A late White weekend: Addicted to the Mind Shaft

Hello. My name is Tam and I am an addict.  It's been just over eight years since I first wrote about Jack White here in my little corner of the interwebs and he and his music have kind of taken over since then.   I should probably be embarrassed by this, but I'm not.  The high of being a fan-girl is too rewarding, being occasionally mocked for it only makes me laugh that those mocking have no idea what they're missing out on.  

It was eight years and a month and a half ago when I had the epiphany that opened up the rabbit-hole and allowed me to fall in, on a clear blue winter day driving the backroads of West Virginia, listening to the Raconteurs album Broken Boy Soldiers for the first time. And this weekend I had a similar experience-- On Friday, March 23rd, Jack released his third solo album, Boarding House Reach.  On Saturday, I went driving with the album on those same West Virginia roads under the same sort of clear blue winter sky. (Technically this was the first weekend of Spring, but the remnants of last week's snow were still on the ground.) And this album has hit me with the same sort of feeling I had that day eight years ago, that there's something to this music that I need and that I'm not going to get anywhere else. And so I celebrate my addiction.

As for this new record, I'm not one for rating systems so I have no idea how to give it a neat quantification.  It's not a perfect record, but it is an astonishing and, for me, delightful one.  It's also highly perverse, beginning with that strange title--  Boarding House Reach.  When it was first announced, a British friend of mine quickly identified the phrase as an English colloquialism referring to the way guests in boarding houses used to reach across the communal table to make a grab for food if they wanted to get a good meal.  It implies rudeness, but also the way we have to adapt and sometimes be tolerant in our dealings with others, while still making sure our own needs are met.  As the youngest of ten children, this is of course pertinent to understanding Jack's mind-set. As a metaphor, it also implies a broadness of reach, a pulling in and consuming of a variety of comestibles, whether they be food or music.  Again, this sums him up quintessentially.

The album was first introduced with a collection of soundbites in a video called  Servings and Portions, then with a handful of songs released as digital "singles", and then a day of listening parties at selected record stores around the world.  After attending one of those listening parties two weeks before the release date, I found myself juggling a contradictory set of reactions. I was excited and delighted and disappointed and apprehensive all at once. But as a fan of Keats' concept of negative capability, this didn't disturb me.  Rather, it was stimulating and upped my anticipation.  As Jack sings in Everything You've Ever Learned, 'the one who is prepared is never surprised'.  When it comes to him, I am always prepared to BE surprised.  Are you?

As always, this is not a review. I can be as critical as any critic, but I'm just a junkie-fan describing my own experience of the music. Your mileage may and probably will vary. So, on to the songs...

I wrote a few weeks ago about how Connected By Love, the first single and first song on the album, disappointed me. Hearing it in the context of the album hasn’t changed that. In fact, when I heard the full album at the listening party I went to, I was convinced that Jack had for some perverse (that word again) reason chosen to release the weakest songs on the album to preview it, because everything that I had not previously heard was so much more interesting to me than this song. It doesn’t disappoint me because it’s a bad song, though, but rather because it’s an extremely beautiful song that doesn’t live up to its potential. The music is gorgeous and the vocal performance is earnest and moving, but he tripped himself up with the word-play. I completely understand what he was going for, it’s a trick he’s done before—The repeated V sounds of Forever For Her (Is Over For Me) and the “Who is the who?” of Want and Able. But in this song, the repeated –ecteds of connected, rejected, protected, infected, etc, are too unlovely a sound to come across as clever, they instead add a clumsiness to lyrics already verging on corny and diminish the power of the song.

Why Walk a Dog impressed me at the listening party, but that may have been due to its novelty at the time.  Jack’s singing and the music are fantastic, especially that scuzzy guitar solo. But hearing it again left me perplexed—What the hell is it about? Is it the literal condemnation of puppy mills that it sounds like? Or are the dogs the sort of obscure metaphor he’s loved to employ in the past? Maybe it’s the mention of birds, but it reminds me of I Think I Found the Culprit from Lazaretto, they're both perfectly enjoyable songs that would’ve made better b-sides than album tracks.

