I heard it through the fiber optic grapevine that I need to post here more, so I had better get this all-important message out while I am in still in Obsessional Fan Mode. While I was up in Texas doing my death duties (he writes sensitively), I managed to catch the White Stripes in concert. As many of you know, I think hyperbole is the All-Time Scourge of the Dark Lord Who Makes Life Miserable, but I would not be honest if I didn't describe their concert as being one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Safe to say they are one of the top ten of incestuous brother-sister acts in the business today!

I don't really feel like giving a concert review, but I have a few theories about why The White Stripes are so interesting to me. Like most of my favorite artists (David Bowie, Rick Astley, Toby Keith) The White Stripes are completely subversive. While they are exploring genres of music (blues, 60's garage rock, punk and American folk and country music) that value authenticity more than anything else, they embrace all of the show-biz acoutriments of *not* meaning it, maaan. The Stripes engage in all of the usual suspects of fakeitude: stage names, self-referential Pulp-esque family fiction (think Jarvis and not Joe for the Correct Cocker in play here), arty (as opposed to artistic) pretense, self-manufactured hype and the most rigid imposition of stageware since Prince's Revolution. They are as high concept as Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Yet, they fucking rule.

They fucking rule because they get to the same essences of music that most of the greats mined in the past. They have aspirations of high camp (Mr. Zellwegger's version of "Mr. Cellophane" from "Chicago" at the show I saw would have done any diva at Wigstock proud) and high art alongside the truly primal (you know, lemon squeezin' and crossroads visitin') musical setting and emotions of most of their songs. They fucking rule because they inhabit a cultural universe of Blind Willie McTell, Charles Foster Kane, Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan, Captain Beefheart and Mondrain and are incredibly anxious to let you in, too. They fucking rule because they have combine all the sexual tension of George Jones and Tammy Wynette (or even Ike and Tina Turner) with a rare child-like innocence. They fucking rule because like their forebearers, The Ramones, they understand the power of keeping it simple, stoopid!

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