Tag: The White Stripes

The White Stripes: April 17, 1999 Detroit, MI

An exclusive archive from The White Stripes just dropped for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring April 17, 1999 from Detroit, MI!

Sign up for a free trial now to hear this newly mastered show plus the entire Third Man Records archival catalog. From White Stripes archivist/historian Ben Blackwell on this month’s ‘Third Man Thursday’ release:

There are moments, ever so brief, that feel like an entire room has catalyzed and are all 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 underground countercultural 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.

Stream this new show and all other exclusive archive releases from Third Man Records with a 7-day free trial. Explore The White Stripes catalog and start your free trial here.

The White Stripes: April 20, 2003 Boston, MA and May 19, 2003 Berlin, DE

Two exclusive archives from The White Stripes are now available for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring two 2003 shows; Boston on April 20 and Berlin on May 19. Sign up for a free trial now to hear these new shows plus the entire Third Man Records archival catalog.

From long time White Stripes fan Mike on this month’s ‘Third Man Thursday’ releases:

They’re Gonna Talk About You Still

When Jack White appeared in the film It Might Get Loud, he chose two influences to share with the cameras: Son House, the blues singer and guitarist – whose birthday it is today, and Flat Duo Jets, the two-piece band fronted by Dexter Romweber – who passed away last month. In tribute to those artists and the lasting power of influence, here are the White Stripes performances from Boston, where the band performed a cover of Flat Duo Jets’ Don’t Blame Me, and Berlin, where they brought Son House’s Grinnin’ In Your Face to the masses. Two of the band’s most widely shared concerts, each originally captured off the radio and circulated by fans. Like the music of those key influences, these performances are both familiar and essential, re-shared here upgraded and unedited for the first time.

With only 4 weeks between them, the concerts from Boston and Berlin reveal just how quickly the band’s performances were developing. Boston is a spontaneous run-through, with the new songs rapidly settling into their proper live versions, pure risk-taking live on the air. Berlin pushes the set further, resulting in an explosive ninety-minute go, one of the longest broadcasts the band had ever done. As soon as these shows hit the airwaves, they were immediately shared by fans as must-hear recordings from the tour. 

During an interview before the show in Boston, the band were asked whether maintaining simplicity was still a goal, with Jack confirming “I don’t really want to evolve or grow in the band at all. I don’t want that false pretense, or to try and second guess things. We like living in this box we’ve created very much, and we don’t want to change.”  And yet, even with that commitment, the Boston concert would be held at the Orpheum, a venue twice the size of the ones played on previous tours, and the Berlin concert would get moved from the Casino to the larger Columbiahalle, one of the first times that had happened to the band. So, while they may have been able to keep some things the same, they couldn’t stop others from evolving around them.

The spirit of wanting to preserve things would get echoed in other interviews, when discussing the band’s influences: “It’s wonderful to have influences. It’s wonderful to join that tradition of songwriters and storytellers, and join that family…telling the same story your way.” One of those stories was also Jack’s favorite song, Grinning In Your Face, by the blues legend Son House.  Even though the band had been performing the song at shows going back to 1999, the Berlin broadcast would be the first time that most fans had ever heard it – included here as part of Death Letter. Notable too, as the song was from a record that wouldn’t have existed if not for a group of young fans inspired by the out-of-print recordings of the bluesman, going on a road trip in 1964 with the hopes that they could track him down and convince him to make music again. The result of that effort was the record “Father of Folk Blues” which Jack would discover by hearing John the Revelator played over the PA before a Radiohead concert.  Just as John the Revelator would get memorialized on the White Stripes debut album, and Death Letter on De Stijl, the performance of Grinning In Your Face on the Berlin broadcast would serve as a key reference point of the Stripes covering the song. The band’s day in Berlin would turn out to be especially productive in that regard, as the soundcheck would also see them record a cover of Soledad Brothers’ St Ides of March, which would be released later that year as the B-side to The Hardest Button To Button.

Jack had been introduced to Flat Duo Jet’s “Go Go Harlem Baby” around the time he was working at an upholstery shop.  And while Son House’s music would serve as a perfect example of the band re-telling a story their way, when the Stripes covered the Duo Jets, they played it faithful – true to the source.  Don’t Blame Me was itself a cover, a story that singer and guitarist Dexter Romweber had re-told his way, but when the Stripes played it, they did it like Dex did.  And just like Grinnin’ In Your Face at Berlin, the performance of Don’t Blame Me at Boston was also the first time that most fans had ever heard that song. The occasion was all the more significant because Dex was on the bill that night, performing with his sister Sara as the Dexter Romweber Duo, making the Stripes’ cover of Don’t Blame Me the rare experience of being able to pay tribute to someone who influenced you, with them actually in the room. When later asked how he felt about the impact that Flat Duo Jets had on others, Dex was gracious: “There are musicians that have influenced me that came before me that people don’t necessarily know about. It’s all just a natural lineage of stuff handed down. I’m not lost on the fact that people influenced me either. So, if Jack got something out of those records or he saw something that was valuable to him, I thought that was a positive thing because I had done the same thing.” In 2011, Third Man Records would reissue “Go Go Harlem Baby” on vinyl after being long out-of-print, continuing to pay that influence forward.

Everything has a source. Just as the mighty Mississippi starts as a small lake in Minnesota, that too gets fed by the creeks and springs around it. You can never fully go upstream, just as you can’t predict where something will go once it’s released, or how it might influence others. Just as these shows were spread by fans, here’s a reminder to go check out Son House’s “Father of Folk Blues” and Flat Duo Jets’ “Go Go Harlem Baby”, music kept in the light by those who understood that when you discover something good – whether on an out-of-print record, a song overheard at a concert, or a band’s performance on a radio broadcast – the best thing you can do is to share it with others, and let that love keep shining on.

4/20/03 Boston – Orpheum Theatre

Listen to the show here.

Originally broadcast on the radio, Boston would be the first time that many fans would get to hear the new songs from Elephant performed live. Even though parts of the band’s opening concert from London had been broadcast a few weeks earlier, the performance from Boston is the one that feels like the proper return to the stage, especially given how accessible the show would be to fans. The concert at the Orpheum was the band’s second show this Easter Sunday, as they had also performed a brief set earlier in the afternoon for a group of contest winners at the nearby Paradise. For as familiar as this show is, it’s amazing when you realize how many risks the band took on this night. After the opening trio of Black Math, Dead Leaves, and Let’s Shake Hands, the first surprise arrives during I Think I Smell A Rat, with a cover of Party of Special Things to Do by Captain Beefheart, a rarity released as a 7 inch a few years before, but only played live a handful of times. You can hear Jack call out for the bass drum pattern “boom, boom, boom, boom…” just before kicking off the verses. This spontaneity can also be heard in the version of You’re Pretty Good Looking, with Jack pausing after the first verse to shout “gimme a click, Meg!”, singing the rest of the lyrics in the swing style that he would use at other shows throughout the year. Even though it was still early in the tour, the new songs were also getting updated, which you can hear in the performance of The Hardest Button to Button, with the vocals having shifted away from the deadpan delivery heard on the album to an all-out scream. Death Letter features the quote from Motherless Children before abruptly closing, indicating that something must have happened with the guitar. Rather than attempt a restart, Jack moves to the keyboards and performs an impromptu cover of Red Bird, an on-the-fly debut of the Leadbelly song.  The show gets to a truly unique moment with the debut of Don’t Blame Me, an homage to one of Jack’s key influences, Flat Duo Jets.  A special occasion, given that Duo Jets’ singer and guitarist Dex Romweber was the opener on this night, performing as part of a new duo with his sister Sara. Just like the show with Loretta Lynn in New York the night before, Boston is one of the few times when the band would get to share a bill with one of their musical idols.  A week later they would do it again, opening for the Stooges at Coachella.  As they close the show, the band go out on a high note, leaving the audience and the listeners wanting more, with Jack holding back laughter as he leads the crowd to the final verse in Boll Weevil.

5/19/03 Berlin – Columbiahalle

Listen to the show here.

Just as the broadcast from Boston felt like the band’s official return to the stage, the way they sounded on the broadcast from Berlin was as if they’d suddenly hit their live peak. Having been moved from the Casino to the larger Columbiahalle due to demand, the band’s setlist is similarly expanded here, a masterful 30+ song display. Coming just weeks after the breakout shows in April and the exploratory performances in Scandinavia, Berlin takes the Elephant set and firmly baselines it into a 90 minute powerhouse. Like watching a racehorse lap effortlessly around the track, over and over, they just sound so healthy here. From the whammy-and-feedback opening in Dead Leaves and The Dirty Ground to the final singalong in Boll Weevil, you get the full course – a virtual blueprint for the rest of the Elephant tour. The Hardest Button To Button gets a unique spot near the top of the set just after the openers, which extends the energy rush to great effect. Listen for the ad libbed line “Beating up Swanson and Damstra with a baseball bat!”, a funny reference to tourmates Whirlwind Heat during the marathon version of I Think I Smell A Rat, which also features When I Hear My Name, Take a Whiff On Me, and Mr Cellophane, now in its official live arrangement – complete with Jack letting the audience know when it’s time to adjust the rhythm of their clapping.  After an excellent Hypnotize, Jack introduces the band to the audience with an appropriate “Hot and sweaty in Berlin!”. Death Letter follows and is just about perfect, complete with Jack yelling “Let’s go Meg!” which she responds to by joining him in a run that culminates with a fantastic burst on the kick drum. This sets up Grinnin’ In Your Face, one of the first times that listeners had ever heard the band perform the Son House song live.  Again, just about perfect. There are performance highlights all over this show, including the adlib of “I can tell that we are going to be friends…Berlin, Berlin, Berlin” and the nod to Burt Bacharach and Marlene Dietrich before Look Me Over Closely. Even the out of tune guitar that pops up during the transition from Let’s Build A Home into Goin’ Back to Memphis still ends up resulting in a wonderful improvisation that they use to push through and close the main set. The encores play out like a continuous medley, including a complete version of Fell In Love With A Girl, the rare occurrence when they played the song in full. Having also used the soundcheck to record the future B-side cover of Soledad Brothers’ St Ides Of March, on this night they really could do no wrong.  Do yourself a favor and fall in love with Berlin all over again, a mandatory performance from the Elephant tour.

Stream these three new shows and all other exclusive archive releases from Third Man Records with a 7-day free trial. Explore The White Stripes catalog and start your free trial here.

The White Stripes: January 2004 London, UK and Paris, FR

An exclusive archive from The White Stripes is now available for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring one night in London and one night in Paris from early 2004. From long time White Stripes fan Mike on this month’s ‘Third Man Thursday’ releases:

Staring down one of the longest breaks they would have since first taking the stage at the Gold Dollar on Bastille Day 6 years earlier, Jack and Meg return to their “home away from home” in London, before heading to Paris to close out this phase of the Elephant tour at the appropriately named “Zenith”.

Having just completed the filming at Blackpool, rather than rest on their laurels for these final two shows, the band were still pulling out surprises and making each one unique right to the end, with London getting impromptu quotes from George M. Cohan’s The Yankee Doodle Boy and Leadbelly’s Red Bird, and Paris getting a performance of The Kills’ Superstition along with an uber-rare update of Diddy Wah Diddy – a song not performed live since 1999, when the band opened for the great Wayne Kramer.

The London performance would coincide with another milestone, as earlier in the day Jack would sit down for what would end up being the final interview with DJ John Peel, who would pass away later that year.  The two spent the time playing records for each other, chatting about movies, and of course discussing the Stripes’ success – of which Peel certainly played a role in, having hosted the band on his show during their first visit to the UK back in 2001. When asked “So, where do you go next?”, Jack’s response was a mix of relief and closure: “We’re done with ‘Elephant’ and we’re not touring any more on that album. So, I just need a break. We’ve toured the world on it, and I’ve gotta get inspired again.” True to that feeling, the session ends with Jack performing songs solo on the acoustic – including covers of songs by Blanche, Loretta Lynn, and a song that he had written for Cold Mountain which the producers had declined to use.  As if bringing the cycle with Peel full circle, Jack also performed Jack the Ripper, a callback to that first session in 2001, here a stripped-down version played at the DJ’s request.

In a way, the period between that first Peel appearance in July 2001 and the final one in February 2004 was like a 2 ½ year trek up a mountain, where Jack and Meg had gone from being the small band that few had heard about, to an internationally known live act who were days away from completing a successful world tour. Having enjoyed the kind of 360 degree view one would get from the top of a peak by traveling across the globe, it’s fitting that the final show of the tour would be at a venue named The Zenith.  And while the performance in London happened to coincide with a final visit with Peel, who had helped kick off a sort of reverse Beatlemania for the band (the final interview also taking place on the 35th anniversary of the Beatles final live performance on the Apple rooftop), the performance in Paris just so happened to take place on the eve of La Chandeleur, the French observation of Candlemas, which marks the end of the Christmas period.  One last day on tour, before the decorations finally get taken down.

And just as soon as they finished in Paris, they would fly to Los Angeles for the Grammys on February 8th, exactly 1 year and a day after the first live preview of Elephant at London’s Electric Cinema. Putting on the red and black trousers one last time, the band tore through an epic Seven Nation Army, complete with a surprise version of Death Letter included within it.  A watershed moment, capped off by Seven Nation Army winning “Best Rock Song”, and Elephant winning “Best Alternative Music Album”.

The significance of the Grammys performance mirrors that of the first Peel broadcast. Where one was like a secret transmission audible only to those in the know, the other was a takeover of every channel on the dial, an instant conversion of the masses. It’s a funny thing when a band spends a year touring, and then has a moment like that, right as they go off the road.  As if they should get right back out there and do it all again, to capitalize on that momentum.  How many times have you seen a band suddenly become that visible (just days later, SNL would even make a sketch about them), only to look up their touring schedule and find out that they had already come around months, if not a year earlier?  And for the fans who were there from the beginning, it’s as if now suddenly the entire world sees what you knew all along. Random co-workers ask if you’ve heard of this band. Relatives and friends tell you that they saw that group you like on TV.  It’s one thing to reach a peak when only a few people know about it.  When now everyone knows about it, that’s the true zenith.  

1/30/04 London
Brixton Academy

Listen to the show here.

Returning to the city where Elephant was recorded, Brixton Academy joins the Masonic in Detroit and the Aragon in Chicago as one of the three venues to get a repeat visit on the Elephant tour. Having previously broadcast a performance at the Academy when they last visited in April 2003, the release here closes the gap of 2004 being the only year when they played in the UK not to have some kind of “Live in London” out there.  Like the December 2001 broadcast, where the band had also played London earlier in that tour and then came back for a closing show, this show feels a lot like a radio broadcast that never was, a perfect encore performance capturing the band putting on a near-flawless set. After the openers of Black Math and Dead Leaves, Jack greets the crowd with “London! Our home away from home!” and it’s right into When I Hear My Name, which features an impromptu verse from George M. Cohan’s The Yankee Doodle Boy, complete with Jack modifying the lyrics to reference his own birthday “A real life nephew of my Uncle Sam, Born on the 9th of July!”.  While the UK had adopted them as family, an unabashed reminder of their American roots. The ending of the song features a frantic run of soloing with the whammy, which like the inclusion of Leadbelly’s Redbird in I Think I Smell A Rat, is proof of just how much they still had left in the tank, even as they prepared to close out the tour.  Listen for Jack singing along to the end of In the Cold Cold Night, and Meg returning the favor by again singing along during This Protector, where you can just about hear a pin drop in the venue. The main set goes out heavy with Ball and Biscuit, with amateur video of the performance showing Jack close the song by thrashing around next to Meg’s kit, even knocking a stand over, before going to the floor and letting the feedback ring out as he leaves the stage.  Before Seven Nation Army, Jack asks “Is everybody friends with the person next to them? You make sure of that now. Cuz Meg and I aren’t leaving until every one of you get a friend on either side of you, okay?”  The version of Seven Nation Army here features the opening line of “I’m gonna kiss ’em off” which was unique to the three London shows. Before closing with Boll Weevil, Jack introduces it as “an old song”, as if now officially able to refer to the days before Elephant as being from another time in the band’s history.  Even though this is the end of the tour, they leave the stage letting the crowd know that they won’t be gone too long: “We’ll see you guys at Reading and Leeds festivals in August, all right?”

2/1/04 Paris
Le Zenith

Listen to the show here.

