Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. DVIII--The White Stripes: Effect and Cause

Friday, Wednesday...whatever....

This week's tune was the last song on the last studio album this week's band recorded before disbanding.  It was a lovely way to go....

I wrote about the White Stripes in Jukebox, Vol. CXVI (seven--seven!--years ago), and for many years it was the second least viewed music post I ever wrote (not enough cool kids reading emaycee's blog!).  God only knows why it was so low for such a killer band, but over the past couple of years its page views have leapt up to respectable (for a half-assed blog written by an amateur musicologist).  Nothing much to add as the band remains happily defunct, though I would like to note that the White Stripes were nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility (2023) and were not inducted.  To which I can only say:  What.  The.  Fuck?

"Effect and Cause" was not released as a single (should have been!), though not from a lack of trying as the band released four singles from the rather surprisingly named Icky Thump.  The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, making it the highest charting in America of their career.  However, it debuted at number one in Great Britain (so many cool kids in the U.K. need to be reading emaycee's blog!).

Fun Fact: The album got its title from an exclamation of surprise in Lancashire (a county in northern England where Jack White's second wife is from, who is said to have used the exclamation):  ecky thump.  The band claims to have changed it to icky to make it more appealing to Americans, but there were also copyright concerns as it gained fame from being used in a British TV comedy, The Goodies.

"Effect and Cause" is a testament to how much Jack and Meg White could do with so little.  Featuring nothing more than a metallic acoustic guitar and some snappy drums, Jack gives an inspired vocal performance that is the embodiment of an all-knowing smart ass.  The lyrics are comprised of clever turns of phrase and plays on cliches that stream forth like a rollicking preacher's sermon, as the protagonist commiserates over a lost lover.  Every time I hear this song it calls to mind classic rock from the seventies, and I'm sure that if it had been released in that decade it would have been a staple on every AOR FM station in America.  Alas, it wasn't, and it's left to me to educate pop music fans on its wonder--which, come to think of it, isn't a bad calling at all....

Lyric Sheet:  "Well I ain't saying I'm innocent, in fact the reverse/But if you're headed to the grave, you don't blame the hearse/You're like a little girl yellin' at her brother 'cause you lost his ball..."

Enjoy: 

Republicans = Nazis

Peace,

emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CXVI--The White Stripes: Ball and Biscuit

Today we're going to feature the best 1970's band not to actually record in the 1970's....

Another in a long line of artists that I was introduced to by my daughter (she sent me a copy of their album  White Blood Cells and after hearing "Fell in Love with a Girl" I fell in love with The White Stripes),  The White Stripes are arguably the best band rock and roll has seen in the last twenty years.  From their beginning in my adoptive home of Detroit, Michigan in 1997, Jack White and Meg White (they claimed to be siblings but were actually married from 1996-2000) literally set the pop music world on its ear.  Though they only released six albums, two of them ended up on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time."  They were critical and fan favorites, sold several million records, won six Grammy Awards, and were widely regarded as an exceptional live band.  The weight of fame eventually became too much for the very introverted Meg White, and they went their separate ways in 2011--but they had a hell of a ride for fourteen years.

Fun Fact:  The White Stripes got their name not only from Meg White's last name (Jack Gills took his wife's name when they got married), but also from the fact that Meg really liked peppermint candies.  Fascinating, my God...

Released on what is widely considered their best album, Elephant (and I wouldn't disagree) in 2003, "Ball and Biscuit" is most amazing to me for being the type of song I usually hate:  it's long, it has a lot of guitar solos, it's bluesy, and it's about drugs.  And yet I adore it--and such is the magic of The White Stripes.  Clocking in at a little over seven minutes, "Ball and Biscuit" is an amalgamation of Jack White's otherworldly guitar playing (needless to say, he's one of my all time favorite guitarists), Meg White's understated but evocative drumming, and Jack White's matter of fact yet yearning, cocksure yet vulnerable, vocals. It's the love song of a drug addled man, sung to an unimpressed drug addled woman, and in the hands of The White Stripes, it's a reminder of just how soul ravaging the blues can be.

Lyric Sheet:  "It's quite possible that I'm your third man, girl/But it's a fact that I'm the seventh son..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CVIII--Tegan and Sara: Walking with a Ghost

On this dreariest of days (both politically and weather-wise) for a bit of levity you can imagine the ghost you're walking with to be either the spectacular Obama Presidency or more depressingly, what's left of our democracy...

