Jack White

I was never much for fashion or malls or the main stream. I always managed to contradict and oppose. Less so now, but it's been a defining feature in my life. Even the music I liked best from the popular catalogue were the lean cuts ripped down to their blues roots. Contentious and in your face was best for me. Now of course it's much worse and less painful, especially with others along for company.

My brothers can age people by the music they listen to. I don't like to stand still to long, preferring to remain a moving target of adolescence. 50 and hopeless, but my wife still smiles fondly at me. Today it was Jack White keeping me refreshed with the juice of life. I like my steak without sauce, my eggs from chickens I know, my rye on ice, my hair short enough that it doesn't require tending, and my beer more like bread than beer. I love beer.

I bake bread, make pasta from scratch and cook from my wife's amazingly productive garden produce, lovingly cured, canned, preserved, dried and frozen masterfully. I don't just get mushrooms, I get morels. Our potatoes are like candy they are so sweet this year. I'm a sensual dude that loves the physical things in life and Jack White is like a breath of tomato leaves bruised in the height of summer.. Sharp green and rank with the processes of change. The Jack White is from my people. Straight up. I like strong coffee and sweaty sex.

The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, and whatever else this guy does is, to my ears, part of the future movers and shakers of rock and roll. I'm not talking about the corporate marketing department versions of music, but the stuff that happens more organically. The stuff that comes from personality and human imagination. The stuff that might leave your Mum uncomfortable and all my religious, soft head friends, disapproving of it's dangerous feel. It is dangerous too I believe. It's new, unpredictable and unlike never having a fence to sharp to sit on, this bites with the force of Mother Nature.

I'm talking about a little gem I found in a heap of music my brother Biff was so kind as to assemble in a dozen DVD's for me. I struggle with bandwidth. Poop on the bandwidth, but yeah for the Biffmeister.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK1IwHPX8Cc

I haven't actually hear this version of it. I really hope it conveys the potency with which this guy brings a song to life with. Can't say I'm optimistic about the guitar sound, but my version off the White Stripes recording Icky Thump and is titled Effect and Cause. This boy is from a fine tradition and I'm very happy to see him adding to the canon. That's the version that's go me blinking rapidly so I do hope this vid helps make my point.