The White Stripes
"The Big Three Killed My Baby" b/w "Red Bowling Ball Ruth"
scum stats: original SFTRI pressing was 500 on red vinyl (I think), a shit ton on black, TMR version is 150 copies on tri-color and a shit ton on black
Week one of living in a world of three little girls crawling around this house has me generally optimistic about how the next 18 years of my life will play out. While some folks response to my having a three month paternity leave is "wow...no work!" it hardly plays out that way.
It should come as a surprise to no one that running a record label is FAR less work than wrangling a 5 year old, a 2 year old, and a newborn. Three months paternity leave is three months deep in the trenches. School pick-up and drop-off, pediatrician visits, ballet class, coordinating mattress deliveries, hanging on the telephone with customer service, runs to the pharmacy, grabbing carryout food, play time activities director, homework assassin, second string burper, furniture assemblyman, sleepy time therapist are all things I've tackled in the week since Navy Eleanor was born.
I just try and GET SHIT DONE as much as I can when I'm here. Don't let tasks pile up. Smile every once in awhile.
Woke up this morning to a dead battery in my car. Let my mother-in-law borrow it to run to the grocery store the other day, but had to back it out of the driveway because she felt uncomfortable doing so herself. It was raining, I turned on the headlights and she never turned them off. Ugh.
Usually this is something I would let fester, Uber in to work for a couple of days before finding the time and energy to address it. But on leave, I waste NO time.
Battery wouldn't jump and the most complicated thing I can do re: car maintenance is replacing a dead battery. So I am on top of this. I pull out my sorry excuse for a tool box, disconnect the terminals, throw the dead, ten-year-old battery in the back of my wife's car and ramble on down to Autozone to get a replacement. $140 something later I'm back in business. There's still some alert lights pinged on the dash, but hell, I really just drive this thing to work and back. I can wait those out.
So as I type here with fingers still greasy from the transplant, I can't help but think of how much the early existence of the White Stripes was tied to car troubles. "The Big Three Killed My Baby" was not tongue-in-cheek, it was a frustrationary tale firmly rooted in real life. The Third Man Upholstery van had no windshield wipers and woudn't start if it was rainy. But Jack figured out some way to wrap tinfoil around SOMETHING under the hood to get that sucker humming. I never did figure out what that was. Pretty sure that van only went out of town once, to Chicago in '98, for Two Star Tabernacle opening for Jeff Tweedy at Lounge Ax and then two days later the Stripes opening for the Sadies and the Waco Brothers. Jack and Meg sat in the two front seats and since there were none in the back (it WAS a delivery van) I sat on a bean bag. So dangerous. Oh yeah, there was no radio! We had to use a boom box on that trip (listening to demos by Poopy Time) but most of the time in that vehicle it was just the low hum of the wheels on the road. Meditational silence.
A two day tour in January 2000 was side-tracked as Meg's Ford Escort just stopped moving on I-94 right outside of Chicago. Had to cancel the gig in Youngstown, OH that night. Yes, the White Stripes did tour dates in a FORD ESCORT. Well, one date. Then the car died.
The first "official" vehicle of the band was a maroon van used starting around spring/summer of 2000. It ran well most of that tour, but something went haywire in Los Angeles. I'm pretty sure a large portion of the profits from that tour went to the $800 worth of repairs in Denver to fix the incorrect work done by the crew in LA.
So much uncertainty, so much resignation to the fact that the mechanic could say "you need a johnson rod" and ultimately having to be beholden to them and whether or not they decided to screw you that day. Cars still seem overwhelming to me, but I'm not as scared of them as I used to be.
"The Big Three Killed My Baby" was originally written for Andre Williams to sing with Two Star Tabernacle and we released the fruits of those sessions back in the Vault however long ago. But to me, it was always perfect when Jack and Meg tackled it. The b-side to their version was originally supposed to be "Stop Breakin' Down" and was pitched as an "anti-automotive" single. But "Red Bowling Ball Ruth", the song "inspired" by AC/DC's "Have a Drink On Me" seemed to be more appropriate here. Song title came from a bowling ball that was kicking around Jack's house at the time that was inscriped "Ruth" and was red. It may have come from the burned out East Warren lanes, but I digress.