It's not often you get to write about a band that is lead by openly gay identical twin sisters from Canada--actually, it's never before--but that's what we have this week.  Twin sisters Tegan and Sara Quin have been making music since 1995 (when they were fifteen, for Christ's sake) and released their first studio album when they were both nineteen years old in 1999.  Over the years they have released eight studio albums, had a top three record on the Billboard 200, been nominated for a couple of Grammy's, been nominated for and won several Juno's (for those forgetful sorts, that's the Canadian equivalent of our Grammy's), and are quite the prolific touring band.  They've also somehow managed to find time for politics in both Canada and their sometime home here in the U.S., fighting for, among others, gay rights, musical education, literacy, and cancer research.  Well, done, ladies!

Released as a single in 2005 from their So Jealous LP, "Walking with a Ghost" may well be the Green Eggs and Ham of pop music, using only 24 words (though repeated often) in two minutes and thirty two seconds.  Musically, it's about as simple--it starts with some short acoustic guitar bursts with a little drumming, and leads into some short electric guitar bursts with a little drumming.  The vocals have a little (and believe me, too much would have killed it) eighties pop vibe with their reverberations and robot-like cadence,  In a word or two, it's catchy as all hell--between the guitars and the music and the vocals it's all but impossible not to sing along and shake your booty just a bit while you're doing it.

[Aside:  For those interested, The White Stripes did a cover version of "Walking with a Ghost" about a year after Tegan and Sara released the original--while I can't say I like it as much as the original, if you're an aficionado (as I am) of Jack White's guitar playing he does a nice take on the song's guitar line (can be found here)]

Rap sheet:  (Uh, kind of hard to find anything that stands out in such a brief set of lyrics) "I was walking with the ghost/I said please please don't insist..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CVII--Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: Stove by a Whale

Truth be told, other than "Stove by a Whale," I don't know jackshit  by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists.  And while this is true to a certain extent with some of the other songs featured here on FNJ  ("Bittersweet" by the Hoodoo Gurus or "Stupid" by the Long Winters), I've at least heard the album it appeared on or another song or two by the band.  Not so, with Ted Leo--I know nothing.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists began in 1999 in Washington, D.C. and are still recording and touring to this day, though the only constant in the band is Ted Leo as the Pharmacists have gone through numerous incarnations.  They've released seven LPs. several EPs, and a handful of singles, and near as I can tell have never had one that anywhere near resembled a hit record.  Through their steady touring they've developed something of a loyal following, but if I had my guess, it would be that 99.9 percent of the people in the world have no idea there is such a band and probably never will.

All of which, once again, shows the magic that is pop music:  how often does some out of nowhere band or solo artist produce a song that you've heard by a fluke occurrence ("Stove by a Whale" came with another in a long list of assists from my daughter) and come to spend the rest of your life loving though with the plethora of music released each year and the constraints of time it's virtually a miracle it ever came to your ear?

Originally, I thought "Stove by a Whale" was an environmental song, some kind of comment on the pollution in our oceans (you know, someone had been on the beach or on a boat, and had seen a whale swimming with a discarded stove floating nearby), but, as is often the case, I was nowhere near right.  Stove, which is the past tense of "to stave" actually means to smash a hole into to something, and the reference comes from Herman Melville's Moby Dick (though it seems to have many other sources as well, as whaling was once quite the profession).  All of which is zero help in explaining the meaning of the song, which some have noted has something to do with some kind of personal liberation, but means fuck all for all I know.

Released on technically the band's first album (Leo had released an album before under that moniker, but it was actually a solo effort), The Tyranny of Distance (the title taken from a Split Enz song called "Six Months in a Leaky Boat"), "Stove by a Whale" is as 70's rock influenced as anything the White Stripes have ever done.  An eight minute and two second tour de force, the song starts with a throbbing pair of guitars that sound almost like dueling foghorns (sounds crazy, but it really works).  It then weaves its way into Leo's vocals which venture from a rant into a scream with a staccato delivery (again, crazy but it works).  The vocals end at about the four minute mark and the song cascades into the foghorn guitars before turning to a more traditional guitar solo that is layered with an hypnotic bass for the final four minutes.  I could see how the song would not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you're looking for something a bit avant garde with a 70's sensibility, this is the song for you.

Liner notes:  "Not in what you hear, but feel, surreally thrust between/What accents mean and what you think they should..."  (Yeah, I have no idea, either, but it sounds really cool...)

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

The change in my pocket

Every few years a single comes along that literally makes me snap my neck--"what the fuck is that sound all about?"--and makes me remember why I devoted such a huge chunk of my life to music. Since 2000 I recall that reaction to the White Stripes' "Fell in Love with a Girl," Bright Eyes' "Lua," Outkast's "Hey Ya," and Kanye West's "Jesus Walks." This century has another: Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You." (And what joy I get from being an independent blogger who is able to actually type out the world "fuck" instead of creating a grawlin--F#$%--like the MSM must.)

Peace,
emaycee