My immediate impression of Corporation when it was released as a digital single was that it was lyrically lightweight but would be a blast to dance to at shows. When I flew to Nashville for one of the three pre-release shows at Third Man Records last weekend, I found that was absolutely correct. It’s not a head-banging pogoing tune, it’s a hip-swiveler like Trash Tongue Talker from Blunderbuss, and I love it for that reason.



Initial reactions from friends and early reviews pretty much unanimously singled out Abulia and Akrasia as a track to skip over, but I am the anomalous weirdo who will not only not skip over that song, but put it on repeat for multiple listenings in a row. This song reflects Jack’s reputed standing as a Scrabble pro, with its tongue-twisting, twist-of-an-ending exhortation, read by gravelly-voiced Aussie bluesman C.W. Stoneking against a lovely gypsy-flavored tune on violin, piano, horns, and tambourine. Surprisingly, Jack doesn't perform on the song at all, neither vocals nor instrument. It's just his words performed by other musicians and this is one more reason why it makes me smile every single time I hear it.

Hypermisophoniac is another one that both delights and perplexes. Both musically and lyrically, it’s a depiction of the condition of misophonia, intentionally meant to aggravate at the same time that it fascinates.  I really look forward to hearing it live.  But what the hell does robbing a bank have to do with the rest of it?

Ice Station Zebra is, simply put, Jack’s manifesto. Where the White Stripes song Little Room summed up an aspect of his work ethic, this one sums up so many of the beliefs and philosophies he’s expressed in interviews over the years—Choosing the box he puts himself in rather than letting others box him in; being part of the tradition, the family, of songwriters he respects and “letting God in the room” when he writes; his bemusement with people who expect him to remain one thing so that he can live up to their expectations. To take the edge off some of these potentially pedantic statements, he sets his highly clever, rapped lyrics to an almost impossibly catchy, beat-changing break-down that reflects where his head is at musically these days. It’s bound to become a live show staple, and deservedly so. 



Over and Over and Over is the first pre-release song that I saw other people really get excited about. With minor modifications, it could have come from any of Jack’s other bands, but though he tried with all of them, he couldn’t get the riff he’d been carrying in his head since 2005 to cohere until now. It’s a killer of a riff and the spat lyrics are an easy live show chant. But to me, as enjoyable as it is, it’s exactly what he rails against in Ice Station Zebra—A song that lives up to what the majority of fans seem to expect from him. So I like it very much, especially the existential Descartes reference in “I think therefore I die, anxiety and I rollin’ down a mountain”, but it’s not likely to end up on any of my “Top whatever” lists of Jack’s songs. But his pronunciation of “perfidy” to rhyme with belly and Isotta Fraschini makes me giggle every time.

 

When Servings and Portions was posted, I ripped the audio and put it on a cd so that I could put the cd into my alarm clock/cd player and wake up every morning to the purred “Helllooooo” at the beginning. I was eager to hear how that fit into a song and I was not disappointed in any way when I heard it pop up in Everything You’ve Ever Learned. One of my favorites on the album, it’s another philosophical manifesto, one that I can wholeheartedly get behind, with that digitally enhanced purring speech at the beginning that erupts into a propulsive, thrashing, snarling, shrieking thought-provoker. I want to hear it live so, so badly. But I also learned today that I need to be careful of listening to it while driving.

Respect Commander is the other song that disturbed and disappointed me when it was released as the b-side to Connected By Love. It begins compellingly, with more of that hip-swiveling funk, descending into a sultry interlude leading to… lyrics that unfortunately fill my mind with images from the music video for the Warrant song, Cherry Pie. The line "Every time she gets the satisfaction/I want her to control me all night long" just sounds so hair metal.  And again he's piling up the –ecteds. I compared this song to my favorite song by Son House, Pearline, which is the story of a love affair told by guitar with only two sung lines. I will always wish Jack had let the music do the talking in this song and not sung the words he wrote, because the music is fucking fabulous and says all that needs to be said.

