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.
