Hey shmuck...The White Stripes went Big Time on ya! Whaddya have to say for yourself now?

It ain’t often that a schmuck like me gets what they’d call "fan" mail in the biz…but when I do it usually surprises me how much more insightful and intelligent the folks who waste - err take - the time to drop me a note are than myself. Christ, I shore do hope none of these folks take up the rockwrite gig themselves, or I’ll wind up more marginalized n than I already am in this racket. Talk about your primadonna cult figures rendered uselesss (Paul Westerberg and I – hey! maybe I’ll write a tune with that title, then they’d have to write about me!).

Anyways, this cat from godknowswhere drifted a complimentary little bone my way just some three days ago in which he’d claimed to be amongst the faithful and a reader of my sordid little web rag. Said he’d liked my spiels, although…(pause, think…hmmm)…ALTHOUGH (?!) he didn’t always necessarily agree with me, he’d found my dribdrab one of three things – and this is paraphrasing in its loosest form because I don’t exactly recall how he’s said it (and probably couldn’t because his words seemed more savvy than any I’d come up with) – entertaining, funny, and/or insightful. Not always all at once, but a clean one of the three consistently – which means the kid thinks I’m batting a snap .333. Which I’ll take because I’ve always pegged myself as a hit-for-average kinda guy (like a hip Rod Carew, but with a personality). A .333 hitter with a little pop in his swing (hey…the man SAID that I occasionally rounded all THREE of the bags he’d laid out) – not bad for a indie player with no hopes of ever getting beyond the graveyard of this writing schtick.

But average ain’t what its all about – nosiree – and the chap who’d written me had laid it all out for me in his note. Claiming to have stumbled onto my meanderings at a White Stripes website (who, in fact, I had spent a serious near-year pining for) this amiable feller wanted to know what I’d thought about the Stripes latest record (that being the currently popular White Blood Cells platter) which, he seemed to have noticed, I’d never sincerely commented on (it did wind up on my 2001 end-o-year ranting, but only in blurb-ery form), and moreover, he wondered what I was thinking now that the Stripes were "hitting the big time". Well he wasn’t the only one asking me such thing lately either, so I figure it’s high time I get off my ass on this matter and give the people what they WANT (being as I am the supply side part of the equation here – they, the demand).

Big Time (caps for those words are a must since the masters of the corporate form of such success want it well-known when their coveted Big Time has been officially hit) Shmig Time, I say (and sound like a moron doing so). My response to the esteemed Stripes so-called ascent to dancing with angels depends on what Big Time you’re talking about (you gotta know which devil is dealing the cards when you play these sorts of games). Are we talking the mega-dollar corporate puppet kind of Big Time (that being those dizzying stratospheric height of omnipresence that the likes of Mike Jackson, N’sync, or perhaps the recent Ozzy Osboring)? Or are we dealing with the REAL big time (no caps), the sort achieved by the Stripes on De Stijl’s "Truth Doesn’t Make a Noise"? Because I really and truly want nothing to do with the former; it is an arena so foreign to my sensibilities that I’d have to say (and did in an e-mail back to my new-found friend) that I’d guess the STARMAKERS won’t have much use for the Stripes for too long because Jack and Meg are way to fucking real for that world’s bullshit façade, they’re just a feather-in-the-Big-Rock-cap. However, the latter, the idea that the White Stripes – for me – have been big-fucking-time for a long-fucking-time because of their MUSIC…well that’s my at-bat baby! I can handle that one (I am, after all, a .333 hitter – documented!).

Truth is I don’t give a shit either way about the media exposure the Stripes are getting. Sure I’m happy for Jack (who I’d spoken to a coupla times and found shy, reserved, and utterly sincere and believable) and Meg (who gave me a sip of her private stash’o’inspiration at a Cleveland gig – thanks Meg) because they seem damn good people, but mostly I’m happy because this seems to be one of those very rare cases in which the MUSIC ("oh my god! Did he say ‘the music"? geeeez-us! Get he guy…now! If ANYone gets people thinking about the music ‘round here, we’re all fucked. Do you people realize how razor thin most of this shit we push is?") – yeah, I said the MUSIC – WINS out - because those SOUNDS are the real and pure reason for all of the White Stripes attention.

• True story: I’d done a little Stripes preview/blurb for a paper I’d whored myself out to in which the editor (a good cat really, just a bit misguided here) felt some sort of inexplicable Editor’s Urge to insert a short spiel about the Jack/Meg husband/wife/sister/father/daughter/ whatehaveyou/ whateverthefuck nonsense that’d been boiling over in the deep waters of the mainstream (talk about having absolutely NOTHING to say about the band’s music – CHRISTAMIGHTY OMIGOD! Apparently some cat from Time or somesuch rag felt so COMPELLED by this important and controversial story that he’d dug around some Detroit area marriage/divorce records to PROVE the duo as formerly wedded. Maybe he even listened to the record – MAYbe). Anyhow, not being one for rumor and/or innuendo in the first place, and not caring what the fuck the Stripes private lives may have held or hold – realizing that, um, err, that such stories have NOTHING…NADA…NIL to do with what they made these records for in the first place (Jack: Hey Meg, let’s start a band and play some really coy, edgy, modern punk-pop blues racket just as a rue to fuck around with people about or mysterious selves! Imagine the excitement we’d cause! Meg: Gee Jack, that sounds swell! Maybe people will start to wonder whether, like, we were married once…or whether we’re brother and sister…or whether or not I ever went to school or that maybe I was raised the daughter of a secret billionaire Svengali that jet me around the world as some sort of trophy daughter until I’d met you and fallen in love and run away to a life of dirty floored rock clubs and sweltering, smelly tour vans! But, what kind of music should we play? Jack: Oh who cares, they probably won’t anyways – not with that swell tale about your sugar daddy and all!). Never once did I question the Stripes story when I’d heard "Jimmy the Exploder" for the first time and nearly wept. I didn’t know WHO it was, and frankly I didn’t CARE if it were men from fucking PLUTO – I just knew it WAS what it WAS – a revelation! Thusly, I was none to happy to find my name at the top of a piece of sick journalism that was playing right along with the slobbering trendsucking flock of the mass media dolts. I was furious and embarrassed – but it WASN’T my DOING. There – my peace is now spoken. Forgive me one and all. 