Ezmerelda Steals the Show is another that many fans and reviewers are planning to skip over on this album, but it enchants me. Jack’s a whimsical poet, a master of imagery, and lectures with a wink.   This song expresses all of that. I can’t help but wonder if it’s a story he made up to tell his kids.  And I want to scream that final line everywhere I go in public.

Get In the Mind Shaft.  Not only is this my favorite song on this record, it may very well become one of my favorite Jack White songs.  It’s highly unique, and not only because there are multiple versions of it— depending on which album pressing you ended up with, you can hear it begin with one of apparently more than half a dozen different stories that Jack recorded.  They’re all little pieces of #JackWhiteWisdom, ranging from him learning to pick out chords on a piano in an abandoned house, to the sound of frequencies in nature, to the mental battle of baseball pitching, to likening himself to a fisherman selling his catch at a dollar a head.  Regardless of which you hear, the background music of dramatically swelling strings gives weight to the words, making them profound. The story fades into an electronic break-down of synthesizer and digitalized voices singing “It’s strange, let’s try it. Can you hear me now? Am I invisible to you?” The voices are all Jack’s, apparently sung through a vocoder, but the effect makes them sound like alien children, like an eerie memory of how he made Meg White’s voice sound more child-like on St.Andrew/This Battle Is In the Air by speeding up the tape. It brings a touchingly innocent gravity to the second half of the song, turning it into a plea for connection. At the moment when the repeated refrain of “Can it be? Can it be? Can it be? Can it be?” erupts into soaring “Aaaaaaahhh”s, my face splits into an ear-to-ear smile even as a lump forms in my chest and my eyes fill with tears. For me, it’s a powerful song that hits me just as hard as my most favorite of his songs, 300MPH Torrential Outpour Blues. That song struck me immediately as an expression of the sardonic angst I’ve lived with almost every day of my life.  This one reminds me to not let that angst close me off, to always remain open to curiosity, beauty, and wonder, which is one of the most profound rewards of this addiction of mine, one that I’ll carry with me the rest of my life, no matter what kind of music Jack decides to make in the future.

What’s Done Is Done keeps being described as the only country song on the album but, to my ears, the only thing country about it is the twang in Jack’s vocal delivery. The music, on the other hand, is hard to categorize. It’s got the sort of intensely deep kick-drum as in Love Drought from Beyonce’s Lemonade, simple acoustic piano and brush drums, accented with Hammond organ and synth, then ending with a touch of softly strummed acoustic guitar. None of that is overtly country, at least not to me. But it is definitely beautiful. It’s also a fun performance from Jack, with that little whistle/hiccup at the beginning of “what’s”, and Esther Rose’s soft folk-infused voice is a beautiful accompaniment to his. I’ve heard her sing before, back when she performed with Luke Winslow-King, and I didn’t love her voice so much then, but I think I prefer her with Jack over either Ruby Amanfou or Lillie Mae Rische. And that whispered exchange at the end is the niftiest of touches.

Jack has always known how to end an album and Humoresque proves his skill yet again. After the cacophony of the rest of the album, it follows the relative quiet of WDID for the softest and gentlest of send-offs. The only cover song on the album, with lyrics by Howard Johnson (an early 1900s songwriter, not the guy who opened the hotel chain) over a classical interlude by Antonin Dvořák, Jack keeps it simple with an almost heart-breakingly husky vocal over piano and drums. Its reminiscence of early White Stripes covers like Look Me Over Closely and Mr. Cellophane proves that, no matter how far his boarding house reach into different genres and styles, underneath it all, Jack really is that “same boy” we’ve always known.

There’ve been a lot of hyperbolic reviews of this album, both reviling and acclaiming it. I’m not going to define it either way. To me, it’s just a perverse thing of beauty that confirms me more than ever as a fan of this musician who has opened so. Many. Fucking. Doors for me. I’ve climbed inside the mind shaft  and I don’t plan to climb out any time soon. 

