Quoting widely from the box set insert about Live in Las Vegas backstory:

In the midst of the run of shows in September 2003, a promotional idea was cooked up by the team at V2 Records – 40 or so fans would be flown out to the White Stripes show at the Joint (at the Hard Rock Casino) in Las Vegas, get a meet-and-greet with the band, and then some time afterward be presented with a vinyl pressing of that evening’s show.

The original pressing is sparse to say the least. With no printed artwork, tracklisting or even credits “The White Stripes Live In Las Vegas” rubber-stamped on the labels is the only true identifier on this record. A dip through the original paperwork shows only 100 copies were ever pressed, all at United Record Pressing in Nashville.

Consider this snapshot of the night…Josh Hartnett, Steve Mcdonald, Darryl Hannah, Scott Caan and Josh Klinghoffer were all there, not necessarily together or gambling. Soledad Brothers and Whirlwind Heat tore it up as the opening bands, and the Stripes’ set itself was spectacular. The unpredictable moments electrify…an off-the-cuff take of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” to a mid-set abandonment of “Offend In Every Way” because of its reliance upon the D minor chord [ed: relevant because two months prior Jack White was in an accident that injured his hand and he was at that time unable to play D minor chords] and an opportune tease of “Mary Had A Little Lamb” imbue the evening with spontaneous joy. Songs from Elephant had taken shape as muscled, taut beasts of energy as the blasting jolt of pure rock and roll lava via “The Hardest Button To Button” testifies. All these factors make this night stick out as measurably better than the rest.

The White Stripes sound fantastic, of course, leading off with Meg’s gigantic sound on the opener “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground,” and continuing on through the million-song set (OK not quite but it’s a lot of tracks). Jack’s guitar work on “I Want to Be the Boy” is bendy beautiful and the rollicking southern blues guitar on Son House’s classic “Death Letter” is over-the-top fabulous. Plus we get the early teaser of the smash “Seven Nation Army” and a bunch of early-Stripes favorites like “You’re Pretty Good Looking,” “Hotel Yorba” and “Fell in Love with a Girl.” Can’t even imagine how amazing it must have been to be one of those 40 folks at the Hard Rock Casino, and did they even realize how lucky they were?

Not from the Vegas show (there isn’t anything out there on YouTube) but “Dead Leaves” from Coachella the same year:

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Elephant is the band’s fourth LP and far and away their most successful as well as critically acclaimed. It’s included on many best-of-ever lists and won both the Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rock Song (“Seven Nation Army”) at the Grammy’s. It went to #6 in the US and to #1 in the UK. It’s totally digital/computer-free; the White Stripes recorded it with all pre-60’s gear onto an eight-track tape machine. For the most part it’s hard to tell but I can feel that old-school tech straining its edges on “There’s No Home for You Here” about which Jack White said they recorded “to see how far we could go with an eight track recorder, and I think how far we went is too far.” (I love it, though, it sounds like super-early Beatles or Stones).

They released four singles from Elephant. The first was the mega-power-hit “Seven Nation Army” which only went to #76 on the main US chart but hit #1 on the alternative charts in both the US and the UK. The track now an ubiquitous sports arena fav which is a bit of a head-scratcher to me, more for the genre it comes from than the song itself which is simple, rhythmic and primal aka perfect for sports. According to Wiki, “This phenomenon has its roots in a UEFA Champions League football match in Italy in October 2003, during which fans of Belgium’s Club Brugge KV began singing the riff in a game against Italy’s A.C. Milan. They continued the chant after Club Brugge KV striker Andrés Mendoza scored a goal. Club Brugge KV won the game, and the song subsequently became the team’s “unofficial sports anthem.” The second single was the cover of Burt Bacharach’s “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself” (first recorded in ’62 by Chuck Jackson and then, also in ’62, by Tommy Hunt, finally made popular by Dusty Springfield in ’64). The Stripes version went to #25 on the US indie chart. The third single from Elephant was “The Hardest Button to Button” (#8 US alternative, #23 regular UK chart, #1 UK indie) and the final single was the aforementioned “There’s No Home for You Here.” I love all the singles and my other top picks from Elephant include the hard bluesy rocker “Ball and Biscuit” (fun fact: a friend of ours named her catering company Ball and Biscuit a couple of years after this LP’s release and her business is still going strong), “The Air Near My Fingers,” and “Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine,” a track that “was originally written for the band’s previous album, White Blood Cells, but Meg had disliked the song and it was removed. After debating it, the song was rerecorded and included in Elephant, but only after a line from the song was removed after it was deemed too harsh.” (wiki) Elephant does treat us to future-Jack White’s tendency towards bat-shit crazy, though, especially on the intro to the song “Little Acorns” (the rest of the song is pretty great though).

