Tag: jack white

Photo by terren in Virginia, used under Creative Commons license

Best albums of 2012

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

In alphabetical order only:

  • Allo Darlin’ . Europe
  • Cloud Nothings . Attack On Memory
  • Godspeed You! Black Emperor . Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!
  • Japandroids . Celebration Rock
  • Low . C’mon
  • Perfume Genius . Put Your Back N 2 It TEEN . In Limbo
  • Shearwater . Animal Joy
  • Van Etten, Sharon . Tramp
  • Walkmen, The . Heaven
  • White, Jack . Blunderbuss

Note that I still have to listen to this year’s releases by Lightships (update: meh), A.C. Newman, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Band Of Horses (update: rubbish), Bat For Lashes (update: rubbish), Beach House, Calexico (update: meh), Chromatics (update: meh), The Happy Jawbone Family Band (update: rubbish), Metz (update: meh), Passion Pit (update: rubbish), Grizzly Bear (update: meh),Tallest Man On Earth (update: quite good), Tame Impala (update: meh), TEEN (update: excellent!), Titus Andronicus (update: meh), and Ty Segall, and that I’m still working on Divine Fits (update: meh), Sigur Ros (update: good), and Swans (update: meh).

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Photo by terren in Virginia, used under Creative Commons license

Photo from jackwhiteiii.com, taken Oct 4 2012 by Jo McCaughey.

Turn the oscillator

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

There are concerts you go to because you’re hoping the live show transcends the recorded material. There are concerts you go to because you want to see a band or artist of significant importance play live, just once. And once in a while, you see a concert that delivers both. Once in a while…like when Jack White schedules two nights at the Sony Centre.

We had an insanely busy week leading up to the concert (the second of the two) so I didn’t even know who was opening. Turns out it was a band called Pokey Lafarge and the South City Three, an entertaining little contraption of a band that impressed mostly via their rock star harmonica player and enthusiastic old-timey image. They dutifully played their set, got the energy level up, and were on their way. Then the roadies — all dressed in zoot-suit-ish garb — reset the stage.

When Jack himself took the stage, he did so with his all-male band. I was sad to miss his all-female band, who had played the previous night, but my disappointment was short lived. The band ripped into a 5-song sequence with no break, and this band let it all fly. The drummer and keyboardist especially; both were large, muscular guys who played the hell out of their instruments, contrasted against the waifish White. I found it hard to take my eyes off of them, especially as they were positioned at the front of the stage, framing White as he lurched about. The only difficulty I had was seeing through the 6-6 Shaggy-from-Scooby-Doo looking jagoff in front of me who kept swaying and dancing and then hugging his girlfriend every time she recognized a song. For once I knew what it felt like for Nellie to go to shows and not be able to see anything but the back (and iPhone screen) of the person in front of her.

The set was seventeen songs long, plus four in the encore: eight of his songs from Blunderbuss, eight White Stripes songs, two Raconteurs, two Dead Weather, and one collaboration/feature Jack White did with Danger Mouse. The set list didn’t seem to stray too far from the previous night; I would have liked to hear “John The Revelator” and “Hotel Yorba” but I was happy that he ended the main set with “Ball And A Biscuit” on the second night too, as it’s probably my favourite White Stripes song. It was a crushing version of it too; playing with a powerful backing band just gives the songs a lot more depth.

The range of styles White pulled out that night, the breadth of the bands and side projects, the tightness of the band, the art integrated with the show, the monumental musicianship…it all paid tribute to Jack White being one of the most influential and meaningful artists playing today. It was a fun two hours, but ten years from now it’ll feel momentous.

Pictures here.

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Photo from jackwhiteiii.com, taken Oct 4 2012 by Jo McCaughey.

 

Photo by kata rokkar, used under Creative Commons license

Multifarious

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

The best music I’ve bought lately, in no particular order:

  • Japandroids . Celebration Rock
  • Shearwater . Animal Joy
  • Sharon Van Etten . Tramp
  • Beth Jeans Houghton And The Hooves Of Destiny . Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose
  • Cannon Bros . Firecracker Cloudglow
  • Jack White . Blunderbuss
  • The Kills . Blood Pressures
  • Perfume Genius . Put Your Back N 2 It

OK, I may have fibbed just now. There was a tiny bit of order: the new Japandroids was at the top of that list because in sheer rawk-awesomeness it outshines the others on the list.

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Austerity pushers and vaccination kooks are giving kids in Washington State whooping cough. Or something. Warning: contains the eye-meltingly great line, “I hope there’s a hot place in Dumbass Hell for Jenny McCarthy.”

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Recent movies we’ve watched:

  • Here’s how to tell when Air Canada’s in-flight entertainment has run out of movies I’m willing to watch: I watch Contraband (imdb | rotten tomatoes). It was rubbish.
  • The Guard (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was superb. Fun, and funny. It didn’t disguise the fact that it was a standard cop movie trope (big crimes in small towns, kooky townspeople, fish out of water big shot from the FBI, etc.) and it took me a few minutes to understand anything anyone said, but once it got going Brendan Gleeson was terrific and people like Don Cheadle and Liam Cunningham filled in the rest nicely.
  • Triangle (imdb | rotten tomatoes) came out of nowhere. I don’t remember where I heard about it, but it sat on my hard drive for more than two years before we finally watched it. And it was pretty good…a decent little thriller that worked just fine as long as you didn’t think too hard about the sequencing (and sequencing, and sequencing) of events.

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I’ve been sending this article to just about every extrovert I know. Specifically the ones who think introversion is something they think they can help people “get over” by forcing them into social situations. Which is to say, all of them.

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OK, so…the Eaton Centre shooting yesterday. Brutal. Tragic, obviously. Stupid.Worrying, sure, due to the premeditated gun violence carried out by multiple attackers on someone who is probably, at least according to early signals given by the police, directly or indirectly linked to a gang…worrying in the same way the Jane Creba shooting was. But not scary. Not to me, at least.

We know the questions will come about whether we’re worried about living five minutes away from the Eaton Centre (well, ten minutes from the end of the mall where this happened), but honestly it doesn’t feel that close. To be honest, I don’t even consider the Eaton Centre to be part of Toronto. It’s like this weird suburban amusement park wedged between the tackiest corridor of Yonge and ugliest stretch of Bay, in which no non-teenager valuing their sanity would set foot for more than a few moments, and into which no actual Torontonian would walk of their own volition. So that underground food court where the shooting took place seems to me like a far-flung, unknown corner of the city.

As it happened, Nellie and I walked through the mall (straight through, actually…there’s a shortcut from Yonge to the Mercatto abutting Trinity Square) about five hours before the shooting. Had we chosen to eat dinner there instead of a late lunch we would have been there for the shots (albeit two levels up) and would have rushed out with the rest. But even knowing that, there’s no feeling of fear due to proximity. It happened somewhere else.

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Featured image by kata rokkar, used under Creative Commons license