The White Stripes at the Detroit Institute of Arts

 “That was the best thing we’ve ever done. It was also the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

 

So were the thoughts expressed by a long-forgotten big wig at the Detroit Institute of Arts. What they had “done” was bring in the White Stripes to perform two sets in the hallowed Diego Rivera Court. When booked, the White Stripes were moderately ascendent. By the time of the performance on November 2nd, 2001, they were stratospheric and lava hot. The performance, all guts and glory and emotion and resplendent joy, had pulled in THOUSANDS to the Beaux Arts-style building that day, the museum’s largest single-day attendance in over seventy years of existence. That was the best part.

 

The “worst” part was those thousands, many of whom had not set foot in the building since grade school field trips, really had no idea about the space they were occupying. Completely enveloped by 27 larger-than-life scenes conceived and executed by Diego Rivera in 1932-33, the Detroit Industry Murals stand as one of the most breathtaking and important displays of art in the city, if not beyond. As a stylized near-deification of automobile plants, communal labor, racial harmony and vaccination, the murals themselves (done as frescoes, paint applied to wet plaster) once dried, form an integral part of the wall.

 

But rock and roll fans of 2001 cared not. With the court well beyond capacity and the overflow crowd spilling deep into the adjacent Great Hall, over-eager attendees were climbing the planters in front of the massive expanses of both the north and south walls. Desperate for a better view, a clear line of sight or just caught up in the electricity of the moment, people were carelessly touching, casually rubbing and leaning against these priceless works of irreplaceable art at the heart of the literal, metaphorical and historical cultural center of Detroit. Risking the destruction of valued fresco history all just for the hope of catching a glimpse of what was, in 2001, the NOW cultural heartbeat of the city.

 

Thankfully, the only noticeable damage done on that evening was the ringing of eardrums. 

 

The White Stripes’ performance was nothing short of impeccable. The 33-song cavalcade ceremoniously kicked off with Jack White literally waving a Detroit flag, knowingly singing “Little Room” in the biggest room it had ever been performed in. The incongruity was immediately pushed further with the trilling screech of “The Big Three Killed My Baby,” as intensely critical a song as has ever been written about the industry that built Detroit. All performed in a room that, save maybe the Rouge Plant’s blast furnaces, is as close as to a temple as exists for the automobile industry. No sacred cows here. Iconoclasm exemplified. 

 

Jack and Meg fully hit their stride and power through a medley fueled by another renowned Detroit commodity...rock and roll. Their assertive take on Iggy Pop’s stomping “I’m Bored” weaved seamlessly into the Gories’ hypnotic “Omologato” and by the time they were crushing on the MC5’s atomic anthem “Looking at You” the result was maddeningly perfect, a daft tribute to the oft-overlooked local cultural fuel that helped ignite and launch the White Stripes to the perch where they could ultimately propel themselves globally.

 

Jack urged attendees to go check out some beloved home-grown Gordon Newton art before the set break then he and Meg came back all taut and attitudinal with impassioned takes on gems like  “Let’s Shake Hands” and “Fell In Love With a Girl” sitting comfortably amongst covers of Robert Johnson (“Stop Breaking Down”), Loretta Lynn (“Rated X”) and Blind Willie McTell (“Your Southern Can Is Mine”) before tying it all together succinctly with the White Stripes blasting through their bona fide set closer “Screwdriver.”

 

Knowing full well the gravity and importance of the 50th installment of Third Man Records’ Vault subscription series, here in its entirety is the White Stripes legendary night at the Detroit Institute of Arts. With striking soundboard audio that wonderfully captures the energy radiating off the band that evening while subtly balancing the cavernous BOOM of tube amplifiers in a room with only bodies to deaden the sound, the two LPs here are lovingly pressed on red and white vinyl. All sounds were painstakingly mastered, cut, and pressed at the Third Man Cass Corridor premises, less than a mile down the road from the marble fortress of the DIA.

 

Utilizing said audio as its bedrock, the package also features a pro-shot DVD of the complete White Stripes performance, sourced directly from the previously untapped video archives of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Vibrant and captivating, the footage manages to bring the viewer into the room, transported to the time and place where such magnetism unfurled.

 

The artwork here utilizes a cache of previously unseen images shot that day by noted Detroit photographer Steve Shaw. Capturing the band at delightfully opposing tableaus...the strikingly empty soundcheck where skylights find the sun dappled mise en scene of Rivera’s murals as a humbling backdrop to the hauntingly dark and imposing mid-set overhead spotlit vignette of Jack and Meg....the imagery here is among the best we have ever had the luxury of using for such an important moment in the White Stripes’ history. Gracing both the LP and DVD covers, the choicest Shaw images are reproduced here in a collection of four stunning photographic prints.

