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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We did see Jack White on The Supply Chain Issues Tour here in Milwaukee in August and heard a lot of what’s on this 3-LP release, one in blue, one in white and one in black vinyl. As always, it is gorgeous with high production value and quality vinyl, printing and packaging. Also included is a 7″ of “Tip From You To Me” which I’ll write about separately. The live tracks are pulled from a variety of shows throughout the tour and the world: Germany, France, London, Vegas, Chicago, Austin, Detroit and more. None from the Milwaukee show, unfortunately.

Disk One is a collection of live tracks all from White’s 2022 release Fear of the Dawn. Some of the best are the hit “Hi-De-Ho,” “Taking Me Back” and particularly raucous and ass-shaking renditions of “What’s the Trick” performed in Frankfurt, Germany and “That Was Then (This is Now)” from Zurich Switzerland. Disk Two is a track-for-track performance of Entering Heaven Alive, performed on July 22nd, 2022, the day of the record’s release, in London at Union Chapel. Like the record, the acoustic(ish), folky show contrasts with the harder blues garage of Fear of the Dawn. Disk Three is super-interesting: it’s a mix of covers and spontaneous compositions.  Some of the best covers include The Stooges “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” The Monks “I Hate You” and Willie Dixon/Bo Diddley’s “Diddy Wah Diddy.” The most surprising is White’s rendition of Black Flag’s “Nervous Breakdown.” It’s really hard to believe some of the off-the-top-of-his-blue-head songs were actually made up on the spot. “Gordie Howe Bridge” (performed in Detroit) is simply kicking and “I’m Running in Brooklyn Because I’ve Got Nowhere Else to Go” (obviously played in Brooklyn) is a killer punk blues.

I haven’t clicked through to see it (you have to create an account and I’m not willing to do that) but the show is available to view here:

https://all.worldconcert.site/Jack-White-at-Empty-Bottle-Chicago-IL-USA

Here’s a link to his concert in Paris that includes the “Hi-De-Ho” performance on The Supply Chain Issues Tour.

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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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Live at Third Man Records has a mix of tracks from White’s Boarding House Reach, Blunderbuss and Lazaretto, the 2017 single “Battle Cry”  and a few White Stripes songs. Thankfully the live performance vehicle prevented White from a shit-ton of noodling and limited his weird experimentation (though there is still a bit of that courtesy of two keyboards) so the songs from Boarding House Reach are more tolerable than they are on the original. Those songs include “Over and Over and Over,” “Corporation,” “Why Walk a Dog?,” “Connected By Love,” “Ice Station Zebra,” “Hypermisophoniac” and “Respect Commander.” From Blunderbuss: “Blunderbuss,” “Love Interruption,” “Sixteen Saltines” and “Missing Pieces” which ends with a long diatribe against the lies told by the  president of the US. From Lazaretto is just the title track “Lazaretto” (too bad, I really love several songs from that LP). Of course my favorite tracks on Live at Third Man are the White Stripes songs: “Wasting My Time,” “Hello Operator” (which starts out with an awesome audience sing-along), “Fell In Love With a Girl,” “Catch Hell Blues,” “Little Bird,” “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground,” “I’m Slowly Turning Into You” and “Seven Nation Army.”

The package is deluxe, like most Vault packages tend to be (especially the ones featuring White) with super-high quality vinyl and record packaging. The gatefold is die-cut with mix-and-match artwork from the record sleeves to “provide fans with hours upon hours of flip-flopping fun” (LOL, really it took like 5 minutes to do this). The package also has three 8×10 photos from White’s live performances featuring Jack along with band members Dominic Davis (bass), Quincy McCrary (keyboards), Carla Azar (drums) and Neal Evans (keyboards) and a giant Jack White logo flag. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with that.

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Poet, blues scholar (and manager of the MC5) John Sinclair penned the liner notes for the LP. He writes, “Guitarist and vocalist Johnny Walker and drummer Ben Swank pay serious tribute to the three legendary black revolutionaries, not only assuming their name but honoring the black liberation struggle with a stripped-down, seriously raucous blues attack deeply rooted in the rawest idioms of the African American musical tradition…The Soledad Brothers are no cornball blues revival act but make a fresh, idiosyncratic, soulful extension of the blues into their own life experience and out into the world at large.”

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