June 12, 2002, The White Stripes in Denver

Published in the Uncategorized

 

Drove to Denver for the second time in two days to see a concert, this night to see the White Stripes. Got in 30 minutes after the doors opened and it was already difficult to find a good place to sit and wait for the show. After about 15 minutes of sitting in the darkness against the wall at the back of the floor to the left, somehow Lisa and Dean found me.

Before the show, they played the Kinks (“Preservation Society”) and then the soundtrack to the “Music Man”—Lisa explained the story to me and knew all the words so we wished I knew them too so we could act and sing all the parts together. One of the songs was about teenage rambunctiousness—“Trouble right here in River City.” Lisa and I started looking at the women around us—she liked a “hippie chick” in front of us. She was cute—a tall thin blonde, with feather earrings, a backless shirt, jeans with a whole in the back so you could see she was wearing Underoos, and a soft satin belt. I said that I thought she was beautiful but I had the feeling I could put my hand right through her.

The opening band (we couldn’t figure out what their name was … The Whirling Beats maybe) was a 3-piece from Michigan consisting of a drummer, electric bassist, and a guy who “sang” and played, I think, an oscillator. His stage moves were a mixture of David Thomas (of Pere Ubu), David Byrne during his quirkiest, and Joy Division’s having a seizure. He would squawk the “lyrics” (one song’s lyrics consisted of a repetition of “one, two, three”) and make birdnoises, and then careen around the stage. The bassist and drummer were the two musicians, but they had only one approach, which was basically to play their instruments as fast and aggressively as possible. At one point a woman behind us began yelling “You suck” between or even during songs. At one point the bassist looked up in her direction, so she was definitely audible onstage. Anyway, once the got the negative reaction they were waiting for, they began to play even louder, even faster, more aggressively—I realized they must get heckled a lot. But the Denver audience was appreciative, and even yelled the girl down who was reporting that, yes indeed, the emperor had no clothes.

Then a longish wait for the White Stripes to come onstage, and they did, briskly, Jack nodded to the audience, Meg made herself comfortable at the drums, and and Jack nodded to the audience, strapped on his guitar and yelled something at Meg and they were off. There was no songlist—Jack moved from song to song, at whim. By song number two ( ) his e string broke, which necessitated transposing the melody line to a lower key, which he accomplished, if not gracefully. By the fourth song we’d already heard a version of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and mid-way in the set we heard a bit of “Ready Teddy.” Other than that it was mostly blues, including two stellar covers—one of “Death Letter Blues” and the other a very confident reworking of Robert Johnson’s “Stop Breaking Down.”

Although when he sang to her things got very smoky, and when someone yelled out after a Meg vocal “we love you Meg” Jack said, “Well, Meg’s very fragile. If you’re gonna love her, you gotta promise to be kind to her.” There was one encore, “I Need a Home.”

Left to “Exiles on Main Street” and Lisa bought a t-shirt (red, of course) with a monkey on the front, and then we were on the streets of Denver.