 

The White Stripes' at the Detroit Institute of Arts was an exercise in inherent juxtapositions. The best and the worst. High art and low art. Big rooms and little rooms. Past and present. Respect and irreverence. Hyper-local and widely global. Emptiness and overcrowding. Darkness and light. The White Stripes embody and attack all of these. A mess of contradictions laid bare for all to see and listen and love.

How Michigan is the Fifth Member of the Stooges – OR – A Cultural Cycling Through Three-Hundred Years of Bullshit Historical Anecdotes and Arbitrary Facts to Argue that Geographic Demarcation Can Be Personified as a the Embodiment of a Musician

Regardless of my job, I was asked to write an essay for the "Total Chaos" book with the suggested topic of "How Detroit Was the Fifth Member of the Stooges." I quickly clarified with main author Jeff Gold if I could change "Detroit" to "Michigan", he concurred, and it was with great excitement and sense of accomplishment I completed the piece below. It was the SECOND essay I had published in a book about the Stooges, an honor that is not lost on me.

At the party celebrating the release of the book, Iggy told me two things...

1) That I looked EXACTLY like the guy that threw a bottle (pie?) in his face at some show in Michigan back in the day.

2) That I'm a good writer

That's all I needed to hear. Enjoy.

The borders of Michigan are arbitrary…the survey lines of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, a southeasterly adjustment for a bloodless war with Ohio for the desirable international port of Toledo (the loss of which Michigan got its Upper Peninsula as compensation) and a veritable shit-ton of lakes cut a cute geographic form that can equally be called America’s high-five or America’s hand-job.

Despite this, the entire state of Michigan is incredibly average. There’s nothing of note that really makes it any different from Ohio or Wisconsin or just about any other boring state that doesn’t have mountains or an ocean or hieroglyphs or any sort of cultural accelerant.

So, too, with Ron, Scott, Iggy and Dave. They all came from an entirely average, middle class world. That is the only place from which they could emanate. To be more specific, Michigan is the only place a cultural roundhouse kick like the Stooges could ever be birthed.

As the birthplace to both Domino’s and Little Ceasar’s pizza chains (two of the top four pizza dispensaries in the world, both raking in BILLIONS of dollars every year), it is the unique incubator of Michigan that has a knack for taking what may have been considered low-brow or intended for the edges of society in the mid-1900s and perfecting it, simplifying it (the $5 Hot’n’Ready is marvel of modern economics) and making it understandable for a widespread global audience. As some of the first Western records pressed in the newly opened Russia after the fall of communism in 1991, the hand-illustrated, Cyrillic-bedecked covers of the band’s first two albums are proof positive that this is exactly what Iggy and the Stooges did with their brand of juvenile delinquent-inspired rock and roll. Which coincidentally, goes hand-in-hand with pizza.

And being birthed in Ann Arbor is fitting. With the University of Michigan looming large over the entirety of the town, everything in that city has an air of elitist self-importance. The classic joke goes, “How do you know someone went to the University of Michigan? Let ‘em talk for five seconds...they’ll tell you!” Coupled with the town’s overwhelming left-leaning politics (the Stooges were close friends with folks who bombed a CIA office in the city in 1968) and it’s clear the only place to birth the Stooges, wholly unconcerned with politics or elitism, is a town boiling over in it.

The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, was educated at U of M, leaving the institution in late 1967. The possibility of him crossing paths with Iggy are nil, but it’s not too big a stretch to correlate that the anarcho-primitivism argued in Industrial Society and Its Future (“The Unabomber Manifesto”) is in some bizarre way in concert with the precisely sparse lyricism and uncluttered instrumentation of the Stooges’ self-titled album. That’s not to say “I Wanna Be Your Dog” is tantamount to serial killing...more like the absolute inverse. As Kaczynski and Iggy are on completely opposite ends of the spectrum, but both so completely laser-focused, so singular, so undistracted by the noise clouding around them that it’s clear the environment had to be somewhat instrumental in fostering those traits.

Jack Kevorkian went to U of M too, but I can’t find the connection there.

This cannot happen in socially-conscious San Francisco of the same era. It would not happen in the fading Village folk scene in NYC as it slowly transformed into glam and punk. Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the rural abuts with the avant-garde on a daily basis, was the only incubator that could birth these bozo geniuses. Michigan is not just where important and relevant moments of this band and its story happened to take place, it is a driving factor and overbearing presence throughout their existence, whatever the locale may be.

