white stripes concert review...

It was a good concert, all in all. I wish I hadn't seen the "Blackpool Nights" DVD... I would like to have been a little more surprised by the tone of the live shows. The mix of songs was good. The live "arrangements" (if you can call them that) were good. The "sound" was about as good as you could hope for / expect... given the fact that the band consists of essentially a really distorted guitar and a bass drum.

There were more than a few screw-ups, musically... and not just the Jimmy-Page like sloppiness, which is part of his "technique"... A few places where Jack's fingers were in the wrong place... and a missed cue by Meg which earned her a positively withering look from Jack. But the interplay between the two if them is really nice, most of the time. It seems really loose... the way he cues her on all the accents. He even chokes her cymbals for her sometimes, which I think is really... cute? I dunno... it amuses me.

I have to say I can do without the thing where he just unstraps his guitar and drops it on the floor between songs... letting it feedback for 20-30 seconds while he switches instruments. I know it's part of his bad-boy-rock-star "schtick", but really... it pretty fucking obnoxious.

There is very little between-song-banter. I think he spoke to the audience 3 times. One of the exchanges went like this...

JACK: Meg had breakfast with Dennis Hopper today.
AUDIENCE: (applause)
JACK: (pause) ...that's not true.

He was also dressed like some sort of satanic bullfighter. You really have to be a "Rock Star" to pull off wearing a hat like that.

The crowd was far more diverse than I expected. I thought it would be all black-clad greasy-haired hipsters, but no... there were both younger AND older people there than I expected. It's nice to see that they have such a broad appeal.

(I also ran into a former student from the college there, which is always good... helps to reinforce my 'cool prof' street cred!)

Anyway... it was a long night. I didn't quite realize that the drive would be THREE HOURS. Plus, lots of standing around. Fuck "general admission"... I want a CHAIR!! I'm taking many naps today in an attempt to recover.

Dave

PS> The opening bands didn't suck either, particularly "The Shins" who were quite good, if a bit... "flippant"!