With a 6 month break just days away, it’s fitting that the final show of the tour opens with the line “When I hear my name, I want to disappear” and closes with “I just don’t know what to do with myself”.  Having ended their first show in Paris back in 2001 with Jack proclaiming “Lafayette, we have returned!”, he couldn’t have predicted just how far the band would rise since then, as he tells the audience at the Zenith, “Good Lord, there’s so many of you!”.  No doubt happy to be closing out the tour, there is a feeling of movement in this show, as the band confidently go from song to song.  Listen as Meg enters early in Love Sick, with Jack giving an audible “Yeah!” in approval.  There’s another moment like this during Ball and Biscuit, with Jack heard asking for “just one now” and Meg responding with a single hit on the drums, right on time.  Perfect reminders of just how tightly connected the two were on stage.  While many of the familiar songs in the set would carry over into the band’s eventual return in August, In the Cold Cold Night would get its final performance of the year, not to be performed again until the Get Behind Me Satan tour in 2005.  And even though the set is mostly filled with songs that they had played dozens of times on the tour, many of the performances feel as if updated for the occasion of this being the last show. During I Fought Piranhas, the line “Who puts up a fight walking out of hell?” never sounded so appropriate, and the version of The Same Boy You’ve Always Known is played as if having been written for that moment when it’s time to say goodbye.  Never ones to go quietly, Cannon gets a rare inclusion of Diddy Wah Diddy, a song only played one other time back in 1999, and gets followed by The Big Three Killed My Baby with Jack riffing on everything from George Bush, the auto companies, and a declaration that “America’s mind is lazy!” before going into a chant of “I’m about to tell the news Meg!” – thoroughly getting it all in for this final performance.  After Jack the Ripper they also slot in an impromptu cover of the song Superstition by The Kills. Unlike the quote of the song at LA on 9/22/03, here it gets played complete with the original riff.  In the encores, Lafayette Blues serves as the perfect setup before they close the show with I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself, with Jack thanking France for being “the country that produced Michel Gondry”.  Having now wrapped a year’s worth of touring going out on a high at the Zenith, the farewell of “My sister thanks you, and I thank you! Good night Paris!” is delivered as if literally shouted from the top of a mountain. 

Stream these three new shows and all other exclusive archive releases from Third Man Records with a 7-day free trial. Explore The White Stripes catalog and start your free trial here.

Weekly Live Stash Vol. XCII, January 19, 2024

Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio, nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music, and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from The White Stripes, Eggy, Spafford, The String Cheese Incident, and more. Paid nugs subscribers may be eligible for 4-months of SiriusXM All Access (App Only), see your account page to take advantage of this offer. Offer Details apply. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.

  1. Lovely Day
    Neal Francis & Nigel Hall
    5/5/23 New Orleans, LA
  2. Love Sick
    The White Stripes
    1/24/04 Glasgow, SCO
  3. Boom or Bust
    Eggy
    1/6/24 Deerfield, MA
  4. Six Underground
    Spafford
    1/14/24 Pembroke, MA
  5. Ebenezer’s Winter
    Kitchen Dwellers
    1/16/24 Aspen, CO
  6. Land of the Navajo
    The String Cheese Incident (w/ Peter Rowan)
    12/30/23 Oakland, CA
  7. Stress Dreams
    Greensky Bluegrass
    1/14/24 Orlando, FL
  8. Attachments
    Umphrey’s McGee
    1/14/24 Richmond, VA

The White Stripes: January 2004 Glasgow, Scotland

An exclusive archive from The White Stripes is now available for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring a two night stand in Glasgow from January 2004. From long time White Stripes fan Mike on this month’s ‘Third Man Thursday’ releases:

January 2004: Glasgow, Scotland

Scottish Nation Army

Just weeks after the New Years Eve show in Chicago, the band were back across the pond once more, to perform a final run of concerts in the UK and France.  These shows in Glasgow took place at the midpoint of the tour, and were the last stop before they’d be under the lights and the cameras at Blackpool.  Being of Scottish descent, Jack and Meg were back in “the homeland”, playing to audiences of 5,000 fellow Scots in the aptly-named Hall 3 of the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre.  On a tour where each show was a consistently excellent performance, what makes the Glasgow concerts special is that together they represent the moment when Seven Nation Army officially became an anthem.

While already on a steady path through the stadiums of Europe, the now ubiquitous “Seven Nation Army” riff had already been chanted by audiences at the band’s live shows pretty much right from the first time it was performed live. Having been released to radio just weeks before the start of the Elephant tour in February 2003, crowds quickly went from clapping in time to the riff at the opening show in Wolverhampton, to singing along to the riff at Manchester the very next night. Nearly a year later, and it’s at the first night in Glasgow where the participation from the audience would reach a kind of critical mass.  With so many versions played at the shows before this, the ones at Glasgow are different.  On the recording from the first night, you can even hear Jack’s reaction as he starts the song and the crowd of 5,000 immediately begin chanting the riff in unison, causing him to delay his entry into the first verse. The very next night, the crowd would do it again. Where other audiences may have chanted the riff or sung the lyrics to the first line before respectfully getting out of the way so as to enjoy the rest of the song, Glasgow is the moment when the audience didn’t get out of the way.  Like a Scottish war cry, the audiences here aren’t just singing along, the band and the crowd are performing the song together.  

As if the universe couldn’t possibly let this kind of moment happen without also letting its polar opposite exist within the same time and space, the triumph of the Seven Nation Army chant at Glasgow is met with an equally unique moment from the crowd, as it’s at the first show where a member of the audience throws a shoe which hits Jack square in the face during the encore of “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself.” Rather than let it ruin the evening, Jack responds by immediately launching into a defiant Astro and Jack the Ripper, with the audience roaring in approval in the background.  Having completely erased any impact from the incident, he then closes the show by restarting “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself,” not missing a beat, with the audience again right there and singing along to every word.

After that first show, in an almost too-good-to-be-true coincidence, the second performance in Glasgow just happened to take place on Burns Night, the annual celebration of the birth of Scottish poet Robert Burns, the author of Auld Lang Syne. One of the most recognized songs in the world, the poem that Burns wrote was originally put to a different melody, but as it spread it eventually evolved into the song now known the world over, which gets sung every year on New Year’s Eve.  As eloquent as the lyrics to that song are, many only get as far as the opening line of “Should auld acquaintance be forgot” before losing track of the words that follow, while the melody has a more permanent place in our collective consciousness, instantly recognizable from the very first notes.  At some point, after a song reaches that level of popularity, it becomes a kind of folk music, where the people singing it, or chanting it, get to decide what the song means, or how it should be sung.  Once that happens, it doesn’t really matter what the words are.  Sound familiar?

1/24/04 Glasgow – Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre – LISTEN NOW

Kicking off the only two-night stand of the tour to take place entirely on a weekend, the band return to Scotland with an epic show. As much as this one is all about the band’s excellent performance, it’s perhaps the audience who steal the show.  You can hear them in full force from the very beginning, singing along to lines in “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground,” “Hotel Yorba,” and even singing along to the melodies of “In the Cold, Cold Night and I Think I Smell a Rat.”  No surprise that they turn “Seven Nation Army” into a definitive moment where the sound of the crowd chanting is nearly as powerful as the sound of the band playing the song. The setlist also features multiple rarities, with “Stop Breaking Down” getting the first airing since the Livid Festival performance at Melbourne, complete with the adlib of Stones “In My Passway” by Robert Johnson. This night also gets an even more rare outing of “You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket,” followed by the final live performance of “Hypnotize.”  Reflecting the intimacy and connection so present at this show, “We’re Going to Be Friends” gets dedicated to the red headed women and soccer players with long black hair in the crowd, which elicits an audible laugh from Meg.  While a shoe-throwing attendee could have otherwise spoiled such a special show by hitting Jack in the face during the encore of “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself,” the band respond defiantly with a fantastic “Astro” and “Jack the Ripper,” before calmly returning to the song to close the show, again to full audience singalong.  

1/25/04 Glasgow – Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre – LISTEN NOW

Night 2, and the band put the jukebox on shuffle. The fantastic run starting with “When I Hear My Name” goes all the way through a cover of Dylan’s “Outlaw Blues,” with the line “I might look like Jacky White, but I feel like Jesse James”, into “Cannon,” which includes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Man,” “St James Infirmary,” “I Think I Smell a Rat,” and “Take a Whiff On Me” before returning to the “Cannon” solo and closing out with a single riff from “Ball and Biscuit.”  The rarities continue at this show, as an excellent “Suzy Lee” gets followed by a funny moment where Jack briefly forgets the name of the song after it, “This one is called….uh, what is this called?…Truth Doesn’t Make a Noise!” “The Hardest Button to Button” gets the always welcome “brain that felt like peanut butter” line, and just as the audience singalongs were the highlight of the first night, here it’s the singalong that Jack and Meg do together on “This Protector,” making it perhaps the very best version of this understated song that you’re likely to hear. As the band plow through the rest of the excellent set, “Offend In Every Way” jump-cuts into “You’re Pretty Good Looking,” just as the beginning of “Union Forever” cuts to “Baby Blue,” which in turn gives way to “Ball and Biscuit” and “Screwdriver” to close the main set.  Before “Seven Nation Army,” Jack declares the Scottish crowd the best in the world, with the song again featuring the now mandatory chanting from the crowd, before the band close the show with “Boll Weevil.”  Next stop, Blackpool Lights.  

Stream these three new shows and all other exclusive archive releases from Third Man Records with a 7-day free trial. Explore The White Stripes catalog and start your free trial here.

The White Stripes: Chicago, IL, New Years Eve, 2003

An exclusive archive from The White Stripes is now available for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring a New Years Eve performances from Chicago, IL. From long time White Stripes fan Mike on this month’s ‘Third Man Thursday’ releases:

New Years Eve 2003: A Finale With Friends

To close out the 20th anniversary of the 2003 Elephant tour, it’s only fitting to go out big, just as the band did. For the final Third Man Thursday of 2023, here is the White Stripes New Year’s Eve concert from 2003, back at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago.  A special performance to finish the year, featuring a little help from some friends, and artwork from longtime Stripes-collaborator Rob Jones.

12/31/03 Chicago: Aragon Ballroom – LISTEN NOW

What to say about 2003?  Over 100 days of shows played across 5 continents. In clubs, theaters, sports arenas. At festivals, on the radio, on TV, at a primary school.  A music video showing a girl with a broken wrist. A music video showing a boy with a broken finger.  A record that turned from Gold into Platinum (and went double platinum earlier this year).  Planes, trains, and automobiles. Interviews, interviews, interviews.  And still, no two performances or setlists ever alike.

Here is the final show of the year, with the White Stripes bringing the Elephant back into the room at the Aragon. With parts of this show broadcast live on CNN, the return to Chicago was a party on a grand stage to close out a grand year, shared with a global audience of millions.

For this special occasion, the band had brought along two groups of friends. The first opening act on this night was the band Blanche, who’s members shared a history with Jack going all the way back to Goober & The Peas and Two Star Tabernacle. A cover of Blanche’s song “Who’s to Say” was featured on the single for “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself”, and they would be joining the band on the upcoming January tour of the UK.

The second openers on the bill were the Flaming Lips, a group who also had a connection with the band. While the Stripes had spent 2003 unleashing Elephant on the world, the Flaming Lips were also on the road, helping Yoshimi battle those Pink Robots.  It would be at a show in Detroit the year before, where the Lips were playing as both opener and backing band for Beck (just as they would at this show for the Stripes), where Jack would present frontman Wayne Coyne with a gift that would be memorialized in the song “Thank You Jack White (For The Fiber-Optic Jesus That You Gave Me)”.  After Jack had injured his finger in the car accident in July, the first concert that the Stripes would have to cancel would be the T In the Park festival in Scotland. It would be the Flaming Lips who would fill in for the band, taking to the stage dressed in red and white and opening with a reworked cover of “Seven Nation Army”, featuring lyrics that included bits from the Butthole Surfers’ “Moving to Florida”, which you can just make out on the performance of the song here, with Jack sharing the verses with Coyne, who can be heard singing through a megaphone, complete with air-raid siren.

The New Year’s Eve show is a wonderful capture of lightning in the bottle for both the White Stripes and the Flaming Lips. While the Stripes and their minimalism would be on their way to the UK to immortalize the power of simplicity on film, the Lips would soon be bound for Coachella, with animal costumes, floodlights, fake blood, and a space bubble in tow.

From the very start of the Stripes performance on this New Year’s Eve, there’s an audible sense of joy, with the band no doubt refreshed after having had a month off since the end of the November leg.  Perhaps not surprising that the set here leans heavily on pre-Elephant tracks, including a few callbacks to the last time they played the Aragon on 7/2, by opening with “When I Hear My Name” in place of “Black Math”, and featuring adlibs of “Aluminum” and “Cool Drink of Water Blues.” The setlist is a perfect summary to close the year, featuring a little bit from every era of the band’s history, with a song like “The Big Three Killed My Baby” brought current with an adlib commenting on the ever-present political climate of the time.

The version of “We’re Going To Be Friends” is simply beautiful, with the Flaming Lips providing gentle backup on guitar and bass, while frontman Coyne can be seen in the footage from the show giving Jack a hug mid-song, smearing fake blood on his shirt.  And of course that Stripes/Lips Seven Nation Army mashup, kicking off the New Year as a shower of red, white, and black balloons were dropped from the ceiling onto the crowd.  This show is a fitting celebration to close out 2003, complete with party favors, as attendees were given a small viewfinder which showed a message of “Happy New Year 2004 from the White Stripes”.  

While it was the end of an incredible year, the Elephant tour wasn’t quite at the finish line just yet, with more shows to come in January.  As Jack would say after “Seven Nation Army”, now officially in 2004, “Well, we can’t stop now, right?”

For a limited time, save on a year of live music streaming! Enjoy unlimited access to all the exclusive Third Man Thursday archives, Jack White shows, and more from your favorite artists.

Weekly Live Stash Vol. LXXXIV, November 17, 2023

Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio, nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music, and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from Goose, The White Stripes, Billy Strings and more. Paid nugs subscribers may be eligible for 4-months of SiriusXM Streaming, see your account page to take advantage of this offer. Offer Details apply. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.

  1. Thatch
    Goose
    11/7/23 Amsterdam, NLD
  2. Love Sick
    The White Stripes
    10/27/03 Osaka, Japan
  3. Pickin’ Up The Pieces
    Billy Strings
    11/6/23 Amsterdam, NLD
  4. Missin’ Me
    The String Cheese Incident
    11/4/23 Austin, TX
  5. All In
    Spafford
    11/14/23 Mills River, NC
  6. Like a Buddha
    Railroad Earth
    10/8/23 Eureka Springs, AR

The White Stripes: Milwaukee, Indianapolis and Columbus, 2003

Two exclusive archives from The White Stripes are now available for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring performances from Milwaukee, Indianapolis and Columbus. From long time White Stripes fan Mike on this month’s ‘Third Man Thursday’ releases:

November 2003 – Looking for a Home

Back in the US for a fourth round, the November leg would begin the journey to close out the year, and close out the tour. Kicking off with a trio of shows in Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and Columbus – they start the run by playing in the three states that border Michigan, as if deliberately making a point of playing everywhere but home. Detroit would have to wait until the end of the month, and even then they had already signed up for a New Year’s Eve show in Chicago. As they would look back on this leg, Meg would recall “We were like a moth right next to the flame. It’s like, do any more and you go down. We were so tired. One final lap, and then have a rest.”

Like the three shows in Scandinavia that kicked off the European tour six months earlier, these first shows of the November run are a complementary snapshot in time. Where those shows in May saw the band experimenting with the new songs and pushing the setlists and arrangements outward, by November the new songs were now long established in the set, and yet somehow the band were still able to keep the performances continuously evolving. Notice that each of the shows here opens with the same three songs (Black Math > Dead Leaves > I Think I Smell a Rat), and even with those otherwise familiar ingredients to work with, each performance is still very much a unique serving – even at this late stage in the tour. From the debut of Bob Dylan’s Outlaw Blues at Milwaukee, to an impromptu version of Sister Do You Know My Name? played as an intro to Death Letter at Indianapolis, to Jack singing into the guitar pickup on his Airline during Hello Operator at Columbus. Still finding ways to pull new rabbits out of old hats, night after night.

11/10/03 Milwaukee: Eagles Ballroom – LISTEN

Having had to reschedule this concert twice (once earlier in the year due to scheduling conflicts, and again after Jack’s car accident), they finally make it to Milwaukee. Coming so soon after the October tour of NZ/AU/JP wrapped, this show nicely consolidates many of the highlights from that run, all within the same show. Why Can’t You Be Nicer To Me? gets included within I’m Finding It Harder to be a Gentleman, and Loretta Lynn’s God Makes No Mistakes is performed here within Screwdriver, both having been debuted at Adelaide 10/15. Girl You Have No Faith In Medicine features the adlib from the Beatles’ Boys at the end – the first since Hiroshima 10/26, and the Hardest Button to Button gets the Melbourne 10/14 “brain that felt like Pea-nut Butter” line. Milwaukee also features the debut of Bob Dylan’s Outlaw Blues, which follows after a blistering version of Ball and Biscuit. Out of the handful of times they would do this cover, the version here just might be the best one. “I might look like Robert Ford, but I feel like Jesse-Fucking-James!”