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I missed writing about this yesterday on its actual anniversary because my day was super-busy and any Third Man Vault package is a commitment. Live at the Detroit Institute of Arts is no exception. The two set performance consists of a whopping 33 songs, many from their 2001 LP White Blood Cells like my favorite “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” plus other great tracks like “Hotel Yorba,” “Little Room” and “Fell in Love With a Girl.” They included songs from their earlier albums The White Stripes (“I Fought Piranhas” and the show closer “Screwdriver“) and De Stijl (“Hello Operator,” “Apple Blossom,” “You’re Pretty Good Looking For a Girl“). Some of the best moments are the sprinkles of Detroit-rock covers during the concert: Iggy Pop’s “I’m Bored,” The Gories “Omologato” and – best of the best – MC5’s “Looking at You.” While I’m not going to watch it today (that would be even more of a commitment than I can reasonably make though most of the tracks linked here are from the Institute Arts concert so I guess I’ve seen a bit of it already), the DVD has the same track listing so it will be a treat to get the full visual of this incredible performance – the venue is supposed to be stunning: a Beaux Arts-style visual arts museum; Jack White urged the audience to check out exhibits by Detroit artists during the intermission.

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The second LP is from a live show at the Magic Stick in Detroit on December 31st, 2000. Since they were just back from a tour of Australia they play a couple of AC/DC covers: “Let There Be Rock” and “Dog Eat Dog,” Iggy Pop’s “I’m Bored,” plus live versions of some De Stijl songs like “You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl),” “Little Bird” and “Let’s Build a Home.”

I haven’t watched the DVD yet but the Vault insert states that it is video of “TWO killer shows never seen or heard before their sharing here, from the peak of De Stijl touring…From June 15th [at Jay’s Upstairs, Missoula MT], the band performs strongly while advertising happy hour Pabst pints behind them. Only in Missoula. We think. Excitingly, this show is synched with crystalline soundboard recorded audio giving it an added ‘oomph’ not usually found on these videos…Follow that with the White Stripes first ever in-store performance at Fallout Records in Seattle on June 17th.” They performed a mix of originals and covers, including Bob Dylan’s “One More Cup of Coffee” and Robert Johnson’s “Stop Breaking Down.”

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Discs 1 and 2 are exactly what you’d expect from a White Stripes retrospective: a collection of 26 songs like “Fell In Love With a Girl,” “Dead Leaves on a Dirty Ground,” “We’re Going to Be Friends,” “Jolene” (one of many covers songs, this one originally by Dolly Parton is my absolute favorite), “Ball and Biscuit,” “My Doorbell” and their biggest hit “Seven Nation Army.” Disc 3 is of most interest to me, with some real gems like the hair metal meets a punk Spanish Conquistador-styled rendition of “Lafayette Blues,” the glam-rocker “Walking With a Ghost,” their live cover of Loretta Lynn’s “Rated X” and “Good to Me” (a breakneck blues stomper). But there’s a couple of stinkers on it like “Who’s a Big Baby?” (it’s waayyy out there, like Jack White found a couple of hidden settings on his grandma’s parlor organ and just went to town) and the most offensive:  “Trendy American Remix” of “You’re Pretty Good Looking” which I hope to god was a joke as it’s entirely in autotune and just awful.