Confessions of a Jack White junkie, part 12: The addiction comes full circle

A couple of songs into the show in Columbus, Ohio and all I thought I would have to say about it was that there are too goddamned many tall people in this world. It was like Radio City on the Blunderbuss tour all over again, unable to become immersed in what was happening because I had to crane my neck and jockey around just to catch glimpses of it. But then I noticed that there were several empty seats in the row behind me, so I climbed over the chairs and found myself raised ever so slightly above the sea of heads with a fairly good view of center stage, except for every time the massively tall bald guy two rows down leaned over to talk to his friends around him and make out with his girlfriend, which went on through the entire. damned. show. But at least I was able to dance around with a lot more space than I normally have on the rail. 

But it just wasn't the same. I was close enough to see when Jack smiled, which, like the last few nights, was pretty damned frequently, but not close enough to take in the full impact of his energy. I began mentally kicking myself in the ass over delaying my flight so I could sleep after the Madison Square Garden show the night before and not stand all day in the cold again. I was so exhausted after the Garden show. The cold had taken so much out of me, both the weather and the sickness I'd been fighting all week. But I knew what I was missing down there at the front, I knew the adrenalin rush of being right there in the maelstrom would have erased all the shivering and aching for at least a couple of hours. But could my body physically have done it without collapse, could I have gone from Austin to Nashville to New York to yet another day of standing in freezing temperatures with basically zero hours of sleep? I don't know. I'll never know. I'm not even sure I would have arrived in Ohio early enough to have been able to get on the rail at all, though a couple of friends who arrived later than I would have did make it despite the number of people in line ahead of them. So I can either continue kicking myself periodically over giving up the chance to be up close and connected at a show at which Jack was talkative and playful and more spontaneous than he'd been in Nashville or New York, or I can be stoic about it and mature (heaven forbid) enough to accept that my body needed a break. Can the junkie handle that? Does she have a choice?

Most of the highlights of the show were early on-- When Jack mentioned leading into Hotel Yorba that members of the Southwest Syndicate were in attendance at the show, but nobody in the audience would know who they are, I had to yell out "I know who they are!" because it brought back a particular moment downstairs in the Grand Ballroom after the Masonic Temple show. And then there was Jack calling out his techs Josh and Abraham to the front of the stage so that he could give them very specific directions to bring him a drink in "a clear glass so everyone can see it" and in that glass he wanted Coca-Cola, Red Bull, something I couldn't hear, Kahlua, pineapple juice, vodka, a few more things I couldn't hear and/or just don't remember and, finally, tap water, but it had to be Ohio tap water. This little episode reminded me of the hunt for a stool that was the proper representation of the form in Miami. And then, as a lead in to You Know That I Know, Jack told the story behind how he came to write that song with Hank Williams, which included a fairly hilarious Bob Dylan impersonation and the fact that Jack apparently didn't know he'd been weeding poison ivy from around his irises--


The re-cap of the ingredients in the drink here doesn't include a couple in his original request, like the pineapple juice.
I'd love to hear from the first person who tests this concoction.

Then there was the Cannon/Sixteen Saltines/Pipeline/Cannon medley that had me jumping like a fool and screaming as much as laryngitis would allow. Moments of spontaneity that made me kick myself a little more for not seeing how far I could push my physical limits.

The pace slowed down a bit just after the beginning of the encore as Jack told another story at the beginning of Three Women, and I found myself slowing along with it. Detachment began to set in. When I saw Jack motioning for Abraham to bring out the Kay, I actually felt relief. But he tricked us like he did at Nashville, he wasn't ready to end things after all and instead treated us to a snippet of Let's Build a Home and most of Suzy Lee. 



Then he handed the Kay back and launched into a handful more songs, including a one-two punch of Black Bat Licorice into Broken Boy Soldier that should have had me bouncing off the ceiling. I felt some of my usual excitement over those two songs, but it was accompanied by that feeling of disconnection from being so far away and having assholes block my view. When he motioned for the Kay again, finally, I was glad for it. It was time. I never thought I'd ever catch myself thinking that.