You see, Michigan is not a state where anything happens. Outside of Detroit, and a much lesser extent Ann Arbor, it’s all ho-hum humdrum non-descript bullshit. So of course, leave it to Halloween night, 1967, at a house party in Ann Arbor to be the moment this wrecking ball descends into public consciousness. Of course this primitive shit music is taking place at an “invite only” party. Of course John Sinclair and the MC5 (both already important leaders in the countercultural underground of the time) are there. Of course joints are being passed around liberally. Of course it sounded like the Melvins, (as Iggy himself would claim decades later). Of course, of course, of course. Because all roads of all these variables intersect in Michigan.

With the Grande Ballroom in Detroit acting as the de facto Fillmore Midwest, every major rock group of the era stopped in town. Out of sheer stubbornness, dumb luck, or not knowing any better, the Stooges (in tandem with the MC5) were able to act as the unofficial house band for 1968-1969, opening for just about anyone and everyone...Butterfield Blues Band, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Sly and the Family Stone, The Fugs, Blue Cheer, Love, Cream, the James Gang, John Mayall, BB King, The Who, Frank Zappa and on and on and on. No need for U of M, that’s a college education right there. You learn how to perform. Day in, day out. A working band. Imagine that.

Not only did the Stooges figure out how to play, while on stage, in front of a crowd, but also had an almost weekly opportunity to glean from whatever hot-shit or shit shit touring act was coming through town at that moment. The Stooges are not a band that made their bones on tour. They were by no means even “reliable” at home. Old-timers in Detroit took pride in relaying stories of HOW BAD the band actually was saying things like, “we would purposefully show up LATE to the Grande so as to AVOID seeing the Stooges for the umpteenth time.” Only in Michigan would you have the greatest band in the world playing weekly and folks bragging about avoiding it.

So for Iggy to expose his dick (purposefully or not) onstage in Romeo, bumfuck of a town if there ever was one, population just shy of 4,000 back in 1968...it boggles the mind. This is a town known for a Peach Festival and being the home of Kid Rock. Nothing happens there and nothing will continue to happen here until the end of time. It’s the kind of town where someone would make the trip to the police station to let them know the lead singer’s dick is hanging out. Only in Michigan.

The Goose Lake International Music Festival of August 1970 took place in Jackson, Michigan a burg fittingly known for being the longtime home of the state penitentiary and the birthplace of the Republican Party. Before a crowd of upwards of 200,000 people, Dave Alexander fails to play a single note on stage. Be it because of nerves, chemicals, a combination of the two...it’s irrelevant. This would be the biggest crowd the Stooges would see in any iteration (including reunions) and they utterly blew it. Dave was fired, probably rightfully so, but the fact that barely two years prior merely thirty miles down the road these guys were playing their first show in a living room with no prepared material...these guys traversed the entire gamut of a show business career, a musical lifetime, in the span of time it takes to potty-train a child, across a space that’d render as a speck on a map of the United States, Earth or the Universe. All self-contained in Michigan.

Sadness reigns outward from Alexander’s exit. Roadies, also rans and ne’er do wells filter through the ranks, pathetically culminating in a show at Wampler’s Lake Pavilion in Onsted, Michigan, population 555. In an embarrassing adherence to the contractually obligating dictum “the show must go on,” Ron, Scott and Jimmy Recca play the gig without Iggy or James Williamson. A fan (Steve Richards) sings with them for a portion of the night. There are recordings to evidence this. The jams are actually not totally shit. What happens in Onsted doesn’t necessarily need to stay in Onsted.

And Metallic K.O.? What a glorious implosion, swiftly aided by the menacing pressure of local biker gang the Scorpions, at where else...the Michigan Palace, the same spot in Detroit where Henry Ford built his first car back in 1896. It’s captured on tape and does kinda sound like shit. But beer bottles breaking against guitar strings is an apropos sound/image in a coincidental building at a time where the city and region are falling apart, as the domestic auto industry begins its freefall in the thick of the Oil Crisis.

Nigh-on three decades would need to pass for the band to wholly prove themselves to their Michigan brethren. In a way that belied maturity or progress, the Stooges performance at DTE Energy Music Theater (I die a little just from having to type such a bummer of a name) was proof-positive that the band had their shit together. One wouldn’t want them to become cerebral or philosophical and thankfully, the band understood that.

As my first live experience of about half a dozen with the band, it was not only the best performance I’d ever see from the Stooges, it is still the best performance I’ve seen by anyone in my thirty-four plus years. Sure, the show takes place in a huge embarrassingly-named shed, too far out into the exurbs to feel culturally like anything other than a blob of land, with $15 beers (watered down) and $10 parking (clusterfuck), but all the corporate grabby-ness of dollars could not sully the metaphorical boot mark the Stooges imprinted across the entire state of Michigan. America’s high-five has appropriately been met with a swift kick and it’ll never be quite the same.