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Jack White starts the show by announcing “How you doing? We’re the White Stripes from Detroit. This is my ‘sister’ Meg and I’m Jack. We’re going to play our whole new album in its entirety for you,” and then launches into the killer deep guitar riff of “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” (which they played at the other two shows in the Live in Detroit box set; the only other song that gets a revisit is “The Same Boy You’ve Always Known” which they performed in ‘99 at the Magic Bag). Right away it’s obvious the sound quality has improved since the year before and Meg’s drumming seems more solid, Jack’s guitar even more powerful. There’s a bit of tuning and then the hillbilly stomp of “Hotel Yorba” kicks in followed by the killer hook in “I’m Finding It Harder to be a Gentleman” and the soon-to-be-classic “Fell in Love With a Girl.” There’s only one whisper of a cover in the set, “The Union Forever,” influenced by the mariachi tune by Pepe Guízar. Other show highlights include the manic “Little Room,” the sweetly sparse “We’re Going to be Friends,” the weird angry flamenco guitar meets The Mob on “I Think I Smell a Rat,” the thrashy heavy metal/industrial instrumental “Aluminum,” and when we finally get to hear Meg on the set’s closer “This Protector” (even though Jack and Meg’s harmonizing is a bit shaky).

Runout Groove Side A: THREE TVS… Runout Groove Side B: SHOW SO LITTLE TO SEE

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The sound quality seems a bit rougher than Live at the Magic Bag but the rawness of the performance enhances most of songs The White Stripes performed that night at the Magic Stick. Highlights include cuts from De Stijl like the classic “You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl),” a dirty blues cover of Son House’s “Death Letter,” “I’m Bound to Pack it Up” with sweetly melodic guitar and somewhat stilted drumming (Jack seems to laugh a bit during this song so I’m wondering if Meg fucked up) and “Hello Operator.”  They revisit the awesomely stomping “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground,” the punkish “Broken Bricks” and “Jimmy the Explorer;” perform a brutally painful rendition of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” (ooofff – it is amazing!); and cover – for the first and only time – Captain Beefheart’s “Ashtray Heart.” Jack White banters far less than he did the previous year, just thanking Grand Rapids’ Whirlwind Heat and the Greenhornes (from Ohio) for opening and later asking the audience for aspirin.

Runout Groove Side A: A EASY, AN EASEL Runout Groove Side B: SO STUPID EARLY DS SHOUT SAVE

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The setlist from the Magic Bag performance includes several tracks from The White Stripes (and generally they have a better recording quality than the gritty in studio ones): “Jimmy the Explorer,” “The Big Three Killed My Baby,” “Wasting My Time,” “Broken Bricks,” “Astro,” a stomping version of Robert Johnson’s  “Stop Breaking Down” and the traditional “St. James Infirmary Blues.” Other covers they performed were Bob Dylan’s “Love Sick” (the first time they played it live – also the first time Jack White incorporated piano into a live set and he used it extensively throughout the night) and one of my White Stripes faves “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” (originally by Burt Bacharach; The White Stripes would later include it on their 2003 release Elephant). A couple other of my top picks are “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” (on the 2001 White Blood Cells) on pounding piano and the raucous “Lafayette Blues” in French. Interspersed between the songs is delightful banter by Jack (especially in between “Wasting the Time” and “Astro” when he makes up a story about when he and Meg were kids), a bit of guitar tuning, some musical riffs and a shoutout to The Greenhornes (who drove up from Ohio to open).

Runout Groove Side A: BOOM BOOM DIDDUM DADDUM WADDUM CHOO  Runout Groove Side B: SAY A LITTLE PRAYER FOR YOURSELVES

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