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.
If it weren’t for The White Stripes, my big sister may have never discovered the true power of rock. I would have been forced to tag along with her to countless R&B concerts over the years, never knowing the mosh pits of GA rock shows. She wouldn’t have found out about Third Man until Beyonce’s album came out. We also wouldn’t have seen so much of the U.S. and racked up so many frequent flier miles. Dear The White Stripes, my sister thanks you, and I thank you!
The White Stripes meant musical evolution for me in 2003. I had never heard of them until Seven Nation Army was released for I was in an evil mind altering MySpace Mob war. The only music I heard came to me in videos sent to me via some mobster playing the love game between hitlists and offing rival gangs.Breaking Benjamin and Smashing Pumpkins songs were the only music I heard until The White Stripes brought me back to reality with seven Nation Army. They managed to save me from a terrible gaming addiction,an internet stalker,and got me back to showering, sleeping,and consuming solid foods instead of 5 Rock Star energy drinks a day. I evolved into a more refined and sophisticated me.The White Stripes ushered me into a different phase of my life and I never looked back or relapsed. Mob mentality was replaced with unrestrained individuality.
The White Stripes mean music to me. Chaos. Noise of a thousand cannons propelled by a red guitar and a white drumset. They mean getting older, and with age wiser and richer. Mean gripping my wife’s hand, like I did when we saw them live (first row!) 13 years ago, not letting go of her, rather growing, ascending with the music that made us float that day and still does. Mean we’ll dance and sing their songs until we’re too old to continue doing so, or we forget who we are. Even then, I’m sure they’ll mean that we’ll remember, even if for just one song.
The White Stripes were a love letter written to Detroit.
They molded my youth, and are forever ingrained in my DNA.
The White Stripes allow you to revisit childhood, reexamine loss, and fall in love with every drop of the needle. They influence you into adventure, and flood your senses into an amusement park of peppermint swirls and love.
The White Stripes are LOVE.
I can see your face!
They just mean good rock to me. In a world of alternative everything, the stripes hit the scene with blasting drums and blistering guitar. It was loud, in your face and really good breath of fresh air. I was getting tired of the same sound coming out of the radio and the stripes changed all that. They have been my go-to band for everything art!
Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to see them on stage, which I greatly regret. But through the pictures, the videos and their unique sound… they give off such a powerful aura that I could listen to them or watch them play for hours.
That’s all I love about music. I discovered them in 2000 …. after a few seconds of listening. I knew that I will love this group for life!
the White stripes are part of the great history of music. It’s a group that will cross time
The song Seven Nation Army was played by my oldest son’s marching band years ago. They still play it to this day at their high school football games in Ohio. My youngest son was also in band and hearing them still playing that song reminds me of all the years of them practicing and enjoying music together. My oldest son would have been 31 this year and to this day that song has a special place in my heart of all those school years that have come and gone so fast. I can honestly say that listening to their other songs, there is not one that I don’t like.
When the wife and I decided to start a family, hanging out at the record shop and going to see shows was slowly put on hold. Also it put a hold on discovering new music, running our business and working seven days a week was also thrown into the mix .Four kids down the road I remember reading the review of Elephant in a local paper and two points made me rush out the next day to pick up a vinyl copy of the album . First was that only LP’s were sent out to critics and "no computers were used during the writing, recording, mixing or mastering of this record". I thought that this was so cool and I needed this record. Listening to the record was an awakening, not just to the White Stripes but for myself as it was time to discover again.
It’s not hyperbole to say they changed my life. I won’t go crazy and say they saved it or anything like that, but they definitely changed it. I grew up emulating my older brothers and kind of stealing their tastes in music, hopping onto grunge about 5 years after it died. The White Stripes were the first band that were mine. They were also my gateway drug into music and vinyl addiction. I’ve discovered so many bands through Third Man and just last month finally completed my Vault record collection. 20 years and thousands of dollars later, I have the White Stripes to thank. So I thank you, even if my brothers don’t.