Musicians I'd Like To Take Out To Dinner (Part 4)

It's a total crime, a total show of me dropping the ball that I have had this blog for almost a year and not once -- NOT ONCE!! -- have I ever mentioned one of my favorite bands on here, The White Stripes.


The White Stripes have been around since 1999, but I hadn't really heard of them until my brother picked me up for whatever reason when I came home for my mom's funeral in 2003. Seriously, I have no idea why he picked me up but I knew he was playing "Elephant" in the car. Their sound instantly made me feel nostalgic for the time I would visit my aunt's and uncle's house and listen to my cousin Chuck bash it out on his drum set.

I guess that is the main thing that I just love about their music. It manages to retain this organic quality about it, just because it's simply the guitar and drums (for the most part. Get Behind Me Satan also featured marimbas and mandolins and all that). It reminds me of being a kid and getting my hands in the dirt, searching for earthworms. It's cool and gritty. Playful but satisfying.

Another thing I love about this CD is how it seems that Meg is coming into her own as a singer. "St. Andrew (This Battle is in the Air)" is a really freaky-cool song, made especially so by the use of her high pitched voice that interweaves with the bagpipes. On the last songs she sang, "Cold Cold Night" and Passive Manipulation," she sounds a little hesitant to be in the forefront but on St. Andrew, she seems to becoming more comfortable with her voice and being up front and I hope eventually she will sing more songs on future White Stripes releases.

I think a lot of that comes from their being disciples of the DeStijl art movement, a school of painting where artists used a limited amount of colors and horizontal and vertical lines.Another thing I really appreciate about them is that you can tell so much that Jack and Meg White view what they're doing as an art form. They seem to directly control their stage image, their personal image and their fashion sense. Their videos look low budget but they are brilliant. I just recently came across this one after watching an episode of The Simpsons.

A friend I know recently compared their new album Icky Thump to something that sounded like something Led Zeppelin would have came up with: really blues-based rock and roll with face melting guitars and crashing drums. And I think he has it exactly right and I find it absolutely amazing that something this retro sounding could resonate with me so well. This is a CD I bought Thursday after mulling over a better part of a few days whether I needed to buy this CD or cereal and bread (I wound up eating out a lot) and then played it fully through three times, picking up my air guitar every now and again. This is an album that is really riff heavy, and it's one thing to say "Yeah I like this music," but totally and completely another to say "Man, I wish I could play this music!"

If I took Jack and Meg out for dinner I'd want to talk to them about music as an art form, about their sound and their influences. I'd ask them if they thought Get Behind Me Satan would go down in the history books as a total departure for them, or should we expect a whole mess of left turns during what I hope will be a long career. I'd also ask them if there'd ever be a time soon where I could afford to see them. They're playing in L.A. this September...the only thing is where they are playing is charging almost the same amount of money for PARKING as they are for a full priced ticket! If I get lucky and score a date for The White Stripes' show, you can be sure I'll report on that.

I feel right now that if I were to make a Top 5 White Stripes Songs list, it'd run heavily biased to their new album, which my iPod told me I played about 3 times last week, starting on Thursday. So while I'm still throwing confetti into the air for buying this CD in the first place, I'm not going to make an official list, but will say that "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)" and "Conquest" are the absolutely awesome songs on the new CD, and for what I own of the White Stripes (hello, White Blood Cells in the near future!) the awesome songs are Blue Orchid, Seven Nation Army, Take Take Take, My Doorbell, and The Hardest Button to Button. And a whole boatload of others, but in the interest of making sure my reader doesn't fall asleep, I'll stop with these.