The typeface on this single was originally set to be something different, but the designers (Andy and Patti Claydon) found out that it was $500 to use it, so they just ripped it off free-hand, or so I was told. The logo on the original SFTRI edition was a re-appropriation of the Tucker Automobile logo, and instead of it's slogan "The Symbol of Safety" it was labeled "The Symbol of Sympathy."
The huge photograph of a motor on the cover was something left over from a photo shoot or film shoot that Jack had worked on as a production assistant and years after he'd moved out of his Ferdinand house, I found the "insert your money here" tag underneath the rug in that room.
Whomever tells the best story here regarding car breakdown, car repair or anything in the car realm gets a tri-color version of this record. Cool? Cool. Back to diapers for me.
I drove a 2001 Lincoln Town Car for around 4 years and when I got it I knew that time was limited. By the time I was through with it I think it had around 269,000 miles on it and my family bought it new. It had bald tires, a radiator leak, a coolant leak, a transmission leak, an oil leak, and just about any other type of leak you can think of. Battery was fried to shit, didn’t like to start in cold weather which sucked because I lived right below the boarder (CAN). I had coolant leaking into the heater core so I would have coolant blasting out at me whenever I tried to use the heat so I had to drive with the windows down in the winter and when we tried to fix it I lost all my heat and for the next 3 years an insufferable beeping would happen every single time you started the car. 5 sets of 5 beeps. My solution to that was to just turn the music up. I had a 30 minute commute to work and on my way there at 4am it started shaking violently on the highway as I hit 40 mph and had to stay that speed the entire way to work because I thought it would blow up if I went any faster. Turns out I just needed new spark plugs which I got. I was never happier getting rid of that car, I loved it but I hated it. I got a new car 6 months ago and it’s already starting to have problems, it’s almost nostalgic.
My Ford Escort(RIP) had trouble leaking water and overheating.I once tried to fix the radiator hole with Gaffa tape,and in the abscence of water(i was stuck in the middle of nowhere) i topped it up with 2 bottles of flat lemonade that had been left in my car. And it worked!Got me to where i was going but when the air con was on it did give off a whiff of lemons!
It’s 5:30am, already hot as balls on a June morning in southern Missouri, and I’m driving my ’95 Mazda MX6 to my summer job at a chicken plant. Suddenly my headlights begin to dim, and my car steadily loses power until it dies completely, just a few miles from work. I had plans to make the 4 hour drive to St Louis that evening to meet up with my new boyfriend, so with a dramatic sigh and tinge of guilt, I call my mother, who conveniently also works at the plant (hooray for nepotism!). She takes me to work, and after our 12 hour shift of shoveling raw chicken into grinders, we hit AutoZone and I spend my entire life savings on a new battery. No big deal. Day saved. St Louis here I come…… Cut to me alone in the dark, 3 hours later on a desolate exit off I44, suspicious of every noise and wondering if this is where I die. My car had lost all power again while I was driving down the interstate, so I’d coasted down the first exit I came to. Turns out my serpentine belt was long gone (it runs the alternator, so the actual battery wasn’t ever the problem, cool cool cool). My boyfriend was on his way to pick me up, but it would be an hour before he got there. Meanwhile, I’m quickly losing touch with reality, sitting on the hood of my car and hearing what I can only imagine is a pack of wolves howling at the moon. I casually move back into my car. I’m an hour outside of St Louis, I know the sounds aren’t wolves, but what the hell? The minutes are excruciating, but the boyfriend shows up. He spotted me some cash to replace the belt the next day. Day saved. 8 years later we get married. No big deal. Earlier this week I’m telling him about this contest and we’re reminiscing about my crappy car. He says “Yeah and you broke down around Eureka, right by that wolf sanctuary.” …………… I immediately LOSE MY MIND and Google it. It’s real. I’d never mentioned hearing the wolves to him, because duh, we were just dating and I’m not trying to sound crazy. But yeah, the wolf sanctuary literally borders the interstate and the exit where I was stranded. Moral of the story: Trust your gut – if it sounds like wolves, it’s DEFINITELY wolves.