And by the time I arrived back home in D.C. the next morning, I was wallowing deeply, wondering where the hell the junkie had been when I needed her, when I needed to be irrational and driven. This was a show that would have left me euphoric if I'd been in my usual place up front, but that instead left me feeling a little hollow despite how hard I tried to get into it up in the seats. It certainly wasn't Jack's fault, what he was doing on that stage was magical and I knew it. I can only blame myself for a decision that's left me feeling intense remorse, even though I know full well there was no guarantee I would have made it to the rail even if I hadn't made that decision. 

And now, like after Miami, the roller-coaster ride is at an end for the foreseeable future. My friends Sam, Helen, and Angelina went on to the last three shows of this leg and I spent those few days fighting to not return to the bitter, jealous state I began this ride in back early last summer.  Upon reading Helen's one-sentence review of the show in Oklahoma, and again after the next night in Albuquerque when she mentioned that he played Never Far Away, a song I love not only because it's beautiful but because it so perfectly encapsulates the story of one of my favorite books, my eyes filled up with tears and I felt a physical pang in my heart and before you start rolling your eyes at me let me assure you that I fully realize just how ridiculous that sounds.  I'm not so far gone that I can't stand back and see that all of this comes across like an over-aged teeny-bopper whining about first-world fan-girl problems. But knowing that doesn't help to control the feelings.  When I hear about the shows I've missed, the visceral reaction erupts before conscious, rational thought even has a chance to form. It's so easy to jump to the conclusion that what you've missed was better, more exciting and more surprising, than the experiences that you've had. And then the battle begins between the fan-girl junkie and my more rational, adult side. Those battles ain't pretty, lemme tell you, 'cause the junkie fights dirty and has ammunition in the form of photos and videos and show reviews aaaaalll over the internet. And I know I'm not alone in going through these withdrawal symptoms. I've had many conversations over the course of this tour with the friends I went to all these shows with and they've experienced it, too.  One of them was warned by her mother that it seemed her "decision making was weak or compromised".  Another has brought her credit cards to the limit to get to shows.  It truly is an addiction. But unlike drugs or alcohol that can be explained by a physical dependency, this is more like gambling or some other craving that's based in the most illogical reaches of the brain. Sometimes I feel that if I could just figure out what the hell it is about this man and his music that has this affect on all of us, then I'd be able to figure out some way to build up an immunity to it. But the things that move us emotionally just aren't based on rational causes and can't always be understood. So sometimes we suffer for them in between the moments of bliss.

Jack's touring South America in March, then playing the Coachella festival and a show in Honolulu in April, then that might very well be it for the Lazaretto tour.  Fucking shame my ride had to end with a whimper instead of delighted, giddy screaming. Moral of the story, kiddies-- Sometimes you really should rouse up your inner junkie and let it push you, even if it might  compromise your health or otherwise screw things up. The high can be so worth it, and you have to try to make it happen.

Come back soon, Jack. The junkie and I both need more of that good aural first aid.



Here's where it all began.

Confessions of a Jack White junkie, part 8: All good things must come to an end

So there I was, all by myself.  Stretched out in my camp chair, trying to snooze, waiting for Sharon and Sam.  Instead of driving to meet my buddies, I had flown into Miami Beach and was sitting there alone in front of the Fillmore staking out our spots while they drove down from Jacksonville, where they'd seen Jack White perform the night before.  

In Jacksonville with Helen but without me. Photo courtesy of Sharon Harrow.

Of course, I was unhappy about having missed that show due to poor planning on my part, especially when they finally arrived and began letting slip little details about it, but for a change I wasn't going so far as to eat my heart out over it.  We ended up having too much fun together for that.

In Miami with me. Photos courtesy of Sharon Harrow

I was also surprisingly not eating my heart out over the fact that these two shows in Miami would be my last for the foreseeable future. Writing this a few days after, I'm just waiting for delirium tremens to set in (especially since Sharon, Helen, and Sam were at the last show of this leg of the tour at the same time that I was typing), but so far, so good.  