Other highlights include a funny play on words during Cannon, “I saw Guns! Tanks!…..Tanks, You’re Welcome!” The Death Letter/Little Bird combo is also excellent here, and during the intro you can just make out a tease of the slide riff from Sister Do You Know My Name? The next night in Indianapolis he would perform an impromptu version of the song in this spot. Later in the song, Jack ramps up the ending of Little Bird with a fantastic adlib of “Can’t you hear me knocking Meg?!” while he taps his slide on the fretboard. Listen for the shoutout to the local crowd before Boll Weevil, a throwback to their performances in town from earlier years: “Are we at the Cactus Club? My memory’s not so good. Hi Milwaukee, I forgot to say hello to you!” And later in the song, an acknowledgement of how the band were feeling by this point in the tour, so close to home, and yet still so far away: “See it’s funny, because you all have a home, I guess. But my sister and I, no such luck. Y’all here, you got Milwaukee, Green Bay, Oconomowoc. We used to have Detroit, but that was a long, long, long time ago.”

11/11/03 Indianapolis: Egyptian Room at the Murat – LISTEN

Where Milwaukee the night before saw the band seamlessly cutting in the latest additions from the October run, the crowd at Indianapolis got treated to a longer and more experimental set. There’s an abundance of one-off and unique performances here. Shine on Harvest Moon gets an airing in Cannon, having last been performed at Los Angeles on 9/22, and Mr Cellophane makes a return to the set – the second to last performance. This Protector gets performed complete with the off-mic spoken word intro, and Folk Singer by Brendan Benson gets the first airing since the debut in Madrid on 5/25. An epic 7 minute Ball and Biscuit features Jack singing lyrics from Howlin Wolf’s Smokestack Lightning, the only known time he actually sings along to the riff, which had been debuted back at Stockholm on 5/13. Seven Nation Army gets a one-off adlib of “make the sweat drip…drip”. I Fought Piranhas here is one of the longest known versions, hitting the 6 minute mark and ending in a wail of whammy and feedback.

The biggest surprise of the night is the impromptu version of Sister Do You Know My Name?, which gets played during the intro to Death Letter. Having been hinted at the night before, and one of only two performances on the Elephant tour, the version here is unique, as the Kay guitar is in a different tuning than the one the song is normally played in. As a result, Jack ends up doing a bit of on-the-fly improvising with the vocal melody and the guitar parts. A completely inspired and unexpected surprise. Later in Death Letter he does the quick version of the Motherless Children lines, like he did at Melbourne 10/14. For a bit of comedy, listen for the sound of a local radio station being picked up by Jack’s amp after Seven Nation Army and again after The Hardest Button to Button. Continuing the theme from the night before, there is yet another reference to not knowing where “home” is during Boll Weevil, with Jack making a joke to the Indiana audience saying “We love being here in Houston Texas!”. This show also features a unique milestone, as it’s the first one where Jack closes the show by stepping on the Big Muff pedal and letting the guitar feedback ring out as the band exits the stage.

11/12/03 Columbus: PromoWest Pavilion – LISTEN

Similar to the previous night in Indianapolis, where the show ended with Jack thanking the city of Houston, he takes the joke a step further in Columbus, referring to different cities throughout the show (Boise, Des Moines, Akron). Given the band’s long history of playing in Ohio, it’s safe to say that they’re clearly glad to be back and are in good spirits, as this is an excellent performance, with energy to spare. Many of the songs get an extra dose of enthusiasm, particularly in the vocals. While they were surely looking forward to the end of the tour, and pushing back against the fatigue of touring, there’s certainly no sign of it here. Listen to the version of I Think I Smell a Rat, where Jack throws in the line “Video Games! Tattoos! Body Piercings! I think I smell a rat!” – a comment on some of the distractions of the day. He’d insert this line again at New York on 11/18. During Let’s Shake Hands he adds in the line “Well you can do what you wanna do Meg….we’ve been playing this song for 6 years! So say my name!” As if in amazement of how long they had been together and how long they had been on tour by this point.

Or listen to the must hear version of Hello Operator, where Jack sings one of the verses through the guitar pickup in his Airline. Or Little Bird, where he sings the “When I get you home” lines while toggling the pickup selector on the Kay to cut the sound in and out, mimic’ing the stutter effect with his voice. This show also features a rare outing of Now Mary, the second of only two performances on the Elephant tour (the other was at Sydney 10/10), which in turn segues into a welcome appearance of Sugar Never Tasted So Good. After the encores of Little Room, the Joss Stone version of Fell In Love With a Girl, Apple Blossom, and I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself, where they’ve kept the energy they had at the beginning of the show all the way through to the end, they break the pattern of ending the show with Boll Weevil and instead close with Seven Nation Army, with the intro “Okay Akron, you’ve been very nice to us. My sister is very pleased, and I’m very happy too!”. Like the night before, the show closes with a wail feedback ringing out as the band leave the stage, the now official “ending” to each show that would follow on the tour from here.

Stream these three new shows, and all other exclusive archive releases from Third Man Records with a 7-day free trial. Explore The White Stripes catalog and start your free trial here.

The White Stripes: Wellington and Osaka, 2003

Two exclusive archives from The White Stripes are now available for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring performances from Wellington, New Zealand and Osaka, Japan. From long time White Stripes fan Mike on this month’s ‘Third Man Thursday’ releases:

After the success of the September US tour, the band were off to New Zealand, Australia, and Japan, repeating the journey of the “Three Island Tour” from 2000. With the excellent Melbourne, Australia show released back in March as part of Third Man Thursday, here are the closing shows from the other two “islands” to complete the trio.

Wellington may be the most relaxed show of the entire Elephant tour. There is a pacing and vibe to this show that sits in a comfortable sweet spot, with the band no doubt buzzing off of the performances the day before in Auckland, where they had performed at the Freemans Bay Primary School to a crowd of schoolchildren, and then delivered an excellent performance later that evening at the St James Theatre. There is just something to the Wellington show that makes it feel both unrushed, while yet still delivering all the right amount of energy.  You can hear it in the set, which has a great flow from start to finish. From the “Everybody well in Wellington?” greeting to the audience, to the relaxed version of “Look Me Over Closely”, to a flawless “Truth Doesn’t Make a Noise”, and Jack’s introduction to “We’re Going to Be Friends”, complete with the mid-song aside “This is the important part…we don’t notice any time pass” – an almost Freudian acknowledgement of the pace of this show.  Or how about the version of “You’re Pretty Good Looking”, which gets a nearly half-minute pause midway through for no apparent reason, before kicking back in with the “swing” version to finish the song off.  Instead of going into “Hello Operator” per the normal pairing, they instead throw in “When I Hear My Name”, featuring a cappella lines from “The Object of My Affection”, the first known appearance since the Bowery show in 2002, and the last known time they’d perform it.  Also unique at this show is that Jack stays on guitar for the last verses of “I’m Finding It Harder to be a Gentlemen”, instead of returning to the keyboards.  By the next performance of the song in Adelaide on 10/15, he’ll take advantage of that section to include an updated version of “Why Can’t You Be Nicer to Me.”  “Girl,You Have No Faith in Medicine” also gets a change from the typical delivery, starting with a low-key intro and gradually ramping up to the familiar frenzy. The encores further highlight the sense of balance at this show, with “Astro” and “Jack the Ripper” getting followed by another appearance of the “Joss Stone” slow version of “Fell In Love With A Girl” (that Stone album had only just been released a few weeks earlier).  The soloing in “Ball and Biscuit” similarly features excellent slow blues lines right alongside the guitar hero style runs with the whammy.  Closing out with “I’m going to Wellington” in “Seven Nation Army” and the line “We’re gonna be o-kay when this song is through…that is my promise to you!” in “Boll Weevil”, it’s a satisfying close to a laid-back show.    

LISTEN: The White Stripes live at Town Hall in Wellington, New Zealand

On the other side of the equator, Osaka is a confident power set to close out the Japan run.  While New Zealand and Australia largely went off without a hitch, Japan was not without a few challenges – likely owing to the near-constant jumping across timezones as they moved from city to city, and country to country.  Fast forward a bit and you’ll find this exchange from an interview the band gave on MuchMusic TV in Toronto on 11/13/03, looking back on this leg of the tour:

Jack: We just played Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and it was…I think we had 21 airplane rides in like 2 ½ weeks or something like that. That starts to get, you know…you start to get really messed up. Because you don’t know what time it is, you don’t know when you’re supposed to be asleep and when you’re supposed to be awake, and you’re just expected to play every night, you know? It’s very difficult to keep that up, you know?

Having kicked off the Japan tour with the pair of shows in Tokyo on 10/21 and 10/22, it would be the Nagoya show on 10/23 where fatigue would catch up with the band, with that show getting cut-short due to illness.  The band would quickly get back on their feet at Fukuoka 10/25 and Hiroshima 10/26, with the show in Osaka on 10/27 being the confident return-to-form to close out the tour.

For a band that never used a setlist, there’s an almost clinical precision to the setlist here. A proper kicking out of the jams, one after another.  From the rush of “Let’s Shake Hands” into “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”, to that transition at the end of “I Think I Smell a Rat”, with the final chord hanging there for a second before slingshotting into “Black Math.” The set is loaded with tight run-throughs. “Love Sick”, “Death Letter” – “Grinning In Your Face”, “The Hardest Button to Button”, “We’re Going to Be Friends”, “Ball And Biscuit”. An almost “greatest hits” set for the Elephant tour right down to the closer of “Seven Nation Army” (“Boll Weevil” was skipped for the Japan tour, but would be played on the return visit in 2006).

LISTEN: The White Stripes live at Namba Hatch in Osaka, Japan

As if this wasn’t enough, what really puts Osaka into must-hear territory is that it features an ultra-rare performance of “Little Acorns”, the second of only two known performances.  The Adelaide show in Australia on 10/15 would be the first, but that show was sadly not captured by RADAR.  So, for “Little Acorns”, Osaka is it.  And while it’s a brief version, much like the debut of lines from “There’s No Home For You Here” at Los Angeles the previous month, there’s no doubt of the power the song had in a live setting.  A fitting surprise for the last night on the tour, like a bonus track on those Japan-only releases from back in the day.

While they were officially back to health by the time of the Osaka show, the relentless touring schedule would continue, almost comically so, with the band going from Japan to Brazil for a one-off show on 10/31, and then back to the US for the Voodoo Festival in New Orleans on 11/2, and then off to Scotland for the MTV Europe Awards on 11/6, before returning to the US to kickoff the next leg of the tour in Milwaukee on 11/10.  

Stream these two new shows, and all other exclusive archive releases from Third Man Records with a 7-day free trial. Explore The White Stripes catalog and start your free trial here.

The White Stripes Live at The Greek Theatre, September 13, 2003

An exclusive archive from The White Stripes are now available for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring a performance from 2003 at The Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA. From The White Stripes’ archivist Ben Blackwell on this month’s ‘Third Man Thursday’ release:

The return from the finger injury. While a shorter set overall (about 1 hour and 13 minutes from start to finish), there is excellent enthusiasm here, and even a few debuts as well. This is the first show to feature the “That’s what I’m gonna do” adlib in “Seven Nation Army”, the first to feature a quote from the song Evil by Howlin Wolf, and the first to feature a cover of “Man” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who would be joining the tour a few days later in Seattle on 9/16.  This show also features an acapella performance of the song “I Got Stripes” by Johnny Cash, who had passed away the day before, as the lead-in to “Death Letter.”  While it had only been 9 weeks since Jack’s finger was broken, the only real sign of the injury here is the abrupt aborting of “Offend In Every Way”, which itself isn’t all that unusual, as they were known to jump from one song to another all the time. While there’s no reason given for the pivot away from the song here, a week later in Las Vegas on 9/20 Jack would again abort the song, revealing the inability to play the D minor chord as the reason.  This would also explain why “Jolene” (which also relies on D minor) would be absent for most of the September tour, not returning to the set until San Diego on 9/25.  As the setlists would show, the September leg would be a progressive return to the stage, with each performance getting additional songs from the earlier Elephant live set added back in.

LISTEN: The White Stripes at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA, 9/13/2003

Having been off the road for 2 months, if there is any rustiness here it’s mainly heard in some of the missed lyrics throughout the set, as opposed to anything instrumental or anything in the vocals. Jack hits all the right notes here, just misses a lyric here and there and adlibs through it where needed. The pivot away from “Offend In Every Way” results in a similarly abbreviated quote from “Isis”, which stops after a few rushed/hybrid verses, including the rarely performed verse 7 (“Pyramids embedded in ice”).  In the encores, Jack starts “Truth Doesn’t Make a Noise” on the keyboards, similar to the versions from Pomona/Chicago/Detroit Jun-Aug 2002, where he starts on the Rhodes and goes to the guitar midway through. Here, he does a verse, but then goes silent while he continues on the keys before finding his way back into the next verse.  But while the finger may have been injured and some of the lyrics missed, his vocals and the energy are in great form here. A highlight at this show is the run starting with “Cannon”, which goes through the usual “John the Revelator” interlude and ends on the familiar last line of “Evil!” before going into an unheard riff where he debuts lines from the song Evil by Howlin Wolf.  So, the word “Evil!” sets up the song “Evil.” Nice. This then segues into “Cool Drink Of Water Blues” (another Howlin’ Wolf quote) and transitions seamlessly into an excellent “Ball and Biscuit”, which features soloing played as effortlessly as any version you’d have heard pre-injury.  A few songs later and that “Offend”/”Isis” attempt gets more than made up for by Jack launching into “Let’s Shake Hands”, which includes the debut of the YYYs “Man” and a unique version of “Pick a Bale of Cotton”, with Jack doing what can be described as a low-end “burp” sound into the mic as a counterpoint on the lines “Me and *burp* pick a bale of cotton”, before some nice whammy soloing to close out the song and the main set.  The encores kick off with “Seven Nation Army”, featuring the first appearance of the “that’s what I’m gonna do” adlib. While the band had been off the road, the popularity of the song had of course continued to rise, with the Berkeley crowd heard going nuts in the background the moment the first note is played. While “Little Room”/”Union Forever” are a familiar duo here – “Little Room” gets a heavy delivery here and “Union” gets a clean intro – a flip-flop of the way the songs were usually paired up, with “Little Room” typically serving as the quieter set up for a bombastic entrance into “Union.” And “Truth Doesn’t Make a Noise” is a nice addition to the set, even with the missed lyrics, being the first performance since 2002. All tied up with a sincere shoutout to San Francisco as “the first city to like us” setting up “Boll Weevil” to close out the show.

A great start to the September leg, likely played short to make sure they didn’t overdo it on the first night back.  Even though the finger may have still been injured, the vocals and energy were in great shape, and the band would be quick to ramp back up.  

Hotel Yorba, I Think I Smell a Rat, Screwdriver, Love Sick, I Fought Piranhas, Astro, Jack the Ripper, I’m Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman, St James Infirmary, Lord Send Me An Angel, and Hello Operator would all return to the set for the next performance on 9/15 in Vancouver. 

Little Bird, Let’s Build a Home, Goin’ Back to Memphis, Fell In Love With a Girl, Lafayette Blues, and Sugar Never Tasted So Good would be added at Seattle 9/16.  

Wasting My Time, Look Me Over Closely, Take A Whiff On Me and Small Faces would signal the “return to normal” at Portland 9/17, along with Motherless Children at Denver 9/19, setting up the Las Vegas and Los Angeles shows.  

The return of Jolene and Same Boy You’ve Always Known at San Diego on 9/25 would complete the recovery, and with a closeout show in Mesa on 9/26, they’d be off to New Zealand and Australia, where the setlists would be taken a few steps further.

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The White Stripes: Chicago and St. Paul, July 2003

Two exclusive archives from The White Stripes are now available for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring performances from Chicago, IL and St. Paul, MN. From long time White Stripes fan Mike on this month’s ‘Third Man Thursday’ releases:

In The Bigger Rooms…


Coming off of the June run, the trio of shows in Chicago and St Paul were a true test. Big shows in big rooms. July was all about exhibition, closing out the tour by pushing into the next level up.

As the last shows on this leg of the tour, these performances represent a kind of final exams. Two nights in the 4500 seat Aragon, and the tour-closer in the 5000 seat Roy Wilkins. While they had played the big room at Masonic back in April, the Aragon and Wilkins would be played without any home field advantage. While it may seem silly to be so focused on the capacity of a venue as a metric, the reality was that these were among the biggest venues that the band played on the tour. Three bears style, clubs like the Ritz and Stubbs were now too small, arenas like Sun Dome too big, and a venue like Memorial Hall just right. In order to graduate, the band needed to demonstrate that they could go bigger.

