Music |
Get Behind Me Satan
The White Stripes
By
Published: Jan 01, 2006
Category:
Rock
Get Behind Me Satan
The White Stripes
The White Stripes are The Strokes are The Hives — that’s how I used to see it. I mean, I knew nothing. And didn’t care. Hey, I knew the names of the hot bands, didn’t I? Which wasn’t bad for a guy getting on in years.
Anyway, why care about the new stuff? Sure, young people were jumping up and down about these bands and debating their relative worth. (That’s one reason God invented college, so kids could argue about matters of infinitesimal import.) Well, kids are always jumping up and down about something, and if you wait a month, you’ll hear about three other bands that are equally "essential" and have whole campuses aflame.
Then Jack White produced Loretta Lynn’s Van Lear Rose, the most satisfying CD she’s made in years. A rocker and a country legend? I perked up. But not so I sought out music from The White Stripes.
At long last Jon Stewart had the Stripes on the show. I kinda sorta knew there were only two of them — Jack on guitar and piano, his sister Meg on drums — and that, I guess, made me think their music was soft and subtle. No way. Meg pounds the drums like Keith Moon. And Jack not only plays a scorching guitar, he can scream like Robert Plant.
(For those who were born after the glory years, Keith Moon drummed for The Who. And Robert Plant was the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, an English band that took black American southern blues, added power chords and shrieking vocals, and tore the roof off. To do the remedial homework, start here.)
Led Zep was a full band. The White Stripes were just these two kids. I was blown away.
I snuck ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ into our home. Had to. This is their fifth album. It’s so late in the day they’re no longer on an indie label. Kids in cool places like Seattle would rather die than hear them. If the teens who live in our building saw me with the Stripes….I don’t even want to go there.
But why am I apologizing? This is thrilling music, as exciting to me now as Green Day was a couple of years ago. It rocks hard and lean, and Meg White is a relentless drummer. All of which is announced right at the start, with Jack playing fuzz-tone guitar and Meg pounding away and then Jack screaming:
You got a reaction
You got a reaction, didn’t you?
You took a white orchid
You took a white orchid turned it blue.
"Get behind me," Jack commands a stanza later, one of many dismissals he will make to an unnamed woman. Or a demon? Or….but it can’t be Satan, because, like Robert Johnson, Jack White sold his soul to make the heavenly music that is the devil’s favorite.
Or has he? I have read that Jack plays a Montgomery Ward guitar. He has said that he and Meg were the last of 10 children raised in a single-room house. And just look at the guy — none dare call him "sincere."
If you analyze the words, you see a lot of loneliness, bitterness, alienation. The usual kid stuff. (Not that they’re wrong.) But you can’t really hear the words. Or, rather, you don’t care to — the music is that varied, that interesting. Like the way the first song doesn’t really end, it just segues into — no, that can’t be a marimba! But it is.
I take The White Stripes with me everywhere, but especially, via the iPod, to the gym. It’s this winter’s Cardio Helper — with this music pulsing in my veins, I can get my heart rate to previously unknown heights. And time disappears — I get so lost in all the changes this CD puts me through, I come out the chute at the end wishing there were more.
You may want to get The White Stripes into your physical — and mental — fitness regime. Just one suggestion: If anyone sees you jumping up and down, say you’re listening to Death Cab for Cutie or The Postal Service — or just make up a ridiculous name for a band. You don’t want anyone to know you’re in the thrall of The White Stripes. Because they’re not hip. They’re just great.
To buy ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ from Amazon.com, click here.