The other thing that struck me as strange was that I didn't have the usual butterflies in my stomach leading up to these shows. It hit me the first night while leaning on the rail waiting for the show to begin that instead of excitement, I was feeling something that seemed strangely like relief. That's not to say I wasn't excited for the show, because I transformed into the usual bouncing banshee once Jack hit the stage.  In that moment, though, I was just... calm.  There had been no severe line angst that day and, being perfectly honest with myself, I had to admit to looking forward to getting a break from the emotional roller-coaster of the last couple months.  We would all be on hiatus after this week, as the only dates Jack had scheduled for the rest of the year were in Mexico, the U.K., and Europe and there have been no hints as to when anymore will be announced.

But before that hiatus, I had two more nights with him.

As usual, it started with this (the irony of someone watching Lalo's injunction to not watch the show through a 3 inch screen can't be missed)--




The first night was a little on the strange side, with three sets like at the Detroit Fox show. But the feeling of this one was completely different from that one.  The crowd at this show was rowdy, even slightly obnoxious in spots, with a bit of pushing and shoving going on around us (nowhere near as bad as Cleveland, though, at least where I was standing), but Jack seemed to be enjoying their response to him.  He made a lot of eye contact with people in the front, including us, much of it accompanied by that infectious smile.  So we were confused when the curtain closed after a relatively short set that included standouts like a nice long introductory High Ball Stepper, the rarely heard (though this was the third time for me) I Think I Smell a Rat, a more complete John the Revelator tucked into Cannon than I'd heard before on this tour, and a completely improvised, unnamed song. But then the curtain swept open again and the crowd went nuts to Fell In Love With a Girl.  This second set included a very sweet Same Boy You've Always Known, and then the curtain swept shut again after We're Going To Be Friends.  Very strange to end a show on such a mellow song, which left us confused all over again.  But the show didn't end then, because there was yet one more set of just three songs, all blazing ones-- Icky Thump, Freedom at 21, and Seven Nation Army. And unlike Fenway, this crowd knew how to do a fucking Seven Nation Army chant. (More irony, though, with this person filming everyone else filming the song. But, of course, I'm ironically grateful that they did.)

Show photos courtesy of David James Swanson

What usually happens when he hangs the guitar from the mic stand (this will make sense further on)

It was a damned good, high energy show, but something felt a little off and we had no good ideas of what it might have been.

But if the first night was a little strange, the second night was... well, I'm still not sure what adjectives to apply to it. In talking about the Fenway Park show, I mentioned Sharon and I finding each other afterward and wondering "What did we just see?"  This show yanked the same response from us, but expressed ecstatically instead of with bemusement.

Let me preface this by stating that I never in my life thought I would attend a Jack White show during which he performed sitting down. The man just has too much energy. He may not always spin around the stage like a tornado, but even standing still you have the feeling that he could begin whirling at any moment. But this show was proof that you just cannot ever have any kind of assumption or expectation where Jack is concerned.  

The only other time I know of anything similar to this happening was at a private party at end of the 2010 Dead Weather tour, late at night after the band performed on the David Letterman show. Jack apparently got into a mood and exploded at the crowd and when video surfaced a few days later, fans at one of the message boards exploded over the things he said.  Considering my own issues with temper and snark, none of that bothered me.  If anything, hearing of incidents like that makes me identify with him more strongly because I understand where that sort of shadow stuff comes from.  No, what bothered me  about the videos that popped up from that night was seeing the state he was in when he came out from behind the drum-kit to play guitar on Will There Be Enough Water.  He started out by sitting heavily down on the front of the drum riser with his guitar and then ended up propped up against the speaker cabinet at the side of the stage for support when he wasn't at the mic singing or at his pedal board for a solo. I found it very disturbing to watch, much more so than his displays of temper.  His playing wasn't affected, the solos he wrenched out were as searing as ever.  But was it exhaustion, illness, drunkenness, all of the above, or something else that made him unable to stand without support? I don't know and never will.  But I know it wasn't the Jack that usually takes the stage in front of a crowd. 

