BOTH sides of argument and cannot remember where I'm supposed to end up.

Ending with “Love Potion #9” which for years was my favorite cover the White Stripes did, despite the fact that by 1998 it had all but disappeared from their set. I have a memory of Jack asking his brother Joe if he could borrow a copy of this song (the Coasters version?) on 45, and it seems like it was explicitly to cover it. 

THIS is so pure, so simple, two chords, one additionally thrown in for an accent here and there, Meg’s drums locking on waltz signature, the interplay with the audience, “What he said…one, two, three four!” and NAILING that next note. Wow. If we didn’t have this tape to prove it I would never believe the performance would’ve been so wonderful.

There’s no tangible way to measure how much joy, love, pain, stress and absolute great feelings in my life are ultimately tied to these inauspicious events that happened twenty years ago today. So I’ll just continue to listen, as I have been for the past twenty years, and marvel at what a beautiful sound could be made by two of my favorite people on earth.

Listen here...

The White Stripes The First Show: Live on Bastille Day 7-14-97