LISTEN: The White Stripes at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, IL

Like it or not, the band’s ability to dazzle at a large scale was the albatross that some critics desperately wanted to put around their necks. While the band would prove the doubters wrong, it didn’t change the fact that it was the narrative being forced on them. Jack himself was aware of the numbers at play at these shows, as you can hear him on the recording from 7/2 note the “4500 people” in the audience. And while the press around the St Paul show marveled at the band’s ability to jump from the tiny 400 capacity First Avenue the year before to the 5000 seat Roy Wilkins, the Chicago shows came with a narrative in the other direction. It seems that the issue that some reviewers had was not that the cavernous Aragon Ballroom was too big, but that it wasn’t small enough, wishing that the band would not “stray from the garage”. With comparisons to the performances the band had given at the Empty Bottle and the Metro in years past, the Aragon shows had been set up to be a Kobayashi Maru, an unwinnable game. And yet, what was missed in those concerns was that the Aragon shows were a natural step in the trajectory that the band had already long been on. In 2000 they played the Empty Bottle three times. In 2001, they did it again, including a two night stand at the tiny bar. In 2002, they went bigger, with two nights at the larger Metro. If any city was right for the band to expand and push their limit, Chicago was it. And true to the path they were on, both nights at the Aragon had completely sold out. Like the resistance to Dylan going electric, the critics had wanted the band to be something that they no longer were – unknowns playing to small crowds. With all the focus on the venue, the critics were asking the wrong question. Instead of asking about the room, they should’ve been asking about the crowd – and whether they would be willing to make the jump. As these shows would prove, the band had no problem bringing the fans with them. You never have to leave the garage if you can turn a ballroom into one. The bigger room meant that there was a home for everybody at the shows now: old fans, new fans, and the critics – whether they liked the size of the room or not.

As for the performances, for many the only exposure to the Elephant-era live show is the legendary performance from July 2. What may be surprising is just how much of an outlier that show is. No other show on the tour is quite like it, or goes that far down that particular kind of rabbit hole. One of the only shows on the tour not to feature “Black Math”, the performance forgoes many of the familiar numbers in favor of songs like “Aluminum”, “Black Jack Davey”, “Candy Cane Children”, the debut of “The Air Near My Fingers”, and the impromptu jam that would become “Little Cream Soda.” While there is still plenty of the familiar catalog present, the overall vibe of the show is one of experimentation and even a good bit of confrontation, starting and ending with ominous wails of feedback. You’ve heard the gig. Equal parts mania, exhaustion, and inspiration. A masterstroke that this gig was released as the primary reference for the tour. While it may be one of the most rewarding and unique performances the band ever gave, it can also be one of the most challenging for a newcomer to live Stripes.

When placing the shows from 7/1 and 7/3 alongside it, the run becomes a wonderful Neapolitan trio. Unlike the run in Scandinavia, where the shows build one after the other, the shows here are each a very different flavor. Like discovering an unknown prequel and sequel to your favorite movie. While the second night in Chicago is a stream-of-conscious show played without regard for any “normal” type of setlist, night 1 is the full display of the band’s live show. If 7/2 is the band completely off-script, 7/1 is the faithful readthrough, confidently nailing every line. You get virtually every one of the “standard” songs that had been in rotation on the tour – with the lone exceptions of “I Want to Be the Boy” and “Ball and Biscuit.” Otherwise it’s all in there, from the “Black Math” opener, the “Take Whiff On Me” quote in “I Think I Smell a Rat”, “Jolene”, “Motherless Children” in “Death Letter”, the honesty of “Same Boy” and “We’re Going to Be Friends”, the “You’re Pretty Good Looking”/”Hello Operator” duo, “Screwdriver” to close the main set, and “Boll Weevil” to close the encores.

The show also rises to the setting, delivering moments of pure vaudeville. In addition to “Mr Cellophane” they also throw in a one-time addition of “We Both Reached For The Gun” from Chicago as a quick quote inside of “Screwdriver.” “Wasting My Time” also gets a unique variation, in a way that sets up the performance of “Black Jack Davey” the following night. These moments balance against the bombast on display. Listen to “The Hardest Button To Button” here, or that yell that pivots “Death Letter” into “Motherless Children”, as if bringing a stampede to a standstill. This show is a proper opening night blitz. The encore at night 1 also features a rare performance of “Hand Springs”, a deep cut shout out to those fans who no doubt had been with them at the Bottle. Even though the critics may have wished that these Chicago performances had instead taken place at a smaller venue, the first night in Chicago proves why that was never an option, delivering what is probably the most refined show of the entire tour up until this point, enthusiastic and complete.



If Chicago Night 1 was the Dr Jekyll to Night 2’s Mr Hyde, Night 3 in St Paul is the combination of the two, a set that goes back and forth between both personalities, delivering both the familiar and the one-of-a-kind moments. The Roy Wilkins Auditorium was even larger than the Aragon, and the band makes good on the narrative of being the small band that goes big, opening appropriately with “Little Room”. The surprises are there from the get-go, as “Dead Leaves” is quickly abandoned due to an out of tune guitar and Jack performs the song entirely on the keyboards for the first time since the early performance at the Magic Bag on July 30 1999. Prior to that recording circulating, no one really knew that he could do the song like that, as if revealing a super-power he hadn’t yet flexed onstage before. He goes to the organ again to open “The Union Forever”, even adding in a quote from “Razzle Dazzle.” The quiet numbers here also hit exactly as they should. Where the song “Do” had been a challenge to perform at 7/2, here it’s the right song for the room – getting almost as much applause as “Seven Nation Army” before it. The show also features the first known cover of the Beatles’ “Boys” as an impromptu outro to “Let’s Shake Hands” and a masterful medley of “Fell In Love With A Girl”, “Cannon”, and “Hypnotize”, all built around a cover of “Dirt” by the Stooges – a not-so-subtle acknowledgement of how they were likely feeling by this point in the tour. Where Chicago night 1 closed with “Boll Weevil” and night 2 closed with “Let’s Build A Home” and “Goin’ Back to Memphis”, the encores at St Paul close with both – finishing as the longest set the band performed on this leg of the tour. A fantastic exhibition in the big room to close out this leg of the tour.

LISTEN: The White Stripes at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium in St. Paul, MN, 7/3/2003

As a wonderful form of conclusion for the tour, the ticket stub for the St Paul show came with the words “NO MOSHING OR BODYSURFING” printed on it. Like OSHA standards for a concert, as if to say be careful, there will be a lot of people at this one – with big rooms come big responsibilities. Again a validation of exactly where the band were. Like the foreshadowing use of the strobe light in the club in Raleigh at the start of this leg of the tour, the St Paul ticket stub acts a bit like a diploma at the end of it. They had officially graduated from the clubs, and had the paperwork to prove it. Welcome to the bigger rooms.

Stream these two new shows, and all other exclusive archive releases from Third Man Records with a 7-day free trial. Explore The White Stripes catalog and start your free trial here.

The White Stripes: June 2003 Raleigh to Kansas City

Two exclusive archives from The White Stripes are now available for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring performances from Raleigh, NC and Kansas City, KS. From long time White Stripes fan Mike on this month’s ‘Third Man Thursday’ releases:

Starting in the last week of spring and finishing in the first week of summer, these two shows capture the beginning and end of a 13 day trek, from North Carolina to Kansas. Two sets of 6 performances in a row, with a day off in the middle on June 22, and 2 shows played on the same day at Stubbs in Austin on June 25. 13 shows in 13 days.

LISTEN: The White Stripes at The Ritz in Raleigh, NC, 6/16/2003

Kicking off in Raleigh on June 16, with a return to a club they had visited 4 years earlier as a then-unknown opening act for Pavement, and concluding in Kansas City on June 28 at the Memorial Hall – the closest they would get to actually “going to Wichita” on the Elephant tour – the performances here are a true before & after. Two snapshots in time: one looking back, reflecting on their early years on the road. The other looking forward…to the bigger venues and the many dates still to come on the tour.

In as much as April was about exposure and May was about exploration, you could say that June was all about endurance.

The venues on this leg ranged from clubs, to theaters, auditoriums, and even a sports arena. While the band had no problem delivering excellent performances at large events such as Glastonbury, Roskilde, or Coachella (in fact, they had started June with a festival date in Italy to close out the European leg, and then performed at back-to-back festival appearances in California before making their way to Raleigh), finding the appropriate place to play in each city would prove to be a challenge. Not every city had a good mid-size venue. In Tampa, for instance, they had no other option but to play in the 10,000 seat Sun Dome, which had to be curtained off in order to reduce the size of the arena, with the band performing to about the same size crowd as they would at the club shows.

While Raleigh had obvious sentimental significance for the band, just like the show in Houston where they gave a shout out to Blind Willie Johnson, or Oklahoma City “land of Woody Guthrie” – in Kansas City it would be the audience that provided the acknowledgment, roaring in approval during the “Wichita” line in “Seven Nation Army”, taking Jack by surprise. Like the triumphant return to Raleigh, the Wichita reaction at Kansas City is also a true “it could only have happened here” moment on the tour.

The recordings of these two performances perfectly capture not just the sound of the band, but also the venues that they were playing in. The Ritz being the smaller venue, with the crowd upfront and present, and Memorial Hall, with the band playing in a bigger room, and the crowd further in the background. Where you can hear the reverb on Jack’s amp so clearly on the recording at Raleigh, at Kansas City it’s the sound of the room that reverberates.

The Raleigh performance is a club show through and through, a relaxed and warm nod to the band’s history. The tour-closing shows in North Carolina from 2000 and 2001 in Asheville are among the best from those years. This time around, North Carolina got the tour opener, with the band coming back to conquer on familiar ground in Raleigh. While the name of the venue had recently changed from the Ritz to the Disco Rodeo, it was still very much the same place, with Jack playfully reminding the audience about how the last time they played there in 1999 “nobody gave a damn”, before joking “Now who’s laughing?” As if further embodying that feeling of a return to an earlier time, Jack’s Fender Twin has the reverb set high at this show – like he did in the early years (listen to the sound of the springs audibly slapping back during the pulsing intro to “The Hardest Button to Button”), giving an almost throwback feel to the sound of this performance. Like a 2003 version of a 1999 club show, back when it was just one amp on stage doing all the heavy lifting. The setlist here is also about as unpredictable as many of those early shows were – stretching out in any direction they felt like going, from the cheerful tribute to North Carolina in “Lord, Send Me An Angel” early in the set, to a flawless “I Fought Piranhas” packing as much tightly-wound energy as can fit into 3 minutes, or the disarming intimacy of Bob Dylan’s “Girl From The North Country”, the first known performance since the early years – featured as a brief quote at the end of “Five String Serenade.” Even the “Take a Whiff on Me” interlude gets inserted into “The Big Three Killed My Baby”, a colliding of a debut-era song with an Elephant-era adlib. And yet, even with all of this nostalgia – this show is one of the first to feature a strobe light effect for “Seven Nation Army”. A small acknowledgement of where the band were by this point, with the bigger stage productions and larger venues to come. While they would go on to play at a few more clubs on the tour, none would hold as much significance as this one.

LISTEN: The White Stripes at Memorial Hall in Kansas City, KS, 6/28/2003

13 days later, and the relaxed and open-ended feeling so present at Raleigh has been replaced with an almost brutal directness at Kansas City. They’ve just been through a long run of shows, and oh boy can you hear it. Like a boxer having worked their way through the circuit, with only a few matches left before the championship. Still hungry, aware of what it takes to last the necessary rounds, and more than capable of delivering the knockout. While they could focus on more personal storytelling at a comfortable pace in the smaller club setting in Raleigh, in Kansas City the bigger room required bigger gestures, with a focus on keeping the energy going from end-to-end. Look no further than the 7+ minute rendition of “I Think I Smell a Rat”, featuring a medley that leads off with a cover of Lead Belly’s “Pick a Bale of Cotton”, the vocals a jarring display delivered at the top of the lungs – as if demanding that the audience can hear him all the way in the back. If Raleigh had a lightness to it, Kansas City brings the heavy. The near-shredded vocals during the breakdown in “Black Math”, or the doomy intro to “Cannon”, played almost as if mimicking Black Sabbath’s “Electric Funeral.” There’s an edge to many of the songs here, and plenty of surprises, including the rare performance of “Candy Cane Children” – the only live rendition captured by the Stripes to feature that excellent dark outro riff, or the final performance of “Don’t Blame Me” which feels less like a ballad from a hopeless romantic and more like a cautionary tale. Or how about that extended ending added to “Hello Operator”, turning one of their most buoyant songs into glorious sludge. And of course that one-of-a-kind performance of “Seven Nation Army”, where the Kansas crowd go ballistic the moment the Wichita line finally arrives. With so much effortless riffing and raw power on display, it’s no surprise that there is very little time spent on the keyboards here. This ain’t that kind of show. By the time they get to “Boll Weevil”, having successfully delivered a near non-stop performance, it’s a straightforward “Alright folks, I suppose it’s that time of the night…”. A reminder that each show on the tour, just like a carnival, eventually has to pack up and head to the next town. A fitting close to the run.

After this 13 day journey, the band would have a day off and head to St. Louis, where that show would be marked by near constant equipment failures. After such a long haul with no issues, St. Louis ends up being a bit like returning from a cross-country drive, and then the car breaks down the very next time you take it down the street. And even with all of those challenges, just like running through so many back to back dates in so many different settings, they still managed to make that St. Louis show a memorable performance. Endurance.

As it would turn out, the trip from North Carolina to Kansas would include the final shows that the White Stripes would ever perform in those states – as well as Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma. Louisiana would get a final visit at the Voodoo Festival in New Orleans in November, and the band would return to Georgia one last time for the Midtown Music festival in Atlanta, early on in the Get Behind Me Satan tour. They would also return to Kansas City on that tour, but it would be on the Missouri side of town – at the much larger Starlight Theatre, of course.

Stream these three new shows, and all other exclusive archive releases from Third Man Records with a 7-day free trial. Explore The White Stripes catalog and start your free trial here.

The White Stripes: Scandinavia 2003

Three exclusive archives from The White Stripes are now available for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring performances from Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen during a three-night run in May of 2003. From The White Stripes’ archivist Ben Blackwell on this month’s ‘Third Man Thursday’ releases:

Having survived the all-eyes-on-them April tour in support of the release of Elephant, the band kicked off the European leg in May with a three day journey through Scandinavia.


It didn’t get much attention at the time, but the Elephant touring cycle was actually supposed to start in March, with a secret performance at SXSW. With that show canceled after Meg broke her arm, and the album’s release pulled-in by two weeks due to online leaks, April became a tightly packed end-to-end event. Pretty much every one of the performances that month had an additional occasion to go along with it, like an insanely-curated showcase.  From the release of the album on April 1st and the 5-star review in Rolling Stone, to the tour kickoff in Wolverhampton on the day Elephant went to number 1 in the UK, to the debut of the video for “Seven Nation Army” – where you can catch a glimpse of the cast on Meg’s left arm, to the radio broadcast from London – the first time that many fans would get to hear the new songs live, and then back stateside for the hometown shows in Detroit, to performing with Loretta Lynn in New York, the afternoon club show and evening radio broadcast from Boston, an unprecedented 4 night residency on Late Night with Conan O’Brien performing to an audience of millions each night, to the iconic photoshoot with famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, to the one-shot-on-goal at Coachella back when the festival was a single weekend – as openers for the reunion of Iggy and the Stooges no less, and then finishing off with back-to-back nights in San Francisco “the first city to like us” where a fan would make good on that history by throwing an elephant squeeze toy onstage that Jack would keep on his keyboards throughout the rest of the Elephant tour (which you can still see in Under Blackpool Lights), and then a final stop coming back down to earth with a low-key club show in San Diego on April 30th.  Just as soon as the month would come to a close, the band would head right back to England for a one-off festival slot on May 4th, Elephant would be certified Gold on May 9th, and they would be off to Scandinavia to start the trek across Europe.


To get a sense of just how unique these shows are, look no further than the way the run starts, with Jack taking to the stage at the appropriately-named Cirkus in Stockholm with lines from Arthur Brown’s “Fire”: “I am the god of hellfire, and I bring you fire!”.  Hell yes.  


These shows feel a lot like a residency, except instead of being 3 nights at the same venue, it’s 3 days across 3 countries. They are breaking in new ideas, debuting songs, and stretching the sets longer – culminating with the show in Copenhagen, the longest they had ever done by that point.  This is the sound of the band in the Elephant workshop. 


While these performances each have their own character, there is also a common thread across the three nights via the introduction of the song “Mr Cellophane” from the musical Chicago.  A small addition to an already varied set, serving as a vaudeville counterpoint to the sinister blues of “Take a Whiff on Me” introduced in April.  While a natural fit, there is also a bit of symbolism in the choice.  A song about a man who feels invisible, performed by a band that was quite literally everywhere at the time.  The performance of “Mr Cellophane” at these shows would get a different rendition each night, fitting with the feel of each show. The opening night in Stockholm gets the live debut, performed as a single verse and chorus sung with the keyboards. The second night in Oslo gets an additional verse, with the vocals getting a looser and more energetic delivery, and the third night in Copenhagen gets an unique acapella version – like the setlist that night, stretched out for maximum effect.
There is an embarrassment of riches here. In addition to the debut of “Mr Cellophane” and the first known performance of Little Richard’s “Ooh! My Soul” since the Jack White and The Bricks show in 1999, Stockholm is a powerhouse run-through of the live set, complete with a shout out to local heroes The Hives – via a quote of their song “Main Offender” during “Astro” and “Jack the Ripper.”  Oslo gets the live debut of “Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine” alongside brutal versions of “Death Letter” and “One More Cup of Coffee” both nearly collapsing in a fury of out of tune glory.  Copenhagen brings the full “Razzle Dazzle” via a stunning 36 song set, consolidating the ideas from the previous two nights and serving as a benchmark for the shows to come.  