But this night was not like that.  

It started out as tempestuously as any other show, with Dead Leaves leading into High Ball Stepper leading into Astro leading into Sixteen Saltines. The first slow moment was a lovely You've Got Her In Your Pocket, but then two songs later the energy ratcheted back up again with Lazaretto, Just One Drink, and Black Bat Licorice.  And then things took an entirely different direction.

Fixing the pompadour, something he did several times throughout the show

After Alone In My Home, Jack decided he wanted to talk to his friends, meaning us, the audience. He's done that a lot this tour and the media has made a big deal of his "rants".  In return, he's made a big deal at recent shows of the media's big deal of what he considers "just talking to his friends", which is how he described it at Cleveland.  He also talked at Cleveland about how he feels he should end everything he says (even phone conversations with his mother) with "But you know I'm just joking".  This night in Miami was a perfect example of how subtle his humor can be when he gets going.  He began by asking his guitar tech, Abraham, who had already been dealing with multiple instrument issues, to find him a stool, one like stand-up comics use with the rungs at different heights so you can prop your feet in different spots (yes, he was that specific).  While Abraham went off to search, Jack began pacing around the stage with mic in hand, introducing the band.  I can't remember all of the intros, but by the time he got to Fats Kaplin and began telling us how he'd mowed Fats' lawn in the 80s, I was laughing out loud.  Abraham came back with a drum stool and set it by the mic stand, only to be told by Jack that it was too short for someone as tall as he is.  Off went Abraham again, and Jack took the opportunity to tell us about the public school tube amps he's been using this tour, explaining how they were once used for the sort of announcements principals make in school and that he bought all three for $150 and then checked on eBay the next day to make sure that was a good deal because that's what you do these days (I've actually heard elsewhere that they cost closer to $18,000 apiece) and that the other thing they're really good for is as guitar amps. 

Edited a couple weeks later: And God or whatever's above, please bless the young girl who broke the rules and recorded those band introductions. Obviously I mis-remembered the order of some things, but that really doesn't matter. What matters is this--

Here's the same from another, closer angle--

At some point, back comes Abraham with a taller drum stool and down sits Jack at the mic with his Gibson Army-Navy acoustic guitar (Or was it the Gibson L-1 acoustic? He asked for that to be brought out at one point). He was like Goldilocks, though, because this stool wasn't quite right either. After asking the audience if it was alright if he crossed his legs, he went ahead and did a song and then got Abraham back out so that he could very earnestly and lengthily clarify what he wanted.  I couldn't hear what he was saying but Sharon did and told me later that the drum stool apparently "was not representative of the proper form".  Off goes Abraham yet again and this time he scored with just the right form of stool.  At this point Jack was able to prop his feet the way he'd wanted to all along and he launched into a conversation of how sugar is bad for you, but so are artificial sweeteners and Stevia is supposed to be good for you but now the latest thing is Sorbitol and could "you fucking hipsters make up your minds" and get back to him and by this time we were laughing our asses off as he launched into Sugar Never Tasted So Good.

None of this slowed the show down a jot, just made it very, very different. His body might not have been moving around while he sat at the mic for that handful of songs, but the gyroscope in his brain was spinning full blast and he had us fully engaged with the dryness of his humor and wondering what the hell was going on.

In contrast to the previous night, Jack sang most of the songs of this show with his eyes closed.  But there was one moment, when he stood up from his stool to take a bow at the end of Blunderbuss, when he looked down at the people in the front and his eyes traveled from center-stage across the row outwards and I swear they stopped on Sharon, Sam, and me as the stagehands gradually pulled the curtain closed in front of him.    