Well now, where was we? Oh yes, the Big Time vs. the big time; their (they, them, the moneychangers at the Gold Plated wheel of our drifting culture) heights vs. OUR highs. It all comes down to the perception of the people who might care. THEIR Big Time is measured in saturation: dollars, media, attention, and above all, CONTROL. They need to feel they command the scene (remember ’91, ’92, ’93? The years it was so perfectly marketed to everyone? Punk schmunk – one great BIG sale is what it was. CONTROL the scene, CONTROL the kids, and then CONTROL the dollars. Some people thought it was at least something…a nudging of culture in the right direction. They’re recognizing our way of life! They are admitting to the absolute righteousness of our punk/hippy aesthetics! They were slicing your throats is what they were doing, and selling your blood to the rest of the world – at least until they all got sick of its taste). My big time (and I do mean mine – never once trying to imply that it is the right thinking way – just one hopeless man’s opinion) is about nothing less than the sounds coming straight from the disc, vinyl, cassette, or stage. It’s a bottom-line belief that attempts to avoid the mechanized reactionary hype that builds false Gods outta PEOPLE whom just may or may not have something to say. The biggest of times for these rockroll bands is when reg-u-lar people likes you’s and me’s get a king-hell kick from their racket; like a stab in a vein that send you off into the ethers for a bit. Ahhh, now that’s what we’re here for.

So whaddya think ‘bout the Stripes record you schmuck? Which is what I’ve been trying to get around to telling ya’ but always wind up getting sidetracked because that question is ALWAYS riddled by the caveat question-in-addition-to bullets of the Stripesies being Big Time nowadays. Well…it’s certainly their noisiest record. Not in a messy sense, but rather in a LOUD and HOWLING sense. I still prefer De Stijl’s texture (texture? Meaning? I dunno, like the way it feels when it sounds that way…) to the whoop whoop of White Blood Cells, but that’s because I think De Stijl was so fucking cool (and an art/architecture movement to boot!), not because I dislike WBC. I, in fact, DO like WBC; partly because I like the people (J & M) so much and partly because Jack wheezes better than any new rockroll vocalist in some years (or is it more a teeth clenched yelp that he does? Don’t ask me, I cannot sing for shit, I just know its so goddamn perfect – like he hates what the future holds for him and cannot escape it) and also in part because Meg still just beats those drums like she’d just been fondled unwittingly by them (take…this…you…fucker!). I like it…I LIKE it! Not to mention Jack’s writing these weird songs (that, of course, no one pays any attention to…now let’s see, when were these two married? How many kids? KIDS?!? Oh fuck! Where are they hiding them? Which one do they look like? Someone had better find out) that seem to be absolute premonitions of his life-to-be, rather than reflections on one he’s lived. He’s always pulled that Nostradomic shit off well. It’s a big reason why the band is big time in my sense of the big time. Freaky, huh? It is weird when you think too much about it – this kid knowing what is coming the very next day – every day? Or is it? Heh-heh! Maybe he’s just figured it all out. Maybe he has turned it all around and manipulates the manipulators in an attempt to manipulate his and Meg’s way right outta the never-ending cultural manipulation that stifles us all in the end! Tricky bastard! SMART bastard.

Or maybe he’s a fucking seer, a psychic, and a shaman! Geez (rubbing hands together for devious effect), this is getting better all of the time now isn’t it? Hmmm…where to go with all of this next?

Anywho – the point here being…

The point is, um, err, well, you see, the point…Damn! The POINT is, oh yeahs, the point is that the Big Time is merely the Big Green Curtain behind which everyone hides. If you ignore the curtain, then there ain’t no worries ‘bout a Big Time. Hell, the only thing that matters about this sort of success (yep, the Big Time success) is that you have to deal with crowds after a certain point – which I have an extraordinary aversion to. So I tend to choose not to partake in any of these Big Time shows the Stripes are out playing…not because of anything they’ve done, but because of the swirl of meaninglessness surrounding it all.

I hadn’t written jack shit about the bands new record because I knew everyone else would. No one needed me to tell them it was damn good (Jack, in fact, again foretold all of the bands fortunes all over the place on this record – clairvoyant bastard!) – most folks would rather have the sanctioning of the mighty (Entertainment Weakly, Rolling Stone, People, etc) than the endorsement of the miniscule (me) to give them a sense of belonging. Nothing is worth being a part of, after all, unless everyone else wants to be a part of it too. Validation ain’t in the music…it’s in the air.

So, yeah, I like the fucking record a lot – I’d just figured it was high-time that fer-once I kept it to myself while everyone else shared in a moment they pretended to care about. After all, is anyone really listening? Although I doubt it, I sure as shit hope so…because, if they aren’t, we’re all fucked.

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