In the great mess of things I probably should have posted about over the last couple of days, little stands out more than the White Stripes concert I went to friday.
The opening band, the Clone Defects, was pretty bad. Their lead singer looks like James Carville, and pretty much is what Carville would be if he were a rock singer: Badly out of tune and way too enthusiastic.
The Stripes are a great band. Ok, they’re technically a duo, since it’s just Jack and Meg White, who allege that they are brother and sister, but are evidently man and ex-wife. I’m going to steal Spin‘s line on them and just call them the Ambiguously Related Duo.
Whatever their relation, they play some damn good punk/blues/country (though mostly punk) music. And they put on one hell of a show. They tore through half their catalogue and a bunch of covers in an hour an a half. My favorite cover was Bob Dylan‘s “Lovesick”, which they did a really perfect job on reconstructing in their own style.
They played a lot of stuff from their first (the White Stripes) and third (White Blood Cells) albums, but not a lot from their second (De Stijl), which I thought was odd, because that was really good. However, they ripped on “Hotel Yorba,” so all is forgiven.
The oddest part of the entire show was the audience. Because the show didn’t start til 11:30 (because the Metro double-booked themselves), a lot of the audience was at least 30. And if you don’t know that that’s old for a punk audience, you clearly don’t follow music.
I’m not sure if it was because they were old or just weird, but for some reason when the Stripes finished a song, the audience would burst into wild screaming and applause for about 15 seconds, and then suddenly stop. It was really weird:
“WOOOOOOOO!! YEAAAAAAH! (silence).”
Overall, I highly recommend seeing them, if you can get tickets. Me and Cleo had to get ours off of EBay, but if there’s tickets left in your area, go. And the Clone Defects are off the tour after tonight, so you won’t have to suffer through them.
Unless you’re really that hot for James Carville.
(shudder).