The White Stripes
Greatest Hits
scum stats: too crazy to even parse here...or anywhere
So the day is finally upon us where the White Stripes Greatest Hits is unleashed on the entire world...at least in digital form.
For all you die-hards here, the inside scoop is that the demand for the vinyl was so much more than we had initially anticipated that we could not press up copies fast enough to supply anywhere outside of the United States. Hence the delayed release date for the rest of the world.
Even then, we had to enlist the help of an additional SEVEN different pressing plants to be able to tackle this quantity. The etchings in the run-out grooves of the album, with all sorts of recuts and retests and Roman numerals as prefixes and suffixes are just a DOOZY and I'm pretty confident that no one will ever properly decipher it all...if only because *I* haven't even been able to keep track of it all. I am hard-pressed to name any other new release in the past THIRTY years that would have been on the machines across eight different manufacturers.
And in some weird way, I can think of no better metaphor to encapsulate the feeling of a White Stripes Greatest Hits record. Does anyone outside a couple dozen people in Detroit TRULY understand how weird, how outsider, how unpromising of a band this was considered upon their debut back in 1997? For something so unique, so beautiful, so true to actually cut through and emerge and succeed in the mainstream...from my experience, this almost NEVER happens.
Yet here we are, coordinating with the fine folks at Sony/Columbia and their gargantuan worldwide reach and influence and truly hitting new heights of saturation for the band. And as we're just at the start of that relationship, I'm excited to tease that we've got MUCH more coming.
All of this reminds me of something Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney once said about the White Stripes. I'm paraphrasing, but it was along the lines of "The White Stripes are like the Simpsons. It's SO good you feel like it SHOULD be an underground, unknown, cult-like thing. The fact that it actually became wildly popular across the globe is just that fortunate twist of the cosmos."
The idea of a two-piece band from Southwest Detroit still being talked about over twenty years later, arguably more important than they've ever been, nearly ten years after they've ceased to create new work, who had no struggle bouncing from shows at bowling alleys to hockey arenas on the same day, with a band member who literally built his own state-of-the-art pressing plant three blocks away from the collapsing walls of the first club they ever played. All together it's a journey that is both shouting to those a million miles away and whispering someone right next to you. Dispatching records to the farthest reaches of the planet and hand-delivering one to your neighbor. Writing lyrics that feel quintessentially universal and at the same time as if they were specific to you and your life and thoughts that no one else would ever know.
The duality of being both gargantuan large and intimately small at the same time. After all these years...that's what the White Stripes mean to me.
If you've made it this far...great. Post a comment about what the White Stripes mean to you and the best one will get some beautiful gem from my closet or floor or wherever the gems happen to have fallen on that beautiful day.
PS. got stuck at home today with car troubles so I don't have an actual copy of the Greatest Hits for my photo here. So I made my own. Winner can get this jacket maybe with one of the million test presses tossed inside
PPS. I believe the title of the album is, officially "The White Stripes Greatest Hits" as there was initially a concern that having two different titles "My Sister Thanks You And I Thank You" for standard and "Aside From That And Besides This" for the Vault would make it ineligible for chart placement. But a bunch of new chart rules changes made all of that a moot point anyway.
I grew up listening to classic rock (still do) but when I discovered The White Stripes, I had to rethink all of that. I was so much more impressed by what these two could do so much more than a giant group on stage. Less is more. And all of this has relindled my love for vinyl I had when I was a kid. All this because of Jack and Meg!! It’s about time we get a Greatest Hits! Thank you.
I needed to fill a void after the death of Jerry Garcia in 95 leaving me with no shows to go see so I got back into going to smaller shows downtown. Seeing live music at the Majestic, St Andrews and Clubland (pre State Theater, pre-pre Fillmore) filled that void and then a couple years later BAM, the Stripes hit. I’ve always had a diverse music collection and the Stripes added to it. Since then Third Man Records has fueled adds to the record collection like the Hives, Jerry Lee Lewis and this little gem once it arrives.
The best band of all time! Every time whenever I hear something about the White Stripes, I immediately sign myself up. They’ve created history for future music and musicians all around the world! Everyone must hear the White Stripes no matter what!!
The White Stripes don’t mean any one thing to me, much more to me, they evoke a sense of nostalgia- for my youth, for my musical evolution and path… and for all the good times in small clubs so close to my favorite bands I could touch the bandmembers shoes…. up close and personal. I miss all those great times, and when I spin a WS platter, I am transported right back there.
Sad to say I just didn’t get The White Stripes when they came out. Busy being single parent and the bandwidth to take in new bands and music just wasn’t there. fast forward a bunch of years and my kid is now in music production school and bugging me to get into vinyl with him. That coincides with the Lazaretto release and I join the Vault. Not only did that lead to discovering The White Stripes but also Raconteurs, Margo Price, Tyler Williams, The Dead Weather, The Kills, and more. It has been a great ride and part of my rediscovering the absolute joy in music. Unfortunately due to a Covid related downturn in income this is my last Vault package for a while. Will miss the music, the discoveries and your weekly posts. While I still have access would love to read your review of the documentary on the Detroit hardcore scene circa 1981-82 called ‘Dope, Hookers and Pavement: The Real and Imagined History of Detroit Hardcore’.
Ash said it best – “Groovy”.
my brother introduced me to the white stripes when i was too young to remember, their music has always been in my life. my earliest memories of them, and music in general is singing little ghost and my doorbell as a toddler when get behind me satan had just come out. that album still holds the most special place in my heart out of all of them. revisiting them when i was 14, jack became the reason i ever looked at guitars twice and picked up my own. i never wanted to play the drums until i heard meg. i never thought about writing my own music until i heard what jack and meg made. i never wanted to perform until i saw jack tear up a stage, from youtube to real life eventually. even today i’ll re visit a song and the lyrics will take a new personal shape for me. my first tattoo is almost definitely gonna be a peppermint. music is one of the core parts of my life, and it all leads back to the white stripes.
Thank you, Jack and Meg, for the fiber optic music that you gave us
20 years ago, always surprised, always satisfied with the new music coming from these two! Didn’t think I would be looking for vinyl from the White Stripes 20 years later, yet here I am getting the last 20 Vault #’s. The inside scoop is I am getting excited for this Vault release to show up!!
I can’t express how I feel so I stole this: And the glade heaved a sigh, and the tall grass reclined, in curious patterns once rendered in whim. Far off in thunder the hard world replied, as iced pines exploded and screamed on the breeze. Down bore the sun, a chill just behind. The pool, grown blood-red, fended frost from its rim. Details dissolved in the oncoming tide. The pool dimmed to black. Night seeped through the trees. Now flora found slumber while, pulsing below, the pool was infused with a soft ruby glow.