There’s perhaps no better advertisement for these shows than the poster that originally accompanied them, featuring a circus monkey bashing away at the band’s instruments.  Equal parts playful innocence and unpredictable mayhem, nicely foreshadowing the performances themselves. For as much as one could gush over the setlists and the one-of-a-kind moments here, the shows are made all that much better when you realize how loose they are. A skipped lyric here, a false start there, a guitar out of tune.  And just like the monkey on that poster, look at how much fun they’re having.  


Later in the year, the band would sit down for an interview with David Dye on NPR’s World Café. Seek out the full interview, and you’ll be treated to an in-studio performance of “Mr Cellophane.” You’ll also hear this quote from Jack, a guiding principle for the ages: “It’s like when you don’t wanna do something perfect, it’s like trying to be an anti-perfectionist. It’s really perfect by not trying to be perfect.”

Stockholm – May 13, 2003
From the unique opener of lines from Arthur Brown’s “Fire” to the “Stockyard, Stockhouse, Stockholm!” introduction to the audience, and the debut of “Mr Cellophane” from the musical Chicago, the enthusiasm here is off the charts.  Listen to the off-mic yells from Jack when the guitar cuts out during the intro to “Seven Nation Army” before coming back in with a snarl, or the shout of “Alright Meg!” to kick off “Let’s Shake Hands,” which features “Clarabella” and a brief quote from Little Richard’s “Lucille” before segueing into “Ooh My Soul”, the only known performance by the Stripes, and the first since the Jack White and the Bricks shows in 1999.  After a mic-drop in “John The Revelator” something falls onto the keyboards, holding down a note that carries over into “Ball and Biscuit”, where Jack uses the error to his advantage by tuning his Airline to pitch. Even with that technical issue, the version of “Biscuit” here is still unique, as it’s the first to feature the riff from Howling Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning”, which would also get thrown in the next night and would feature periodically throughout the rest of the band’s live career.  There is also the playful  “Did anybody make any mistakes today?” exchange, a nod back to shows in the early days when Jack would engage in similar dialogue with the audience.  Look out for the insertion of lyrics from the Hives “Main Offender” during “Astro” and “Jack the Ripper” and the post-show shoutout to both the Hives and Sahara Hotnights.  An excellent start to the tour. 

Oslo – May 14, 2003
With a warm “Hello Norway! My name is Jack, and this is my big sister Meg on the drums, from Southwest Detroit, and we think you’re pretty good looking!” the surprises continue.  This show gets the first live performance of “Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine”, played as if it had been in the set for years.  “Mr Cellophane” again gets an airing, with a second verse added.  “Ball and Biscuit” again gets the quote from “Smokestack Lightning”, with a third person switch-up in the lyrics with “Jack White’s strength is ten fold!”  “Hotel Yorba” also gets a unique reference to a “dirty old road in Grand Rapids Michigan!”.  Meg had a cold during this run of shows, and just makes it to the last lines of “In the Cold Cold Night” before giving a polite apology “you’ll have to forgive my cold!”  Adding to just how intimate this gig is, this may be the only show to end the main set with “We’re Going to Be Friends”, complete with Jack asking the crowd “Are we friends yet Norway?” before joking “How about that Meg? You thought you didn’t have any friends!”.  Matching this warmth is a good bit of chaos. Listen to “Death Letter” going full self-destruct into a storm of out of tune feedback, Jack going full scream battling the Airline at the end of “One More Cup of Coffee” –  making it one of the best live renditions of the song, and “Cannon” getting an insertion of “St. James Infirmary” with a fantastic extended guitar solo section before going straight into “Boll Weevil” to close out yet another excellent show.


Copenhagen – May 15, 2003
A special show to close out the run.  Even the intro music is unique here, as the band take the stage to the sound of “The Wells Fargo Wagon” from The Music Man being played over the house speakers: “Oh, the Wells Fargo Wagon is a ‘comin, now I don’t know how I could wait to see. It could be something for someone who is no relation, but it could be something special just for me…”  This is the longest show that the band had ever done up until this point.  We get yet another variation on “Mr Cellophane”, this time as a unique acapella rendition between “You’re Pretty Good Looking” and “Hello Operator.” Instead of “Death Letter”, there is the combination of “Stop Breaking Down” into “Little Bird.” “Look Me Over Closely” gets a one-time quote of “Razzle Dazzle” from Chicago as an opener, and this show features both “Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine” and “Hypnotize” – one of the few to feature both songs in the same show, alongside covers of “Clarabella”, “Small Faces”, and an absolutely stunning rendition of “Five String Serenade” by Arthur Lee as a bookend to an excellent “Offend In Every Way.” There are songs spanning all 4 albums here, played one after another after another.  By the time they get to “Boll Weevil”, Jack gives a laugh, acknowledging “This is the last verse of the last song of the night!”  Unlike the previous two nights, there isn’t much between song banter here. Not much else to say here that the music doesn’t already make crystal clear.  A truly inspired performance that sets the bar for the rest of the Elephant tour.  An absolute must hear.

Stream these three new shows, and all other exclusive archive releases from Third Man Records with a 7-day free trial. Explore The White Stripes catalog and start your free trial here.

The White Stripes at the Palace in Melbourne, Australia 10/14/2003

LISTEN NOW: The White Stripes at the Palace in Melbourne, Australia 10/14/2003

Exclusive to nugs.net, this month’s Third Man Thursday release brings us The White Stripes’ October 14, 2003 performance from Melbourne. From long-time Stripes enthusiast and expert Mike:

Coming on the heels of last month’s premiere of Seven Nation Army at Wolverhampton, this show in Melbourne is the return to the city where the riff was first played, during that infamous soundcheck at the Corner Hotel. This time around, the band are upgraded from a Hotel to a Palace.

This show takes place during the underrated New Zealand-Australia leg of the Elephant tour. The natural point of comparison for this show in Melbourne is the Sydney performance at the Enmore Theatre a few days earlier on 10/10. Whereas that show captured the band out to wow the audience, the energy is at times frantic, with Jack going song to song almost recklessly. If Sydney is the getaway car barreling down the alleyway, crashing through the trashcans, Melbourne is the other side of that coin: the same car, the same driver, but why not take the long way home?

Like Sydney, this show in Melbourne is also a marathon set, clocking in at around 1hr 40min. But whereas Sydney hits most of the familiar numbers from the Elephant live repertoire, with no time to stretch out on any one song too long, this set at Melbourne is less about the inclusion of this song or that song, and more about how the songs themselves get performed just a little bit different. Throughout the set, there are many unique change-ups and extra doses of improvisation here, making for an excellent and relaxed performance

Many of the surprises here are subtle. Listen as Jack moves to the keyboards for the first verse of Dead Leaves, or how I Want To Be the Boy To Warm Your Mother’s Heart gets an extended outro in place of the final verse. Other surprises are more obvious, such as Death Letter getting stretched out to over 10 minutes, including a unique rapid-fire delivery of Motherless Children and adlibs at the end of the song proclaiming “Your mother was a mother now!”, before wrapping with a quote from Little Bird. Cannon gets a unique whispered vocal delivery for the opening verses, before switching out the John The Revelator section with improvised lines inviting the audience to “come into my home” for “something you ain’t never had before”. The fourth wall gets broken again during Look Me Over Closely, with the line “every girl in this room, I’m singing this one to you” before ending the song with a saturated burst on the guitar. The Hardest Button to Button also gets an extended intro and an adlib about a brain that “felt like Pea-nut butter!”. The same songs already played many times on the tour, done just a little different here.

And then there’s the truly unique moments, which includes the where-the-hell-did-that-come-from performance of Caravan by Duke Ellington. Broken Bricks also gets the first known performance since 2002, with yet more of those whispered vocals and a “slow version” treatment, before setting up an excellent Small Faces and yet another one-time-only cover, this time Love Me by Elvis Presley – complete with adlibbed Buddy Holly style vocals. So yeah, not your typical Elephant show. Other nuggets include Jack playing some lines from the Peter Gunn Theme during Jack the Ripper, the audience singing the verses during I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself, and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it quote from Wichita Lineman during Seven Nation Army, before closing out with Boll Weevil to bring this one home.

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Setlist

  1. Black Math
  2. Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
  3. I Think I Smell A Rat / Take A Whiff On Me
  4. Jolene
  5. Hotel Yorba
  6. In The Cold, Cold Night
  7. Wasting My Time
  8. St. James Infirmary
  9. I Want To Be The Boy To Warm Your Mother’s Heart
  10. Death Letter
  11. Cannon
  12. Look Me Over Closely
  13. The Hardest Button to Button
  14. Caravan
  15. Fell In Love With a Girl
  16. You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl)
  17. Hello Operator
  18. Lord, Send Me An Angel
  19. Broken Bricks
  20. Small Faces
  21. Love Me
  22. We’re Going To Be Friends
  23. Apple Blossom
  24. Astro
  25. Jack the Ripper
  26. Ball And Biscuit

Encore

  1. Seven Nation Army
  2. I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself

Weekly Live Stash Vol. XLIX, February 24, 2023

Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio, nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music, and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from Billy Strings, Twiddle, Bruce Springsteen, Widespread Panic, and more. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.

  1. Meet Me at the Creek
    Billy Strings
    2/17/23 Atlantic City, NJ
  2. 15 Steps
    Billy Strings
    2/17/23 Atlantic City, NJ
  3. Meet Me at the Creek
    Billy Strings
    2/17/23 Atlantic City, NJ
  4. Apples
    Twiddle
    2/17/23 Flagstaff, AZ
  5. Cadillac Ranch
    Bruce Springsteen
    2/16/23 Austin, TX
  6. Candyman
    Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros (w/ Mikaela Davis)
    2/10/23 Port Chester, NY
  7. Jesus Just Left Chicago
    Jack White
    12/8/22 Chicago, IL
  8. Ball And Biscuit
    Jack White
    12/8/22 Chicago, IL
  9. Seven Nation Army
    The White Stripes
    4/7/03 Wolverhampton, UK
  10. Interior People
    Eggy
    1/28/23 Frisco, CO
  11. Driving Song
    Widespread Panic
    2/11/23 Durham, NC
  12. Tall Boy
    Widespread Panic
    2/11/23 Durham, NC
  13. Driving Song
    Widespread Panic
    2/11/23 Durham, NC

The White Stripes at Civic Hall in Wolverhampton, UK 4/7/2003

LISTEN NOW: The White Stripes at Civic Hall in Wolverhampton, UK 4/7/2003

Exclusive to nugs.net, this month’s Third Man Thursday release brings us The White Stripes April 7, 2003 performance from Wolverhampton. From archivist Ben Blackwell:

Twenty years ago, give or take a couple of weeks, the White Stripes purchased a Random Access Digital Audio Recorder. RADAR for short. It cost $8000. When recently asked about the impetus behind the move, long-time Stripes manager Ian Montone said…

“Many artists I respected – musically and from a business standpoint – always recorded their shows. Frank Zappa specifically. We wanted to implement something similar given we already owned our studio master recordings. So it made sense to record and own everything the band (and Jack) did moving forward. Live shows included. Because every show was different. There was no setlist. Everything was special. We wanted to capture that for posterity’s sake – hence the RADAR.”

In terms of the archival footprint of the White Stripes, the importance of this decision cannot be overstated. Previously, sanctioned live recordings were largely limited to whenever I was there AND the club had a cassette deck wired to the soundboard. With the end result being a static two-channel board recording subject to the whims and preferences of a house sound engineer’s real-time mixing, it left a lot to be desired.

For example…my obligations as a mediocre Detroit college journalism student with a scholarship meant that for the entirety of 2002 (a year the Stripes played nearly 100 shows) I was present for a mere seven performances, two of which were purely coincidental as my band the Dirtbombs were slotted as the warm-up act.

Thus, the number of proprietary live recordings from 2002 in the archive? Shit, barely any. I count one, give or take one.

But come 2003 the White Stripes would have the raw masters of their on-stage inputs digitally preserved. This gave the band the ability, after-the-fact, to have whomever they desired to properly and precisely mix every live show they performed, regardless of whether or not I was there to slide the sound guy a tape that night. This was $8000 well-spent.

Thank god for RADAR.

The April 7th, 2003 gig in Wolverhampton was the first show the White Stripes recorded with this digital system. More importantly, this show is the kick-off to the Elephant world tour, approximately 14 months of whirlwind travel, Whirlwind Heat, sold out shows, not sold out ethics, finger breakings, Grammy takings, global gallivanting and “oh oh oh oh oh ohhhh oh” chanting.

The performance, shockingly, has not been heard in ANY form since the amps powered down that evening two decades ago. I guess no one in Wolverhampton was doing surreptitious audience recordings at the time. Photos of the gig? I found none. Concert poster? I’ve never seen one. Please, prove me wrong. I welcome it. Contemporaneous accounts of the evening? A dumb brief write-up from the NME, one slightly more informative from the Independent and that’s it.

As Jack humbly tells the crowd that Elephant hit number 1 on the charts this day…the gig…you’d think there’d be more proof that it really existed. Things here feel big. They seem important. A chance whiff of greatness. The weight of it all is palpable on the recording.

So the wait to hear this show is most definitely worth it. The first-ever public outing of a clutch of songs off Elephant is the definition of historic.

The fact that Meg switches to her snare hits late on the first verse of “Seven Nation Army”? I LOVE it. Perhaps the only time ever she didn’t 100% nail that song. Jack’s nerves evident on “In The Cold, Cold Night”? Endearing. The premature ending of “The Hardest Button To Button”? A combo of “wow” and “holy shit” said in wonderment.

These are by no means the best versions of ANY of these songs. But they are precious for what they presage…the eventual enshrinement of said tunes in the bombastic canon of a band well on its way to their peak form.

Beyond that…the first time ever covering Public Nuisance’s “Small Faces.” What a moment! And the extra special treat of what we’ve titled here “Talking Pillow By My Side Blues.” An improvised song done in the “talking blues” style pioneered by Chris Bouchillon, appropriated by Woody Guthrie and yet further popularized by Bob Dylan, “Pillow” is one of the more realized extemporaneous songs to emerge from a White Stripes live show of any era. Which is fortunate to have been captured here, as it never shows up again, anywhere, ever.

Thank god for RADAR.

Though I must stress, the method was not perfect. As The White Stripes front of house engineer Matthew Kettle would say “Despite being the best thing we could get at the time, the RADAR was occasionally unreliable, and as we weren’t carrying a sound desk everywhere at that point, not every show was recorded successfully.”

With that in mind, there’s a handful of songs that failed to be recorded in Wolverhampton. “Dead Leaves” and “Black Math” and “I Think I Smell A Rat” seem to be songs from the top of the set lost to the ether on this night. Which isn’t too bad in the grand scheme of things, considering there’s an entire WEEK where Kettle’s best efforts were thwarted by the finicky digital interface and thus, we’re left only with our imagination and collective recollection trying to discern what happened at half dozen shows in June of 2003.

Otherwise the RADAR material was immediately put to use…the accompanying audio to “Black Math” live vid from the Masonic Temple, the Berlin soundcheck b-side recording of “St. Ides of March” and the promo-only triple LP Live In Las Vegas are all proper public-facing mobilizations of these recordings. Third Man didn’t even attempt to crack these suckers open for another ten years until prepping the Nine Miles From The White City live LP included in Vault Package 16 from 2013.

At that point, upon handing mix engineer Vance Powell the necessary drives, he audibly winced.

“What?” I asked him, perplexed and, let’s face it, ignorant.

“These drives have moving parts. Good luck getting anything off of them,” Vance replied.

To which point I said “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“No, I’m not,” he said. “These things are ten years old.”

I learned a very crucial lesson at that moment…that any digital format is only reliable for a couple years before it’s usurped by something more streamlined and less cumbersome – OR – it just stops working. The need to constantly update and re-archive digital files is downright maddening. There is no long-term, futureproof, failsafe digital carrier. Ever. It would be another five years before all drives were properly transferred to a relatively stable LTO format. And even then, not without RADAR drive “G” requiring a $1761.60 “clean room” recovery to save seven shows that would have otherwise just disappeared.

It sounds comical now, but wearing my “businessman” hat I broke out the calculator to amortize the proposal…deciding with an almost embarrassingly “duh” quickness that $251 per show was a reasonable enough fee to reclaim those ephemeral moments. Because there’s spirit in all these recordings. The unforeseen nostalgia of memories yet to be uncovered. Instances where the power of an assemblage of strangers in a room together can divine a psychically shared experience. Time that mattered to someone. Moments could now last forever,

One of those moments, cast off with barely any consideration, a seconds-long thought formulated into action in a more simple manner, appeared when Jack White signed the venue guest book after the show.

“Thanks Civic, you made my day and I shan’t forget it.”

And because of a wise $8000 investment made nearly a generation ago, you won’t either.