He was back to electric guitar and on his feet for the second set, though definitely not as active as usual. But while his energy may have been a bit lower, his intensity wasn't. And there were other moments when the gyroscope went off in whimsical directions, like the minute or so he spent adjusting the guitar mic at his stand, twisting it one way and then another until it became clear he was just playing around with the thing and not at all concerned with getting it into the right spot, and at the end of the show, when he draped his guitar strap from the mics and then began wrapping the guitar and strap around the booms with a little grin on his face, leaving the guitar balanced atop this construction, watching it sink a little without dropping while feeding back crazily as he and the band lined up for their final bow.  All of these moments made for the most strange and wonderful show.










In talking about it afterward, we came to the conclusion that the ankle he sprained in San Francisco had not healed as well as it appeared at the first few shows on this leg of the tour. This could also explain why he was less active at Fenway Park the previous week, when I thought the issue was a lack of connection with the crowd. Whatever the case, there was no lack of connection this night and we saw him perform in a completely unexpected way.  It left me giddily high in just the way I love so much and when we walked out of the theater into the beginning of a drenching rainstorm, the last thing I wanted was the protection of an umbrella.  I wanted to feel everything-- euphoria, whimsy, electricity, rain, everything.  This is why I do this.  This is why I'll be damned if I'll give up on the addiction. 

When the roller-coaster ride will continue is up to Jack.  

(But here's where it began: Introduction)

Why don't you just take the night, wrap it all around me

I've written before about my fascination with the effect music can have on us.  I've read one book on the topic so far that unfortunately fell short of a satisfying explanation, and am currently in the midst of two others (Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia and Robert Jourdain's Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy)  in the hopes that at least one of them will provide more insight.  I want to understand this--  How can certain combinations of chords, melody, rhythm and, specifically for me, voice and words, sweep us to such intense heights of emotion?  How can a mere song inspire an addictive craving to hear it over and over and over again?  If anyone out there knows... please, explain it to me.

The latest song to have this effect on me is one that I first heard about a few weeks ago, when it was announced that Q Magazine was releasing a special issue including a bonus cd in tribute to U2's Achtung Baby.  Amongst the artists covering tracks from the original album was Jack White.  I immediately pulled up a video of U2's original to get an idea of what he'd be working with.



Took one listen for me to fall in love with the song.  I've never been an outright fan of U2, but this and other tunes like With Or Without You stir every romantic yearning I've ever had.  The blend of words, Bono's voice, and the music effectively brings me to tears.

But tonight... Tonight Jack's cover version was leaked onto the internet and moved me in a way I think nothing I've ever heard before has.  So many elements of it are typical of his style--  The interplay of acoustic and electric guitar, the high pitched vocals, the drama... but, at the same time, it's so very different from anything he's done before.  In this one song he's taken every one of those familiar elements to a higher level than I've heard from him before.  The man is known for passionate performances, most famously on the White Stripes cover of Jolene and the Raconteurs' Blue Veins, but this one contains a sustained tension and passion that tops anything I've heard from him yet.  As incredible as his own songwriting is, he's got a brilliantly uncanny ability to take other people's words and music and transform them into something so much more powerful than the original artist created.  I've been left with my eyes wide, my jaw dropped and my heart pounding, and I can't stop listening to it.   

Love is blindness
I don't want to see
Won't you wrap the night
Around me
Oh my heart
Love is blindness

In a parked car
In a crowded street
You see your love
Made complete
Thread is ripping
The knot is slipping
Love is blindness

Love is clockworks
And cold steel
Fingers too numb to feel
Squeeze the handle
Blow out the candle
Love is blindness

Love is blindness
I don't want to see
Won't you wrap the night
Around me
Oh my love
Blindness

A little death
Without mourning
No call
And no warning
Baby...a dangerous idea
That almost makes sense

Love is drowning
In a deep well
All the secrets
And no one to tell
Take the money
Honey
Blindness

Love is blindness
I don't want to see
Won't you wrap the night
Around me
Oh my love
Blindness

From ology.com, a review of the song that uses words like "devastating" and "stunning" that I didn't have the presence of mind to summon up: Listen To Jack White Cover U2's "Love Is Blindness"