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.
The White Stripes sparked an idea.. or I should say a realization for me so many years ago. Something that I will never forget and changed the way that I look at not only music, but life. I believe that " Perfection is in the imperfection " is the best way to say it. Or even, the true joy of listening to music is in the “imperfections”. The “in the moment” energy that Jack and Meg brought to every show is inspiring. I’ve never been more excited to see a live show, as I couldn’t wait to hear and see how Jack and Meg were going to perform the songs that I love and mean so much to me on that particular day. The white stripes helped open my eyes to how amazing live music can be. Always amazing, forever evolving. No band has ever impacted my life in such an important way
o.k., I was reading thru the comments hoping to find someone else who saw The White Stripes in the early days at one of the bars or bowling alleys they played and did not see one. I did not look thru all of them but if someone is out there that saw them in Detroit in the late 90’s please comment. I am not 100% certain but I believe I saw them in Hamtramck. Back then I used to go to the bars often and remember a 2 piece (girl on drums, guy on guitar) one night. It could not have been some other band??? They sounded great but in a drunken stupor I don’t remember the name.
The fact that two people could rock so much was so incredibly inspiring that they paved the way for 2 piece rock bands that we are still seeing the effect of today, thanks for making rock stardom appear achievable again
My family had moved to England from Michigan. I was 10 and needless to say I wasn’t happy about leaving home. Well one night we’re watching Top of the Pops and on comes this band “from Detroit Michigan..” Pretty sure they played Fell in Love with a Girl, but it was just what we needed, pure rock n roll from the homeland. The next day we went to some big chain cd store and bought all the white stripes we could find. Hotel Yorba became our anthem. Maybe not so much a “what they mean to me” but anyways that music stuck and made being away from a home a little bit easier.
I remember discovering The White Stripes shortly after high school. My first apartment was an actual warehouse and I would listen to White Blood Cells and Elephant while gleefully sitting on the floor. I remember how stoked I was to have my place with my music to listen to. The joy of reading the liner notes and deciphering lyrics are still so fresh in my mind 17 years later. That’s the same joy I get when I get any package from Third Man. Thank you guys and gals for keeping us in the grooves during this year!
I can remember first hearing the white stripes and thinking the raw chaotic power and thinking man, there must be like 2 or 3 guitars blasting on this. I loved it. and when I realized it was just Jack and Meg, I couldn’t comprehend. instantly loved it and couldn’t wait to hear more.
In a little aside when I was younger I really liked Seven Nation Army (of course) and Conquest and would listen to those and imagine what it sounded like in my head, always imagining lots of people playing such loud music, so you can imagine my surprise upon many years later finding out that the songs I imagined in my youth took an army to make only took 2! (plus the horns in Conquest)
I’ve been listening to the White Stripes since I was a little girl, I was born in 2002 so I grew up with their music, but it wasn’t until I got older that their music really resonated with me. At a time when everything around me seemed superficial, when most of my interactions seemed contrived in order to fit whatever social setting I was in, the White Stripes’ music became a beacon of honesty for me in which I rarely got to indulge. I was maybe 11 at the time and that was the first time I had chosen for myself something to believe in and live by-authenticity. Since then I have grown to become obssesed with many facets of music, but the White Stripes are something so unique I always find myself coming back finding new meaning in the music and falling in love all over again. The duality of the White Stripes is, in my opinion, what makes their music so brilliant. So, in short, the White Stripes represent honesty for me, and they make me proud to be a Michigander :)
If you’re looking for liner notes for your variant cover, you would be hard pressed to find anything better than everything written below.
The white stripes have been feeding us all since first exposure no matter where or when that might have been (although most can remember specifics of their own first encounters), and have taught me personally that beauty and truth are not just within the simplicity of notes played and beats that drive them, but the space between as well. I almost never comment on these posts but will from time to time read some comments, and the noises made in the tune of “why yet another white stripes vault package/ release” even within our TMR community is a real bummer. I find it such a sweet sweet gesture of collaboration between Jack, Blackwell, and of course the fans, that we can pay tribute to Meg by celebrating this band with each release. Happy Birthday Meg Martha, and thank you so much to the TMR community, both fans and employees. Keep up the good work!
Love, Toeknee