 |
 
 
|
The
White Stripes, The Greenhornes The pairing of the Greenhornes and the White Stripes at the Greek seemed like a winner. Two retro-minded bands, from Ohio (Cincinnati) and Michigan (Detroit) respectively, at an attractive, modestly sized outdoor theatre in the hills of Griffith Park. The kids in the audience, some of whom were very young and perhaps attending their first rock concert, seemed very enthusiastic. My experience, however, was rather mixed. Both bands played pretty well, and I certainly liked parts of both performances. It's just that, after a certain point, I can't go quite so far as to say I really enjoyed the evening on the whole. The Greenhornes were first on the bill and came on stage before a small group of rock fans; maybe a third of the seats were full when they started. They had a few partisans in the crowd, though, and the band performed fairly well for them. The original line-up of the Greenhornes was a quintet with a keyboard player, and their initial style was garage rock a la the Nuggets compilations; The band is now a power trio and their music sounds more like the proto-heavy metal of Blue Cheer and the Amboy Dukes. The first time I saw them in this formation, a year ago at the Rockaround in Vegas, I wasn't sure it worked. Tonight I thought they seemed better focused and they were much more convincing. I still think that Blue Cheer--and I really like Blue Cheer, don't get me wrong--I just think Blue Cheer is a weird band to emulate. I mean, Blue Cheer is a band that tried to copy Hendrix and Cream and ended up a sloppy mess; their charm, though considerable, basically resides in that failure. So, I guess I don't really get the point of trying to sound like a tight Blue Cheer. Even so, I was entertained. In between bands, the house music was the LP Fire of Love by the great but short-lived '80s L.A. punk/blues band the Gun Club. An exciting choice and one that I hadn't heard in a while, though it occurred to me even then that the two bands might cancel each other out somewhat rather than compliment each other in juxtaposition. Both bands play a similar style of overdriven electric blues where intensity and primal rhythms are key to the experience. Where the two bands differ, however, is precisely where arena rock and punk diverge as well. Jack White is a fine, showy guitarist and he writes some songs that are clever, and I would also guess that Meg's 'crude' drumming style is basically an affectation at this point; the White Stripes are an act, in the fullest sense of that word. The Gun Club, on the other hand, seemed to really mean it. They sounded crude because they were crude. And where I don't know that Jack White has written a lot of meaningful lyrics in his career, there's no denying Gun Club singer Jeffrey Lee Pierce when he sings "She's Like Heroin To Me." The pain and urgency are palpable. So this, in some embryonic form, was in my mind when the White Stripes took the stage. They looked really good, in outfits bearing their white, red and black color-scheme, and they were really exciting for the first forty-five minutes or so. After that, it seemed like the limits of the White Stripes had been reached. Their appeal is based on a sonic onslaught from their two instruments. It works well on a record and can overwhelm a small room. In an open-air theatre, though, it sounds a bit thin. There is no bass save from Meg White's drums, and Jack's guitar and vocals are both pretty high pitched. A mix that tended to obscure the vocals did them no favors, but only a handful of their songs really say anything in first place. Jack White tried to mix things up, playing several different guitars, mandolin, keyboards and even the vibraphone at different points, but eventually it all sounded the same. To sustain a two-hour performance, the White Stripes simply need something more. Plus, I have to admit, the whole preening rock star thing and mindless patter kind of irked me. I've seen it and I'm done with it. They sounded like Zeppelin at times, and I'm totally done with them. The length and pacing of the show were the major problem. The set proper was ok, lasting maybe seventy or eighty minutes; but their encore was well over half an hour! That's not an encore, it's a second set. Give me an intermission if that's what you're doing. Of course we stayed, since they hadn't played a lot of their hits--they didn't play more than two or three songs from Elephant until the epic encore--and wanted to hear them. But those couple-few songs should have been the whole encore, and they should have jettisoned the rest of it. I give them some points for trying to give their fans their money's worth, but the evening would've been better if they added a third band to the bill instead. We could have used the variety. The saying goes something like 'the
more we know, the more we know we don't know.' Well, listening
to both bands, I didn't always know what I was hearing--couldn't
always tell if it was an 'original' or a 'cover,' and a muddy
mix from the soundboard compounded the problem. Still, I remember
the White Stripes starting "Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine"
and thinking "Huh, I never realized this was the exact same
riff as 'Train Kept A Rollin'.'" And it took me two or three
verses to know for sure that the song that closed the evening
wasn't a cover of "Frankie and Johnny were Lovers" (Christy
thought it was Elvis's "Teddy Bear"). Though far from
a disaster, both the White Stripes and Greenhornes sounded like
bands that still have a long way to go. But, all that said, all
the old guy recriminations I've expressed, the kids were right
to like it. They could've done a lot worse.
|