Thank god for RADAR.

Start listening today with a free trial.

Setlist

  1. Jolene
  2. Seven Nation Army
  3. In The Cold, Cold Night
  4. You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl)
  5. Hello Operator
  6. Good To Me
  7. The Hardest Button to Button
  8. Hotel Yorba
  9. Small Faces
  10. Talkin’ Pillow By My Side Blues
  11. We’re Going To Be Friends
  12. Apple Blossom
  13. Ball And Biscuit
  14. I Want To Be The Boy To Warm Your Mother’s Heart
  15. Death Letter / Motherless Children Have A Hard Time

Encore

  1. Let’s Build A Home
  2. Goin’ Back To Memphis
  3. The Union Forever
  4. Boll Weevil

Edmonton 2007 Contains The Most Impressive Ten Song Run The White Stripes Ever Played

LISTEN NOW: Shaw Conference Center, Edmonton, AB – June 30, 2007

Exclusive to nugs.net, this month’s Third Man Thursday release brings us The White Stripes June 30, 2007 performance from Edmonton. From archivist Ben Blackwell:

Another entry from the ’07 Icky Thump tour, the middle of this set features a mind-bending run of short, quick song teases all in a row (“I Think I Smell A Rat” to “Cannon” to “Wasting My Time” to “Screwdriver”) which lands directly on top of a stellar “The Union Forever.” From there, the combo of “Cannon / John The Revelator” melts effortlessly into “Little Room” which jumpstarts immediately into a frenetic “Hotel Yorba,” all followed up with a take on “I’m Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman” that turns on a dime when Jack substitutes the lyrics to “Now Mary” while still playing the tune to “Gentlemen.” Which then morphs into a unique “The Denial Twist.” All that to say, for my money this is the most impressive ten song run I ever saw the White Stripes do.

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Setlist

Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground
Icky Thump
When I Hear My Name
I’m Slowly Turning Into You
Effect And Cause
I Think I Smell A Rat (tease)
Cannon (tease)
Wasting My Time (tease)
Screwdriver (tease)
The Union Forever
Cannon / John The Revelator
Little Room
Hotel Yorba
I’m Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman / Now Mary (medley)
The Denial Twist
Catch Hell Blues
A Martyr For My Love For You
In The Cold, Cold Night
Black Math
Passive Manipulation
We’re Going To Be Friends
You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told)

Encore
Astro
Jack The Ripper
The Big Three Killed My Baby
Little Ghost
The Same Boy You’ve Always Known
Jolene
Ball And Biscuit
Seven Nation Army
Boll Weevil

Chasing Ghosts With The White Stripes At Sloss Furnaces

LISTEN NOW: Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, AL – July 30, 2007

By Ben Blackwell

The fact that the word “penultimate” exists exclusively as an adjective for next-to-last situations feels almost egregious. I mean, did we really need an eleven letter word to describe this scenario when a three-word combination totaling ten letters does the job just perfectly?

Because let’s face it…second-to-last things are kinda just whatever. All the penumbra and history and tall tales sprout effortlessly from every last whisper about the LAST of something, the finality, the never-again crushing darkness of an abyss of nothingness for the rest of eternity. 

So for me to roll in and tell you just how good the White Stripes were in their penultimate live show…I understand the urge to call bullshit. But honestly, truthfully, with all personal bias removed from shading of opinion here…this show is phenomenal.

Visits to an Original House of Pancakes, a record store and some antique shops all replay as relatively ordinary for daytime activities. If anything, my memory of the day sticks out as being oppressively hot. With afternoon highs in the 90s, temps at Sloss Furnaces – the supposedly haunted turn-of-the-century pig iron producing blast furnace turned concert venue – would hover into the 80s well into the Stripes performance that night. Factor in the crush of 2400 bodies crammed into the rudimentary shed-like structure with unforgiving open air walls and my recall of the event is overwhelmingly punctuated by the feel, smell and general annoyance of sweat.

Add in the decrepit, rusted, tetanus-y surroundings of the rest of the campus and the knowledge that the number of workers who died there was rumored to be in the hundreds, their falling or being pushed into the red hot fires of the furnaces only to be instantly incinerated and the unshakable pall that casts on a spot even some five decades after the last flames there were extinguished…needless to say it didn’t feel like an ordinary show by any means.

Opener Dan Sartain would play in front of the biggest hometown crowd of his career and the highlight for me (playing drums for him on this leg) was his inquiry to the crowd “So…how many genuine Alabama rednecks we got here tonight?” After a strong response from the crowd, Dan replied “Well, you made my life a living hell for 26 years. Thank you.”

Just…perfect in every way.

The show kicks off with “Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground” and finds Jack taking liberties (for the better) in a song where he usually did not. The particularly gnarly first note of feedback curves into some choice guitar syncopations. As the most-frequent set opener across the band’s career, it feels odd that this would be the last time the Stripes ever started a show with “Dead Leaves” as their final gig would begin with a cover “Stop Breaking Down.”

“Icky Thump” rolls into the fray wildly. To hear the assembled crowd, without prompting, perfectly nail the patter of twelve “la’s” sung in rapid succession at the end of the second verse, all mere weeks after the song’s release…it is a great reminder as to how WIDE this record reached so quickly upon deployment. 

Leading into “When I Hear My Name” Jack, particularly chatty this evening, says “Meg and I knew we was Alabama bound!” and despite any hammy undertones, it ultimately comes off as sincere and heartfelt. Leading out from there, “Hotel Yorba” hits as particularly vivacious, Meg’s accompanying vocals both vivid and spot-on. 

Jack’s unusual beginning to “The Denial Twist” and the improvised divergent lyrics in the second verse, which seem to say “It’s the way you rock and roll!” leave the Stripes’ final performance of this song as striking. 

While the extended, elegiac intro to “Death Letter” stands strongly as a haunting slice of slide guitar, Jack’s improvised lyrics on the third verse delight. Similar to his moves earlier in “Dead Leaves”, taking a specific part of a song that, to my memory, was seldom if ever switched up, and reworking it on the spot, it all feels significant. Especially in light of the fact that the song would essentially run out of its evolutionary runway in another 24 hours. So for him to sing…

It looked like ten thousand

Women around my front porch

Didn’t know if I’d listen to ‘em

Or keep on lookin’ north

I’m just reminded of the fact that no song should ever be considered complete or finished or beyond reinterpretation. 

Acolytes of St. Francis of Assisi may be surprised to catch Jack’s in-the-moment name drop of Brother Sun, Sister Moon in the midst of an extended rant toward the end of “Do.” Though it may bear repeating that “Little Bird” and its “I wanna preach to birds” lyric is explicitly inspired by the 13th century saint, it should require no leap of faith to imagine the 1972 Franco Zeffirreli film depicting the life and times of Francis being viewed by Jack as a prepubescent altar boy. Eschewing his wealthy upbringing for a life of piety and monasticism, Francis would become patron saint of Italy, the first documented stigmatic and the creator of the first live nativity scene. If there’s a Catholic Hall of Fame, St. Francis of Assisi is definitely a first-ballot shoe-in.

Nuggets like Jack’s borderline goofy drunk introduction of Meg for “In The Cold, Cold Night” with “Miss Meg White takes center stage!” belies a truly stellar performance while brief, blink-and-you-missed-it riff inversions on both “Astro” and “Little Cream Soda” are delicious little surprises to revel in. And I’ll be damned if the organ-driven take on “I Want To Be The Boy To Warm Your Mother’s Heart” is a welcome reminder that every last live version of this song is worth listening to. It never fails disappoints, it always satisfies.

But the juiciest plum in this set is the unexpected, abrupt abandonment of “Seven Nation Army” a mere ninety seconds into the song. When Jack says “I don’t know if we should play this song in America anymore…I guess it doesn’t translate well…lost something in the translation” he says so without knowing it’d be the last time that he and Meg ever played the song together.

I remember this happening that night, but at the time I never mentioned it or thought to bring it up.

But 15 years later I had to. 

So in an email with the subject line “dumb white stripes question” I reached out to Jack for clarity on the situation. His response…

oh i think i was just joking because it had become such a soccer chant at the time and that europeans loved it “more” than americans for a minute there

and they weren’t singing any english lyrics just saying “po po po po” in Italy, so i was joking that americans didn’t understand the “foreign language” of “po po po po po po po”

That reads nicely. 

But I cannot help being reminded that in 2007 George W. Bush was still in office and folks were still wildly pissed about his mere existence AND the ongoing overseas US military boondoggles. That year would see a total of 904 American armed forces casualties in Iraq alone, the single highest yearly total in the entirety of said occupation.

So in Alabama, I dunno…a bunch of self-identifying, sweat-soaked rednecks chanting along…it had just the faintest twinge of jingoistic misappropriation originating from the crowd…that basso ostinato chopping along with the sinister Dorian mode overtone. It sounds ominous. “Army” is in the title. I mean, it’s not a stretch.

At the time I remember just having half the half-second thought along these confused political lines and then literally have not thought about it since. The only contemporaneous review I can find of the show, written by Andy Smith, attributes the scuttled “Seven Nation Army” as an effort to prevent “the righteous and violent rigor of the lyrics (to) be misinterpreted as condoning an unrighteous war.”

So even if we do take Jack at his word here (which I think we should), what he says his intention was, it’s worth noting that the perceived notion in the air that night, at least to some, was of an entirely different tone. These are the shortcomings of interpretation. They will never rectify themselves.

So for Jack to switch the opening “Ball and Biscuit” lyrics to be…

Yes I am the Third Man, woman

But I am also the seventh son

…to me it reads as almost stentorian “LET ME SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU”-level of painting a picture just perfectly clear in light of the supposed confusion or misinterpretation of anything earlier in the set. With gusto.

Yet the impromptu lyrics on “300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues” are deadly…

There’s all kinds of emotions that a phone call ain’t gonna fix

You took me to the brink woman, took me everywhere I didn’t want to go but I went anyway        I never want you to question where I was headed, yes that’s where my head is nowadays

The complexity and grasp of human condition displayed in an off-the-top-of-the-head exclamation, deftly cramming all those syllables into precise meter and landing on the rhyming couplet, all while giving off the impression that the severity and pathos contained therein surely must’ve been labored over intensely for hours, days, weeks even…well, isn’t that just the way to knock us all over?

Ending with “Boll Weevil” just a short trip up I-65 from the actual boll weevil monument in Enterprise, Alabama, and some on-mic praise of Sartain is a perfect way to put that specific, local, “we know exactly where we are” stamp on the entire evening. When Jack implores the crowd to not go looking for any ghosts on the property after the show, you have half a mind to respect those wishes. 

We in the touring party would not respect those wishes. After the show, a bunch of us (including Meg, but not Jack) climbed the stairs, single-file, to a precarious perch overlooking the vast, murky stretches of the complex. From above the entirely insufficient artificial light dappled the tiniest spots and failed to make a dent in the existentially overpowering void. 

Even more dread-inducing was the spectre of a pitch-black decommissioned railroad tunnel. From entry to exit, the path we were led to couldn’t have been more than 200 yards at most. But I do not exaggerate when I say there was a complete absence of any outside illumination in this stretch. Pure, unadulterated emptiness. Cannot see your own hand in front of your face insanity. The shit that so many horror film plots are predicated on and has kept the night light business booming since the passing of the torch from candle to light bulb.

We got our hands on a single, meager flashlight, yet between the 8 of us (or so) that were on the endeavor…it felt wildy inadequate to the point of palpable, impending fear.

But there’s a funny little thing that happened within this little group of friends upon venturing into the ghastly, haunted space. We were all still buzzy from the after effects of such a stunning live concert in such unconventional environs. Simply put…we laughed our fucking asses off. Hysterically. The entire time. What took us maybe five minutes to traverse passed in seemingly five seconds. No one seemed like they could even be bothered with being scared. In the face of the uncertain, of the overwhelming chasm…one light and each other was all we needed to lead the way. To illuminate. To get us to the desired destination. 

In the end, we’re all just chasing ghosts, looking for something to get us through.

Start listening today with a free trial.

Setlist
Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
I Think I Smell a Rat
Icky Thump
When I Hear My Name
Hotel Yorba
The Denial Twist
Death Letter
Do
I’m Slowly Turning Into You
In The Cold, Cold Night
I Want To Be The Boy To Warm Your Mother’s Heart
Seven Nation Army
Astro
Jack the Ripper
Encore Gap


Encore
Little Cream Soda
A Martyr For My Love For You
One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)
300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues
We’re Going To Be Friends
I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself
Ball and Biscuit / Cool Drink of Water Blues
Boll Weevil

Third Man Thursday: Jack White Live in Paris 2012

Jack White

LISTEN NOW: L’Olympia Bruno Coquatrix, Paris, France – July 2nd, 2012

By Ben Blackwell

With his trusty all-male backing band the Buzzards, Jack White’s July 2012 solo debut in Paris is chock full of reimagined White Stripes/Raconteurs/Dead Weather favorites sprinkled amongst gems from the just-released Blunderbuss. Throw in choice covers of songs originally by Hank Williams and Dick Dale and a guest appearance by show openers First Aid Kit on “We’re Going To Be Friends” and the end result is a 23-song performance that runs the gamut from blistering to brash to breaking hearts. 

Listen now

Setlist
Black Math
Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground
Missing Pieces
Weep Themselves To Sleep
Love Interruption
Tennessee Border
Hotel Yorba
Two Against One
I Cut Like A Buffalo
Trash Tongue Talker
Blunderbuss
Hypocritical Kiss
The Same Boy You’ve Always Known
Top Yourself

Encore
Nitro
Sixteen Saltines
Cannon
Blue Blood Blues
I Guess I Should Go To Sleep
We’re Going To Be Friends
Carolina Drama
Catch Hell Blues
Seven Nation Army

The White Stripes LIVE at Crocodile Cafe, 7/11/2001

The White Stripes

LISTEN NOW: Crocodile Cafe, Seattle, WA – July 11th,2001

By Ben Blackwell

I would love to regale you with the exact feeling of the room when the White Stripes rocked the Crocodile Club in July 2001. But I can’t…because I wasn’t allowed into the show. Nevermind that I was travelling with the band and in charge of selling all their merchandise, Seattle’s draconian liquor laws prevented me from even being in the room that night because I was only 19 years old at the time. I’d prepared for the moment, slightly, by bringing my older brother’s ID with me just in case I ran into trouble, but the door guy saw through it and was “kind” (his words) to me by NOT cutting it up.

One of the guys working at the club saw this go down and realizing I had nowhere to go asked if I wanted to go for a ride and just kill time. He had to go back to his crib before the gig, I would’ve literally just been sitting in the van (which I was already getting a good dose of at 5-6 hours a day) so I tagged along.

(Years later by sheer coincidence I would be reintroduced to said guy, Frank Nieto, as he was the publicist for my band the Dirtbombs’ We Have You Surrounded album in 2008. It would be quite some time of working together before we actually figured out that we’d met years earlier)

Instead I went down the street to the Sit ‘n’ Spin, the club a few blocks away where the Stripes had played 13 months earlier AND which had no problem letting me in underage. Truthfully…I’m pretty sure I fell asleep there over a slice of pizza. I got woken up by one of the employees as they were preparing to close for the evening and the guy claimed he remembered me coming in the previous year with the White Stripes.

I walked back to the Croc and from outside was able to hear the faintest twinklings of the Stripes’ first time ever cover of Arthur Lee’s “Five String Serenade” which is probably the best part of the ripper of a gig. Yeah that extended set-opening “Let’s Shake Hands” is a top five performance no doubt, and the undeniably explosive version of “Screwdriver” is likely the hardest dive into white noise Jack and Meg ever took…only to lock into a riffy guitar groove reminiscent of Jack’s part on “Turn Your Little Light Bulb On” by the Go.

But the austere “Five String Serenade”, tackled here without any previously known rehearsals or forays, is just perfect. The Stripes were introduced to the song via Mazzy Star’s version on their 1993 album So That Tonight I Might See. Jack and Meg’s simple, plaintive rendition here is probably my favorite musical moment of the entirety of the 2001 touring. The song just speaks so much while saying so little.

Would’ve been nice if I’d actually SEEN any of it happen, but hell, at least we were able to get it recorded. That’s all that matters in the end.

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The White Stripes LIVE at The Troubadour 7/16/01

The White Stripes

LISTEN NOW: The Troubadour, Los Angeles, CA – July 16th,2001

By Ben Blackwell

Not every show is life-affirmingly beautiful. Not every show earns a rosy summation with a tidy bow wrapped around it. Not every show is a game-changer. A lot of gigs are rough, a lot of gigs involve a struggle. A lot of gigs teach us about an artist in regards to how they react to adversity.

The White Stripes at the Troubadour on July 16th, 2001 is one of those shows where the disconnect is the likely appeal.

Around summer of 2001, a phenomenon started to become apparent in regards to the White Stripes playing two shows in a row in the same town. Two-night stands, as it were. For a reason that still seems difficult to pinpoint…the crowd at the first night of a two-show run would just be…dull. Still. Disengaged.