I got my current (and only) car after I graduated college in 2010. It’s a used 2004 Toyota Rav4 that somehow only had 34k miles on it. I got it for a pretty good deal, and then my best friend and I promptly put almost 12,000 miles on it over the next 2 months driving across the country. Honestly, the car held out really well. Other than a couple oil changes, we really didn’t have to do much work on it. We aren’t very creative and named her Carry. The trip did include a near-accident when my buddy fell asleep at the wheel, but that was as close as we came to any real trouble. We saw Jack White with the Dead Weather at Bonnaroo where we worked a beer tent, and we made a swing by Third Man Records in Nashville when it was just one small storeroom and we picked up some limited edition Icky Thump singles. I wasn’t as big of a collector back then and regret not picking up more stuff when I had the chance! I still drive Carry today with over 150,000 miles and she’s still going strong, although she is starting to need a bit more care than she used to.
I had a 2002 Mitsubishi Lancer with manual transmission. In 2014 I had tickets to Philadelphia’s XPN music festival. The first day Ryan Adams headlined, the second day Beck headlined. I live about an hours drive north of Philly. I was driving down solo the first day. The concert is actually held across the Delaware River in Camden NJ. I figured I’d park in Philly and take the ferry over to Camden. Just as I pulled into a parking lot in the city I felt the clutch drop to the floor and the car shut off. Uh-oh I think my clutch died! The car won’t start back up or do anything. Well, I wasn’t in a parking spot yet and a car pulled up behind me. I get out and see some yuppie guy in his 40’s with a nice car with his girlfriend looking all annoyed. I explained my car just died I need to push it out of the way “Can you please give me a hand?”. He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even look at me, he just manages to squeeze his car around me and drive to a parking spot and leave. Real nice, jerk. As I’m pushing my car (and trying to steer it into a spot), I nicer older gentleman walking by comes running up and helps me push it into the spot. I thank him for his kindness (that’s the brother love I’m used to in Philly!). I figure I might as well go to the festival and deal with calling for a tow truck at the end of the day. I go to the kiosk and pay for a full day’s amount of parking. Go back to my car to place my ticket in the windshield and realize my car is locked. Reach into my pockets for my keys, they aren’t there. Look into my car and they’re still hanging in the ignition! Great, I locked my keys in the car! Well, I don’t want to leave my car now with my keys clearly hanging in the ignition. No festival for me today. I call my insurance and ask for a tow truck (since I have road side assistance). They say they can send someone to tow me anywhere in a 50 mile radius, I say that’s fine and they send someone to tow me to the nearest garage. As I wait, I realize I should have my car towed somewhere closer to home so I don’t have to return to the city to pick it up. The tow truck arrives in about 30 min. and I ask him to tow me to a garage just outside the city (but still within my insurance coverage). He says he won’t tow me there, he’ll only tow me to a garage right in the city, so he leaves. I call back my insurance and they send a new tow truck driver. This time I wait an hour and a half for him. He shows up and gets my car loaded up and towed away. I go home, missing the first day of the festival. The next day I’m going with friends, so they drive. We get down without any problems. I see Beck perform for my first time, he puts on an amazing show and I forget all about my problems from the previous day (until a week later when I get my bill for replacing the clutch!).
