The White Stripes
Live at the Masonic Temple, Detroit
October 1, 2005

For all the national attention given to the White Stripes as the current “Detroit band” – Jack’s liner notes for the new Stooges reissues, the ubiquitous critical references to auto factories and smokestacks – it’s rarely acknowledged that, quite frankly, Jack and Meg don’t play hometown shows all that much. Since 2002, when the indie-breakthrough gravy train really kicked into high gear, the Stripes in Detroit have been a semi-annual prospect at best; with touring commitments in countries as far-flung as Great Britain and Brazil, it’s simply impossible for them to come home and play Michigan the way they used to. So it would be an understatement to say that there’s something special about the occasional White Stripes homecoming weekend – these shows are events, in a music industry where such excitement is in short supply. And no matter how you feel about the inexplicable ticket price-hike between the current tour and their last Detroit stop, in November of 2003 (I can assure you that I’m as bitchy as the rest of you), it cannot be denied that the White Stripes know how to deliver the goods.

Consider: dressed in matching feathered conquistador’s helmets, Jack and Meg stormed Saturday night’s red, black and white jungle stage in a fury, launching into oldie-but-goodie “Let’s Shake Hands” to thunderous applause. Then they turned it up a notch. Jack, stalking the stage with his vintage Airline like a confined animal, fired up song after song only to discard them abruptly, not playing riffs so much as hammering them out of peppermint-striped molten metal. After a brutal cover of Captain Beefheart’s “Party of Special Things to Do,” he tore briefly into the opening riff of “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground,” then flung his guitar to the floor and left the stage, returning seconds later with what appeared to be a miniature replica of himself complete with wide-brimmed Zorro hat. “How you doing?” he shouted, his first words since the show had begun. The crowd roared their approval. “Me too,” he replied. The complete version of “Dead Leaves” which followed positively bristled with intensity. Doubters, take note: Jack and Meg White aren’t in Detroit to phone it in. In fact, these post-Get Behind Me Satan shows just might be their most violently transcendent yet.

That fact may come as a little unexpected. Satan, after all, is the Stripes’ least conventionally “rock” album since De Stijl, with far less reliance on the stop-start thrust of Jack and Meg’s guitar/drum interplay than many fans anticipated. But its wild sense of adventure fits seamlessly with the carnivalesque experience that is the White Stripes in concert. Part of the excitement is watching Jack dash from one mic to the other, from guitar to Rhodes to grand piano to marimba, sometimes juggling two instruments at a time; even Meg, usually the eye of the hurricane, joins in the theatrics, stepping up to an impressive pair of candy-red tympani for the chantlike “Passive Manipulation.” Moments like these serve to remind us that the White Stripes are entertainers as much as they are musicians, an integral fact with which to understand their recent output. One could even argue that the quirks of Get Behind Me Satan, the odd little asides that made some perceive the record as eccentric or unlikeable, are best contextualized within a live setting. Those cabaret affectations in “White Moon” throw you for a loop? Try this piano-pumping cover of “St. James Infirmary Blues” on for size. None too fond of “Passive Manipulation?” Well, in that case you might never become a convert, but that’s the nature of the White Stripes: love it or hate it, they’ll be moving on to the next attraction within minutes.

It is precisely that quality which makes them so invaluable, even undervalued, as performers. Nobody else on the planet is putting on a show like the White Stripes. The country blues of Robert Johnson’s “Stones in My Passway” switches gears to Jack’s McCartney-esque pure pop ballad, “I Want to Be the Boy Who Warms Your Mother’s Heart,” and nobody bats an eye. The pair think nothing of juxtaposing “We’re Going to Be Friends” with a version of “The Nurse” punctuated by blasts of noise that would make fellow metro-Detroiters Wolf Eyes proud. And through it all, the audience is never entirely sure whether it’s going to fall apart before their very eyes – let’s see Franz Ferdinand pull that off. Or not. Because unlike Franz, Interpol, or any other alternative heavyweights you might bother to name, the White Stripes are ours – not MTV’s, and certainly not CMJ’s or Pitchfork’s. It was evident in the reaction to Saturday night’s show closer “Boll Weevil,” a capacity crowd singing along rapturously to the words “he’s looking for a home”: they knew – and one hopes Jack and Meg know it, too – that their home is here, with us. It doesn’t matter if they come back to Detroit once a year or seven times, whether they charge fifteen dollars a ticket or fifty. For three nights, we had our hometown heroes back…and the reunion was sweet.

Reviewed by Zach Hoskins