That was the perceived state of the crowd in Los Angeles that day. Before the Stripes even hit the stage, the attendees had not gelled with either of the two opening acts. That alone raised Jack’s ire and you can hear it from the moment he steps onstage…barely any noise from the crowd and an immediate on-mic condemnation. 

From there, the always incendiary “Let’s Shake Hands” is outwardly even MORE so. Through “When I Hear My Name” and “Dead Leaves” the propulsion is strictly emanating from the attempt to inspire the crowd.

The accentented intro to “Jolene” is a nice deviation and in spite of the applause, there was still a disconnect. In what I’ve titled “Hip Improv” here, Jack and Meg chug along on a straightforward “Boll Weevil”-reminiscent groove before Jack intones “Is this hip enough for you Meg? Ah! Can you feel the hipness blow upon you Meg? Come on now! Oh so cool, so cool. Oh so cool.”

Jack’s guitar fritzing out a handful of times here doesn’t help. The aborted 13 seconds of “Astro” at the end of “Cannon” to me signify the band grasping at straws to try and breakthrough to the audience. 

The hot and cold version of “Death Letter” is further evidence of throwing it all against the wall in hopes that something sticks. Following the solid version of “I Think I Smell A Rat” Jack quizzically asks “So how’s the movie? Everybody enjoying the movie?”

The blazing, 62-second version of “Fell In Love With A Girl” feels downright spiteful, especially in foregoing the final verse and chorus of the song. “Wasting My Time” seems like the title could be a manifestation of the feelings on stage at that point. “Southern Can” is tackled at an outright breakneck pace, possibly the fastest it had ever been played. 

The protracted accents punctuating the middle of “Screwdriver” feel provocative, yet another attempt to draw something out of those assembled in the room that evening. Toward the end of the song, Jack and Meg are just busting their humps to improvise on the same page. They get there, eventually.

The intriguing part here is, in spite of all the friction, the show is a compelling listen. Thinking back today, I had NO memory of the audience that night. No remembrance of the struggle. No recall of a less-than-ideal performance. I had no significant recollection of the show other than the fact that I met Chris Pontius at the merch table while Eric Erlandson and Mike Mills were floating around the room as well. 

Listening back 20 years later, my takeaway here is that whatever the vibe in the room may be at the time, in two decades’ time hardly anyone will even remember. If you remove Jack’s banter here, it kinda just sounds like any other show from the same run. Ultimately, I don’t even know if the feeling in the room even matters once the evening is over. All we will have is the recording, if we’re lucky. Everything else is just perception, and perception is just a nine-dollar word for opinion.

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The White Stripes Live in Toledo, 2001

The White Stripes

LISTEN NOW: The Bottle Rocket, Toledo, OH – April 20th,2001

By Ben Blackwell

What’s so wrong with being sent to Toledo anyway?

The White Stripes performance at the Bottle Rocket in 2001 (their fourth and final performance in Glass City) highlights the first recorded performance of “I Think I Smell A Rat.” The Sisyphean task of appropriately tagging “first-ever performance” of a band’s songs is a lake of fire that I cautiously dip my toes into. As shows earlier that month in Athens, OH and Louisvile possibly featured the song, the fact that no one appears to have captured proof of either leaves the truth lost to the mists of history. But April 20th in Toledo is likely the slowest tempo “I Think I Smell A Rat” was ever performed by Jack and Meg. Whereas the speed would be kicked up noticeably in future performances, the measured approach here feels almost…confrontational. The take on “Dead Leaves” is similarly restrained. A rare exploration of “Death Letter” as a set opener wildly leans into an aggressively delightful distorted ending to “Little Bird” while a charmed misremembering of the lyrics in “Your Southern Can Is Mine” reels with childish warmth.

A crowd small (and audible) enough to hear their specific song requests (the obscure vinyl-only “Handsprings!” or “Hotel Yorba” which hadn’t even been released yet) would not remain that way much longer. The tongue-in-cheek “deepest sympathies” to dear friends (and local blues-punk heroes) Henry and June is followed a few songs later with a more sincere thank you shout-out to the group.  The ad-libbed “that’s me!” dropped in after “Jackson” in “Astro”, vocal gibberish resembling the phrase “Third Man” in “Screwdriver” …all these are sweet little chesnuts in this wonderful setlist from the briefest of transitional periods…mixing in, with guile, songs from the impending “White Blood Cells” with choice cuts from the band’s previous efforts. 

All that said, over twenty years later and Jack White has not played Toledo under any guise since. 

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The White Stripes Live at The Magic Stick, 2001

The White Stripes

LISTEN NOW: The Magic Stick, Detroit, MI – March 31st,2001

By Ben Blackwell

Hometown shows are, oftentimes, a mess. The guest list is a clusterfuck, some weirdo from high school you haven’t seen in a decade monopolizes your time, dinner springs upon you like an unwieldy beast that you’ve never had to tackle previously (despite making it work every day in your “regular” life in town). The benefit though is that the performances are so much more likely to be sublime. And the White Stripes at the Magic Stick (coupled with the Gold Dollar as close as they would ever have to a “home field”) on March 31st, 2001 is absolutely sublime. 

As the culmination of three Midwestern dates that weekend (Cleveland and Chicago were the Thursday/Friday shows) the run was hot on the heels of the Stripes breakout performances at South-By Southwest earlier that month. The momentum was building. The shows were only increasing in intensity.

While at this point twenty years later, the setlist is fairly in line with other Stripes’ gigs from that moment, the awkwardness of “Boll Weevil” dropping in the middle of the set will never cease to feel like a glitch in the fabric of time. So clearly is that song supposed to be a set closer. In that same mindset, “Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground” NOT kicking off a show, but tucked in the later third of the set, just smacks of a work-in-progress. The White Stripes were always game to adjust and call audibles and pull things on the fly…but once a move was so clearly perfected, well, there’s a hard time breaking out of that comfort.

A particular treat in this performance is the first and only appearance of the red-and-white Danelectro double-neck guitar. The stock clear pickguards were hand-painted red by Jack himself. With the auxiliary neck strung up in the baritone register, the axe is deployed for the “Astro/Jack the Ripper” medley followed by “The Big Three Killed My Baby”…and then never again. To hear Jack’s thoughts on it at the time, he didn’t feel like he should be doing anything that would explicitly court MORE comparisons to Led Zeppelin. 

(For those keeping tabs, that guitar would show up on stage six years later ably utilized by the local Detroit garage band Tin Knocker)

I seem to recall selling copies of the Stripes Sub Pop single at the merch table on this night. Or if we didn’t…we certainly discussed the possibility of doing so. Maybe we only sold a few? For everything I remember in the past 20 years, there’s a thousand I’ve forgotten so the fact there’s a solid VHS video of the gig on YouTube is a nice accompaniment here. Enjoy.

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The White Stripes Live at the Troubadour, 2001

The White Stripes

LISTEN NOW: The Troubadour, Los Angeles, CA – July 17th,2001

By Ben Blackwell

It’d be delusional for anyone to argue that the White Stripes gig at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on July 17th of 2001 was the primary focus for the band that day. Of far more intrigue and excitement was their mid-afternoon recording of a live performance at CBS Studios for the evening broadcast of The Late Show With Craig Kilborn. 

So once THAT had commenced and the Troubadour confirmed that they could pull up CBS on the television behind the bar…the rest of the day is just a bonus.

Listening back twenty years later, I have to say that the show feels unmoored without a slide blues interlude of “Death Letter” anchoring it all. I know the band didn’t play “Death Letter” at EVERY show, but damn, at this point in the career, it seems like it was all but a given. 

So what a delight it is for off-the-cuff covers like Tommy Johnson’s “Cool Drink of Water Blues” and Gene Vincent’s “Baby Blue” and “Farmer John” by Don and Dewey all to sit comfortably among the standards of the era like “Dead Leaves” and “Little Room” and “The Union Forever.” The accent-based “St. James Infirmary” is always a treat and anytime any song comes after “Boll Weevil” I consider that extra special.

The celebratory feeling of seeing Jack and Meg bash out “Screwdriver” and “Your Southern Can Is Mine” on Kilborn on the modest screen behind the storied downstairs bar was probably the last moment where I most truly thought “there’s no getting bigger than this” for the White Stripes. And the fact that we’re here, now, twenty years later still talking about and sharing these recollections is all the proof I need that the White Stripes are amazingly still relevant and, in many ways, still getting bigger.

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Now Streaming: The White Stripes: Live in San Francisco, 2001

The White Stripes

LISTEN NOW: Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA – July 15th, 2001

By Ben Blackwell

The West Coast run in July of 2001 was arguably the most exhilarating span of tour dates I ever had the pleasure of accompanying the White Stripes on. All the shows were sold out, each night some exciting name would show up at the gig unexpectedly, the band was shit hot on fire and all the building hype and furor was unlike anything we’d ever experienced before and arguably would never experience again. 

So the White Stripes fourth San Francisco gig in just over four months was all of those things and more. From my recollection, the previous night’s performance at Bimbo’s was just a hair-off…the supper club-style setting not completely conducive to the vibe the Stripes were putting out on that evening.

It also appeared to be an early example (the earliest?) of a weird phenomenon that befell the Stripes for the rest of their career. When doing a two-night stand in a city… the first crowd is usually…not as enthusiastic as it could be. The second night was almost always more than compensatory for this, but it was something that was consistently observed and talked about and at least attempted to “solve” for years.

This is clearly evidenced by the gig kicking off with “Little Room”, a unique placement in the set for this song which usually operated as an interstitial interlude. “Little Room” is a reaction to the subdued crowd reaction the previous evening AND a great way to kick up the energy for the start of the show.

Of particular interest to me in this set is a nice sixty-second stretch of guitar and cymbal crash hits that is wholly set apart from the songs it is sandwiched between. Similarly, structured hits would oftentimes telegraph the beginning of “Death Letter” but on this date, it exists just as a unique standalone statement. Here it’s been titled “Improvisational Accents” and it’s a nice capture of a little moment that would otherwise be forgotten to the ages.

Additionally, the interpolation of the traditional song “John The Revelator” into “Canon” found Jack lying prostrate, screaming the words through one of the pick-ups of his guitar. Listening here, the unhinged energy of the recording ably conveys the raw, intense vibe in the room on that evening, twenty years ago today.

A left-turn segue into Carl Perkins’ classic “Matchbox” is a rare cover of the 1957 Sun Records gem, which as far as I have an accounting of, is the only time the band ever slipped this nugget into a performance.

Both “You’re Pretty Good Looking” and “Fell In Love With A Girl” are incomplete here and I have to surmise that somewhere between each track’s respective end and beginning there was an encore break. The specifics though seem to be lost to time and I look back thinking about the simple, easy notes I could’ve taken at the moment to more completely illustrate stories like this. But oh well.

It all wraps up conveniently, almost recalling “Improvisational Accents”, with explosive, expressive blasts of guitar and drums at the conclusion of “Jack The Ripper.” For a run of shows that were all captivating in their own way, this Great American Music Hall show definitely still holds its own twenty years later.

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The White Stripes Live At The Bowery

The White Stripes

LISTEN NOW: The Bowery Ballroom, New York City, NY – June 17th, 2001

By Ben Blackwell

June of 2001 would find the White Stripes playing three NYC gigs in as many nights and the sense of impending greatness felt all but predetermined. The appearance of the likes of Kate Hudson, Chris Robinson, Jon Spencer, Vincent Gallo and PJ Harvey in the crowds at these gigs seemingly confirmed that.

All celeb-spotting aside…Jack and Meg were expressly feeling weighed down by the extent of their press and promotion duties. There’s a photo taken during this time in NYC where Jack is wearing an otherwise plain white t-shirt that says “New York Confuses Me.” Written (at his request) by Meg, the outwardly transparent reckoning of his mounting frustration with publicity scheduling seems almost quaint in hindsight.

The recording here from the June 17th second night at the Bowery Ballroom is a straight knockout…nary an errant move to distract from the supernova captured on tape, all inside a room that was clearly packed beyond its legal limit of 575 patrons. Twenty years to the day since its recording feels like as perfect a time as ever to share this corker with the world.

The opening five songs are unrelenting in energy and bombast…as solid a barrage of introductory rock and roll the duo would ever seem to muster. A curveball of a groove in “The Big Three Killed My Baby” unfurls at the 1:46 point and gives the song an impressive swing to it. 

Seven songs into the set and finally the band plays something off of “White Blood Cells.” I find this funny because at that point, I feel like the album was essentially “out there” and released in all but name. “White Blood Cells” was all anyone could talk about! But that delayed unveiling here is indicative of what I consider an extra-sensorily perfect pacing and song selection this evening. 

Just barely audible here is Miss Guy (Guy Furrow) from the Toilet Boys jumping on stage unannounced (and uninvited) to proffer intermittent backing vocals on “You’re Pretty Good Looking.” If It wasn’t explicitly called out here…would anyone have noticed or even known about these fleeting couple of seconds during the glory days of George W. Bush’s first term? Almost certainly not. And that is EXACTLY why I mention it.

Later I dig how “St. James Infirmary” crashes into the set with a heavily-accented guitar intro, only to morph into a subdued electric piano variation on the theme. 

The entire evening is charmingly ended with “Look Me Over Closely” and while you can’t tell here…another fan crashed the stage to dance to the song and it took all of the band’s collective strength to not make eye contact through the curiously interpretive movements.

Confused or not, the love New York City showed the White Stripes at this point was clearly returned in the form of as solid a performance from 2001 that a fan could ever hope for, not dulled or diminished at all in the intervening two decades.

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The White Stripes Live At Vera Club

The White Stripes

LISTEN NOW: Vera Club, Groningen, Netherlands – November 23rd, 2001

By Ben Blackwell

To jump-start the year-long celebration of the 20th anniversary of the White Stripes third album White Blood Cells it felt appropriate to dust off a solid recording from 2001. Recorded at the legendary club Vera in Groningen, Netherlands, the White Stripes were in full stride during this their 2nd overseas trip of the year. Opening the show with the a-side to their first single “Let’s Shake Hands” and ending two encores later with the b-side to that same single (“Look Me Over Closely”) and you’d be hard pressed to find a more representative gig from this run of shows. Seemingly shared amongst tape traders since its recording, now is as good a time as ever to make this high-quality recording officially available to the public.

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The White Stripes Under The Amazonian Lights

The White Stripes

LISTEN NOW: Teatro Amazonas Opera House, Manaus, Brazil – June 1st, 2005

By Ben Blackwell

Described by the local press as “deliciously irresponsible” and the first rock concert ever at the grand Teatro Amazonas Opera House, the performance of June 1st, 2005 was simply incomparable. Featuring a devastating cover of Bob Dylan’s “Love Sick”, two versions (one electric, one acoustic) of “The Same Boy You’ve Always Known,” three versions of “Passive Manipulation” (two sublime, one outstanding), a snippet of Howlin Wolf’s “I Asked For Water,” and ample marimba on “The Nurse,” and what you have is one of the most iconic and memorable shows the White Stripes ever played. 

Words do not ably describe the beauty of the Teatro Amazonas nor the furor riled up by the White Stripes appearance there. Not only was there fear that the amplification of the band would cause the plaster in the building to crack and possibly fall and injure attendees, but out of custom/fear/lord-knows-what the crowd remained seated until being explicitly asked to stand from the stage by Jack White himself. If that wasn’t enough, during the show Jack and Meg ventured outside the venue to play an entirely unamplified version of “We Are Going to Be Friends” for the assembled multitude of fans unable to purchase tickets and watching the performance via closed-circuit feed. The resultant melee was arguably a riot and was lovingly  and all together what it makes is one of the best true rock and roll moments of recent memory. Heck, Jack White even got married that day.

The best White Stripes show? Some folks might say that. Listen for yourself and you be the judge.

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The White Stripes At Spaceland

The White Stripes

Los Angeles, CA – December 8, 2000

By Ben Blackwell

Twenty years and nine days after it happened, I could not think of a better way to wrap up our monthslong delve into the White Stripes live performances from the year 2000 than with this previously-forgotten recording from Spaceland in Los Angeles on December 8th. 

The Stripes first played Spaceland a mere six months prior on June 22nd, having placed an early “hold” on the date at the club enabled them to negotiate a spot opening for Weezer (underplaying using the pseudonym Goat Punishment) in a gig I’m still kicking myself for not even attempting to record or film.

This, their second-ever trip to the West Coast, would be a quick jaunt right as excitement on the band was hitting a fever pitch. Reviews of this show at the time highlight a line around the block to get in Spaceland on this night.

And the show is strong…an inviting mix-up of songs the band had mastered and was flying in and out of sets by that point.  Largely devoid of between-song banter (save for Jack apologizing that his guitar broke the previous evening and that he cannot seem to make it be “friends”) and not garnering an encore, I can only posit that the band felt this show was just okay.

Stripes tour manager John Baker recalls that following the performance, the soundman wanted to charge him $200 for a CD of the show. After a bit of wrangling, John was able to obtain it gratis and this gig, recorded directly to CD, is now remastered directly from that original compact disc master. 