Back in the 90’s I was 18 and had my first car, an ‘82 mustang. Went to a party on a Sunday at Guelph University about 40 minutes away from my house. Had to be at work 7am Monday and stayed WAY too late. Left around 3am hoping I could get at least a couple hours sleep. So I hit the highway hoping I didn’t get pulled over cause of how fast I was going. About 10 minutes from home and my car started acting up, surging, sputtering, so instead of pulling over I just hit the gas… Bad idea. Heard a LOUD bang an my car filled with smoke. All I could smell was oil. Pulled over, popped the hood, oil everywhere. Started walking down the pitch black highway trying to hitchhike but at 3:30 am only transport trucks, none of them stopped. Thought I’d take a shortcut through the ditch, another bad idea. They were doing construction, 10 foot drop. Slid about halfway down climbed back up wet and muddy. Started hitchhiking again. THEN saw a police car coming up the highway. They pulled over rolled down the window and said Is that your car broken down on the highway? I said yes, can you give me a lift to a pay phone? He laughed, said no and drove away. Finally got to a pay phone, called my dad to pick me up, got a tow and got dropped off at work. Needed a new engine and the mustang lasted another couple years.The worst breakdown I’ve had.
My dad used to paint wildlife art. He used to enter his art in competitions around Michigan. We were down in Jackson for an art show (we were from Mid-Michigan), in a Taurus that, by that point, my dad was sick and tired of fixing. We pulled up to a main stoplight (red), on a HOT summer day. First in line, light turns green, dad gasses it…CLUNK. The transmission went out. The car sat, on a Saturday afternoon, first in line, vehicles honking, not moving at all, on hot asphalt. I was probably around 10 years old. I remember helping him push it around the corner to the gas station parking lot, where we sat for the next 5-6 hours. We used the pay phone to call my aunt and uncle from north Michigan. After communicating with them, we walked across the street to Wendys. We ate hamburgers. We wasted as much time as you can at Wendys. 4 hours later, we helped my uncle push the car onto the trailer. We rode back in the Astro mini-van that was hauling the car/trailer. My dad tinkered enough to get the transmission to “run”. He proceeded to drive it to the nearest dealership to trade it in. The salesmen said “do you know the transmission is slipping? we can’t give you full trade in value.” My dad responded “yes and please, just take it”. PS – We bought the Astro a few years later and drove it throughout my high school years.
I’m a pizza delivery guy and my car is always having issues. Coworkers even began making jokes saying my car needs something fixed every week. Well, a week after I had my accelerator replaced, I parked my car and stepped out and noticed my brake lights were still on. I checked to make sure I didn’t leave my lights on and sure enough, I didn’t. I asked my manager to see what the problem was since I had no idea what could have been wrong with my car. He told me the brake light switch was worn out and I needed a new one. Luckily, the switch was cheap and there was a nearby O’Reilly’s. Now, I was a little excited to go to this O’Reilly’s because there was a cute girl there that I wanted to know more personally. She rang up my order and I left the store happy that I got to see her again. I got back to work and my manager helped fix the car (which he did without using the newly purchased part somehow) as I stood out in the rain using a cardboard box to cover us up a bit as he lied uncomfortably on his back across the the driver’s side floor. Once I got back to work, I kept thinking about this girl so I called the store back and she picked up the phone. I asked her what kind of pizza she liked and that I would deliver it to her on the house. She said she liked just plain cheese. I made a personal cheese pizza for her and another large pepperoni pizza for her coworkers (they were both older men so I assumed at least one of them could have been her dad so I wanted to impress him too just in case). I had a genius plan and wrote “Text me?” along with my phone number inside of the pizza box so when she opened it she would see my cheesy message. Well, it worked out somewhat and we texted each other a few times, but sadly, not even a new friendship blossomed out of out late night conversations.
Well take a guess where my current car is right now ? Stalled four times before finally needing the proverbial tow , just glad it happened hours before the long trek to see Alexa Ray Joel and not midway through the journey to get there . Alexa Ray another day…
When I was very young my parents had a Dodge Monaco that was rusted through on the floorboard in the backseat. If I was fussy my parents just told me to watch the road. Through the hole in the floorboard that may or may not have been big enough to fall through. This was roughly 1980 or so when I was 2.