RIP to Spaceland, later known as the Satellite, which closed down this year and never opened back up. Completely unrelated to the White Stripes, but I have fond memories of running into Lux Interior and Poison Ivy outside there and, man, just saying that feels like it’s something I’ll be telling my grandkids like my mom tells me about seeing Pete Maravich play basketball or Elvis at Olympia or the Rationals at the Michigan State Fair

There’s still some other 2000 material stuff kicking around, some of it only just recently unearthed like this Spaceland gig, but for the time being, we’ll consider the door closed on this year and will excitedly move on to other explorations. 
For a review of this show at the time of performance, check out the write-up here…

– Ben Blackwell

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The White Stripes: Madison, 2000

The White Stripes

Madison, Wisconsin – 3/16/2000

By Ben Blackwell

The White Stripes’ first-ever performance in Madison was a windy Thursday night in a college town where it appeared most of the students had already left for spring break. The gig at O’Cayz was the band’s first after the completion of their sophomore album, the “De Stijl” cover photos taken a mere two days earlier. While still three months before its release, March 16th is, essentially, the first show of the “De Stijl” tour cycle. The band does four songs off the album (some with the intro of “from our new album that’s coming out”), all of which they’d been playing live for months already. 

While included in a still-unshared amateur video of the 3/3/00 Magic Stick gig, the version of “Death Letter” included here is the earliest available recorded live performance of what would become one of the band’s mainstay songs, performed at almost every show for the rest of their career. A little more simple than the behemoth it would later evolve into, I’m quite fond of the inauspicious take on Son House’s classic here. Like just about everything with the White Stripes…simple beginnings.

From my perch, the show was solid if not wildly divergent or raucous. The band went on second of three bands…before the headlining Mistreaters yet after Rob McCuen and the Ruins. I always felt the snare on this board mix was just too low for my liking but was eternally grateful that Kevin Meyer (of the Mistreaters) had the foresight to record the show. Bright moments like the seldom-performed “Grinnin’ In Your Face” or “Astro” interluding with a nod to “Peter Gunn” but without the “I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield” lyrics or Jack saying he invited the mayor of Madison to the show that evening…all stick out to me as welcome, unique turns in the evening.

Most of all, I’m still scratching my head at Jack introducing “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” as having been written by Buster Keaton…a spurious claim I still have no insight as to where in the hell it came from but had blindly repeated for years before realizing that Burt Bachrach and Hal David were the true authors.

Personally, I had a bitch of a ureteral stent removed earlier in the day and found out I’d gotten a full scholarship to college prior to shoving off for Madison….so all around, it was a pretty memorable day.

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The White Stripes: Live At The Magic Stick

August 18th, 2000 had The White Stripes performing at Detroit’s venerable Magic Stick. Supported by near-and-dear friends (who’d later become bandmates and collaborators), the Greenhornes and Whirlwind Heat, the recording provides a window into the Stripes’ mindset that Summer — just after their West Coast De Stijl headlining tour in June and still yet to experience the insanity of their opening slots for Sleater-Kinney in September. The only known live performance of Captain Beefheart’s “Ashtray Heart” (which they’d just recently laid to tape for eventual release in the Sub Pop Singles Club), a rare live outing for the deep cut “I’m Bound to Pack It Up,” and an electrifying set-ending “Let’s Shake Hands” leave the listener with the palpable sense that something amazing is about to happen for this band.

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–

Notes: 

Until someone provides a recording of the 7/22/00 Beachland Ballroom show (or possibly the 7/15/00 Blind Pig show) this is the earliest White Stripes live recording with Jack White using his soon-to-be indispensable Big Muff pedal. The performance of “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” featured here is the earliest extant example of the distorted, feedback-soaked style that would become the standard for this song. The implementation of the green Big Muff Pi pedal here on songs like “Apple Blossom”, “Cannon”, “When I Hear My Name” and others presents dynamic variations on these classics that previously was non-existent, marking a watershed moment in band history that has not been previously heralded. 

Whirlwind Heat played INSANELY early this evening. As in, they were already onstage by the time the Stripes arrived at the venue. The room was pretty empty at that point. So much so that Jack felt bad and arranged for the band to go on again…AFTER he and Meg had finished. You can hear him say after the completion of “Do”…speaking on-mic to Heat frontman David Swanson, “Hey Swanson, you wanna come up? Whirlwind Heat will entertain you again.” The band assembled on-stage quickly and played a brief but spirited second set. Classy all around.

The poster for this performance was personally designed by Jack White (as all early Stripes art was) and may or may not have appropriated imagery from a long-forgotten G.I. Joe graphic. 

While previously released in 2017 as part of Third Man Records’ Vault subscription series, the version featured here is newly transferred, speed-corrected, and mastered in high resolution. Upgrade!

The White Stripes: Seattle 2000

The White Stripes

Sit & Spin, Seattle, WA – 12/2/2000

By Ben Blackwell, The White Stripes’ official archivist

I must admit I have some difficulty writing about White Stripes shows that I wasn’t in the room for. My insight, my drive, my perspective is so driven by the experience. But this performance at the Sit & Spin (or is it Sit ‘n’ Spin…I’ve seen it both ways and it drives me crazy) from December 2000 is just one of those gigs that, even though I wasn’t there for, having listened to the tape for almost twenty years it’s locked into my psyche as a barn-burner. 

First off, some details…the White Stripes played two shows at the Sit & Spin on this day. There was an earlier, all-ages show to accommodate minors who’d otherwise be left out due to Seattle’s draconian liquor and live performance laws, and a later one that same night, 21 and up performance. 

Funny thing is…we don’t know which of those two shows this recording is from! If I was forced to guess, I’d imagine the later one, but I don’t have anything concrete to back that up. Just a hunch I guess.

Jack and Meg start the show with an impromptu jam. Totally made up on the spot and never to be heard from again. And honestly, for me, I think it’s bonkers good. Just the thick, muscly Jack White Airline guitar tone that was front and center in that era, power chords riffing, Meg kicking ass keeping time, lyrics a garbled mess all except for the barely discernible “Back to School” which we’ve felt was an appropriate a title as could exist for this one.

Everything else performed here feels just as sublime, rare outings for both “Slicker Drips” and “Sister, Do You Know My Name?” delight while a downright volatile run on “Hello Operator” invigorates. Jack even calls out a journalist from local weekly the Stranger in his introduction to “Truth Doesn’t Make A Noise” using the writer’s own words to introduce the tune as a “sketch of a great song.” Asking the crowd for requests and actually following through on someone’s shouting of “Astro” is unabashedly quaint here. And tying it all together with a solo rendition of “You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket” to end the set is a fitting audio denouement for what stands as one of the best live recordings of the band from this year.

If you’ve got a spare minute, it’s worth taking a look at the show preview in the Stranger that got Jack’s dander up. Still available for perusal here…thank god for digital publication! https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/pure-engorgement/Content?oid=5779

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The White Stripes Legendary Oberlin 2000 Show is Available Now

May’s Third Man Thursday is here just in time for the holiday weekend with a very special release. Oberlin 2000 was a cornerstone moment for The White Stripes and now the transformative show is available to stream in the nugs.net app. Ben Blackwell, The White Stripes’ official archivist returns this month with a recap of the show below.

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We left Cincinnati later than we should have. A visit to Shake-It Records looms large in my memory and we definitely rolled straight to the club, Dionysus. On the campus of Oberlin College and apparently run by the students there, what could be an easy target to shit on is actually pretty damn cool. I mean, hell, the college I was enrolled in that semester wasn’t booking Sleater-Kinney.

The show itself still sticks out as one of the most transformative the White Stripes EVER played. Like if there was ever so clearly a “before” and “after” moment in the history of the White Stripes live shows, I’d push the pin firmly into the date September 16th, 2000.

I don’t recall the crowds the previous two nights (Chicago and Newport, KY) necessarily “getting” the Stripes. Sure, the performances were solid, folks may have even picked up on it a little, but they were big rooms, law of averages probably explains it. But at Dionysus, man, it’s a small room, maybe 400 capacity, and with a low stage, the space felt like a basement…hot and sweaty, probably not being utilized for its intended use and primarily populated with kids who’ve got NOTHING better to do. Receptors open, transmissions receiving…just give ’em something worthwhile and the response will be wild.

Watching from the merch table at the back of the room, you could feel the band take off. The show starts off interestingly enough (can’t ever recall “Your Southern Can Is Mine” appearing so early in a set) and from around “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” onward, its as if afterburners are on full throttle, every move just of-the-moment and powerful and important and happening right in front of your face.

After futzing around for months, the fuzz feedback mainline of “Dead Leaves” is finally firmly established in the way all would come to know and love it. “Death Letter” is the raucous rail-splitter while the placid verses of “Stop Breaking Down” achieve the song a tempered duality as leveraged by the absolute savage slide of the choruses, while the uncharacteristic off mic screaming in “One More Cup of Coffee” has you realize that mind-bending covers of Son House, Robert Johnson and Bob Dylan poured out one after the other in rapid succession, a most holy trinity of White Stripes heroes if there ever was one.

From “Astro” forward…there’s so evidently a transcendent musical connection between the two entities on stage, of the same brain, taking action without thought, a Darwinian evolution that should crawl across millennia transpiring in matter of mere minutes. On a Saturday night. In Ohio.

Listening back now, nearly 20 years later, it STILL gives me goosebumps. The way “Jack the Ripper” (a song they’d goofed on a handful of times previously) melts into “Farmer John” (a song they’d NEVER previously goofed on) and straight into, hands-down, the best version of “St. James Infirmary” the band would ever perform and arguably epicenter of the aforementioned “before” and “after” designations.

To lay ears to the recording now is to hear “St. James” evolving in real time as an arrangement heretofore unknown, just exploratory explosive accents primally bashing away as entree to the song, unrecognizable from its released version, pummeling inauspiciously into the first verse, Jack’s voice rich, full, expressive, like a vase holding ten thousand orchids hand-painted by O’Keeffe. Then completely out of left-field, Jack offers the second verse double time, damn near jazzy or show tune(ful), humbly paying respect to the roots of this Cab Calloway composition. In my recollection of the evening, I feel like I was holding my breath at this moment. As if to ask, timidly, scared, fearful of failure or catastrophic collapse “can they do it?” And wildly, with abandon, Meg is RIGHT there with him, never missing a beat for the next TWO verses. Weeks, days, shit a half HOUR early this would have been impossible. The chops were not there, the telekinetic o-mind wavelength was, previously, nonexistent. And without ever telegraphing the move, out of nowhere, Jack calls verse four back to the explosive accents, half-time, reigning it in with a delightful smirk, at this point completely showing off how shit hot he and Meg are. Just making it up as they go at this point, verse five crosses back to double time, the intensity somehow amplified, improbably kicked up a few notches and culminating into one solitary, strong expositional statement, like a goddamned full-body statue of Teddy Roosevelt, arm outstretched, pointing, confidently, ready to decimate whatever gets in the way. And that, you little maniacs, is when the White Stripes first hit that apex, as if levitating, where they could do no wrong. Exquisite beauty. The reason we are all here today.

A few songs later and unexpectedly, Jack just starts making shit up off the top of his head. We’ve labeled it “Keep On Walking (improv)” here and that, again, you lucky freaks, is the first time the White Stripes ever just made something up in front of a crowd. Said approach would be responsible for some of my personal favorite moments from the band (including “Little Cream Soda” even though I wasn’t even there to witness it in person) and straight into “Screwdriver.” Jack teases, if only for a moment, the drawn out and confrontational manner of both the MC5’s “I Just Don’t Know” and the Gories “48 Hours” and yet somehow builds upon it. Goes further. Creates distance. Catches nirvana.

Leaving the stage after said culmination, you can hear the crowd just losing it. Apeshit. The opening act, who almost certainly no one there even knew of prior to this evening. EVERYONE was urging them to return for an encore, including the members of Sleater-Kinney, who were all but pushing Jack and Meg back onstage. Really, truly, this never happens, it should never happen, yet witnesses to history and this tape prove, “Let’s Build a Home” just smokes before the tape runs out in a brief moment of Basinski-esque disintegration.

I’m a bastard when it comes to hyperbole…I HATE when people blow shit out of proportion. I don’t have time for it. But I honestly do not think the White Stripes ever played a more perfect show. Yeah Manaus ’05 was bonkers, Tasmania ’06 is electrifying, Mississippi ’07 brings tears, Detroit Institute of Arts, Peel sessions…there’s no shortage of GREAT shows with this band. But ones where everything clicks. Where the band is almost a visage in hyper-speed while their surroundings are but props calcified in amber, where it feels like the incalculable number of nerve endings of every last synapse of every living being in the world were all connected onstage that night…well, damn, Oberlin it is. Because while those other shows may carry more emotion, may explore further depths of the catalog, or engaged multiples of more fans…September 16th, 2000 was the catalyst that enabled all of them to ever happen.

So for that, I’m grateful.

New From The White Stripes

The White Stripes are back with their latest release in Third Man Records’ archival series. Click here to listen to The White Stripes live in Seattle, 6/16/2000. Third Man Records’ Co-Founder Ben Blackwell’s memories from the show capture the essence of those early touring days for the band.

“Heard Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Nirvana consecutively on the radio as we entered Seattle city limits. When we got to the club the sound guy was wearing the ‘Fudge Packin’ Nirvana tee I knew I’d see here. Took me awhile to find the Space Needle, but once I did, I knew I was officially in Seattle. While band was sound checking, I explored the city and managed to walk to Sub Pop World HQ and the Croc Club.

The Stripes were okay, Slim Moon was really into it, sold a ton of merch, saw some guy with a bootleg Gories ‘Outta Here’ t-shirt. After the show, Jack got offered to record for Kill Rock Stars and Sub Pop (from Jon Ponemon himself). Leaving the club the van wouldn’t start (for about ten seconds) giving everyone a big scare.”

In terms of The White Stripes first extended tour, Seattle seemed like a gig everyone was looking forward to. Having just turned 18 years old four days prior, I was later told that if I could get into the show in Seattle (with some of the most restrictive 21-and-over bar policies in the country) that I would be able to get in ANYWHERE. No one ever even asked to look at my ID, but the next four times I would find myself at the Crocodile Club I would have to stay in the van because I wasn’t 21 yet. Anyway, the set that night was prime White Stripes 2000 magic, all the best moments from their first two albums delivered with abandon and aplomb. The crowd doesn’t even seem to mind the early abandonment of “Little Bird”, cheering their heads off at its conclusion, nor object when Jack re-inserts the tune into the set not two songs later. While Jack’s voice had been having issues this week (he even begins the show pre-apologizing for it) outside of his changing his register for “Jolene” it sounds vibrant to me. The vitality of youth! I shot video of this gig, but it’s a terrible angle with horrible light. Maybe we’ll share it for the 30th anniversary.

-Ben Blackwell

The White Stripes and German Engineering

We’re back for the first Third Man Thursday of the year and this month’s release is a unique treat. Today, Third Man Records is releasing The White Stripes’ 2001 show at Orange House in Munich, Germany. The show is one of only two known White Stripes shows to be recorded on reel-to-reel tape. Third Man Records’ Co-Founder Ben Blackwell’s write up details the unique process of mastering this show from the 1/4″ tapes:

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The White Stripes Live at Orange House 11/27/2001

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This show is a remarkable performance in stellar quality. Boy do the Germans know how to record! Of particular interest was the fact that a radio broadcast in 2001 was recorded to 1/4” tape. Just seems like…such an anachronistic move. The fact that the tapes ended up in the Third Man Vault made it all the better to transfer at an appropriately-high bitrate and then share them here. But the tapes themselves were in an incredibly odd iteration which I had never even seen before. They weren’t on reels (or flanges) and instead the tape was all held together by sheer tension around a metal center piece that looks reminiscent of a 45rpm adaptor. I am told they are called AEG hubs. Additionally, the tape was wound with the reels magnetic side OUT. Leave it to our main man Bill Skibbe to track down a German Telefunken tape machine IN DETROIT and work magic on his end. The heads on Telefunken machines face IN, so he had to surgically unspool, respool, edit out dead space AND track down a step up converter as the machine only runs on 220v electricity. I wish everyone had their very own Bill Skibbe to solve technological quandaries like this. I mean, he IS for hire at Third Man Mastering, but I digress.

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There are some songs missing here that are included in audio circulating amongst fans, in this instance clearly missed by engineers swapping out reels in real time. Rather than try to include from inferior sourced audio, we’ve chosen to just present the show exactly as it exists on these original tapes. Save for one EARLY gig (1997?) I am unaware of any other White Stripes performances that were captured on reel-to-reel tape, so this feels extra-special. Starting the set with “Death Letter” is peculiar and I love it…I can’t recall any other Stripes performance beginning with that song, but I’m sure some die-hard will take the opportunity to tell me otherwise! Coupled with rousing takes on “Love Sick” and “The Union Forever” the entire performance captivates. A prime example of the on-fire abandon Jack and Meg were brimming with in 2001.