Jack White
“Over and Over and Over”
limited edition one-sided tri-color, 200 something copies pressed, complete with custom picture sleeve that will be slightly different from the standard released version
Do you guys know how pumped I am?
For the record, I first heard this monster riff in 2005 at Jack’s house while he and Meg were recording “Get Behind Me Satan.”
I am pretty sure that the “Blue Orchid” riff pre-dates this one by a few days, but in my mind, they exist hand-in-hand. While “Blue Orchid” smashed that recording process wide open and gave Jack the inspiration to make that album as bad ass as possible, THIS riff, inarguably, is ten times stronger. I feel like Jack was originally calling it “Thermonuclear Counter-Thrust” but maybe I’m just imagining that. I can find no contemporaneous documentation of that name.
There are two takes of demo recordings of this song from 2005 (with the riff played solely on fuzz bass). There are demo recordings from 2007 with the White Stripes trying it in rehearsal leading up to the tracking of the “Icky Thump” album. Imagine the guitar profile more in line with the octave-pedaled presence of the song “Icky Thump” and that’s a good start for understanding the 2007 version. I guess the Raconteurs tried it but I never heard any evidence, same with the Dead Weather. It was apparently the main track that Jack and Jay-Z worked on together in 2009, under the title “Ray Bans” or “Behind My Ray Bans” and although I’ve never heard that working, I’m told to imagine the phrase “Behind my Ray Bans” to coincide with the last five notes of the riff.
As Jack has already said, this had been his white whale. We sincerely considered including the ’07 demo as part of the “Icky Thump X” Vault package last year. I have no recollection of Jack ever previously giving me such an impassioned plea…”I just really think we shouldn’t put this on the Vault” he said. My response was pretty matter-of-factly, “Well, it’s your label, so please don’t feel like you have to convince me.” Maybe he was trying to convince himself?
Regardless, at the end of 2017 when Jack finally had played me this version you hear now, upon the end of the song, I looked at him and said “I’ve been waiting twelve years to hear this song with lyrics.”
The final version of this song is everything I’d ever dreamed it would be. It is my favorite moment on the album, with the coda to “Humoresque” being a close second. I cannot wait to see this monster unleashed unto a sell-out crowd at Little Caesar’s Arena, a stone’s throw away from the Gold Dollar where this whole mess got started.
I’ve got an extra copy of this limited tri-color to give away here. AUTOGRAPHED by Jack White, today, explicitly for this purpose. Don’t use my give-away here as an excuse to miss going to any number of the listening parties we’re throwing at record stores worldwide though. Even though we’re giving away tri-colors at the listening parties, none of those will be autographed. Man we spoil you kids.
As for the giveaway, post a comment, can be about whatever, but maybe talk about a significant wait you’ve endured in life. Can be funny, pithy, in iambic pentameter, whatever. The “best” comment will be solely determined by me. Please chime in by noon central time on Tuesday, March 13th.
***WINNER HAS BEEN CONTACTED***
I worked over a summer in high school making jewelry. The pay was terrible for a practice that took me so long to perfect. Nonetheless, I worked solely to buy a guitar at the end of the summer, my first quality guitar. The wait between working and actually buying the guitar was long, but it gave me time to think about what I wanted in this guitar I was working so hard for. I couldn’t decide, I would change my mind every week. There were functions in some guitars that I couldn’t find in others and realized that a stock guitar wasn’t going to fulfill my needs as a player. I started to play with the idea of jazzmaster circuits, and came up with a schematic that would be unique to my guitar. At the end of the summer I had saved enough and ordered the parts, starting another long wait. I finally received the package, opening the packages and laying the parts out on the kitchen table made me more excited than I had ever been. I started assembling the hardware first, before attempting the circuitry. It went smoothly and I was proud of the work I had done so far. The wiring was a different matter, I assembled the circuit spending hours cutting and soldering, but it didn’t work, there was a grounding problem. I spend days trying to fix it before I swallowed my pride and went to a professional. He looked at it and cleaned up my soldering joints, but said that there was nothing inherently wrong with the wiring, except that I had missed one ground connection. I finally attached the pick guard, strung it up, and played my guitar, the words were so sweet. The journey that this process took me on was well worth it, and I’ve never felt a connection with an object quite as strong before. It was one of the most worthwhile things I have ever done.
Long wait? Every wait is long if it is something you absolutley need, whether its waiting 4 years for a new Jack White album, or waiting at the dmv to have a miserable person shit out a new drivers license for you. One time I was waiting in line for a taping of conan, my buddy and I drove from philly to new york one morning because we had gotten tickets for his week long residency taping the show there, and after hours of traffic we get in line for the show, and while waiting, this man walked up to me and asked “Do you have any change?” I politely said I didn’t, which was totally true, I had my debit card on me but no cash to spare, he then pulled out his iphone and began to call someone while walking away, but as karma dictates he then proceeded to trip and fall face first into a steamy pile of dog crap. It is 100% true and something out of a sketch show, sorry got a little of track here, we were supposed to write something about waiting right?
Tubbalicious endures waiting everyday…in between treats, giving the look that he too has been waiting 12 years to hear “wanna treat?” (of course this happens while Jack’s riff blasts in the back ground & the treat is tossed up into the air, and in super slow motion Tubbalicious leaps his English Bulldog body towards the sky, doing a back flip & catching the treat. I suspect Mr. Blackwell’s reaction to much like this.)
I met my now wife 9 years ago because of the White Stripes. It’s kind of a nerdy story, but I was on a virtual life online game. My screen name was BallandBiscuit. The virtual woman walked up to my virtual man and said, “The White Stripes, Right?” From there we talked all things Jack white, music, art, movies, philosophy. We talked for eight hours that first night. From there on we talked eight hours or more for the next few months. It tore me up not being with her and having to wait. I then hopped on a Greyhound and went on a three day bus ride from Washington State to Cleveland OH. A month later I sold all of my stuff, (except my albums and turntable) and moved to Cleveland. We were engaged the following February, married the next month. 8 years married and two amazing music loving kids later, we still bond over our love of everything Jack White, music and art. My life has been very serendipitous, and The White Stripes is directly and indirectly responsible for three lives (the third life is because I was on an emergency response and saved a man from drowning, and if I didn’t live in Cleveland he wouldn’t have been found drowning). I owe everything good in my life to that one song. I can’t wait for the Detroit and Cleveland show.
I waited ten years to see jack White live and when I did in San Francisco during the blunderbuss tour I cried I have never been in so much awe it was worth the wait plus more it was a defining moment in my life cause I saw someone whose music changed me and saved me in a dark time of my life
There’s a long wait every winter, from the end of baseball season until Opening Day the following year. While the end of a long season is marked by the crisp exciting air of the World Series, it soon turns to frigid cold. Players retreat to home, ballparks are shuttered, and vegetation begins to die off. But with the spring rain comes new life, fresh grass, and that beautiful sun shining on your face. The wait is long hard, but the payoff at the end is well worth it. Play ball!
My whole point was- thanks jack from Tara and Meg in Edmonton, Canada. I have no idea why you came here, ‘cause it’s not great in any special way (literally, last year they had to change the city slogan from “city of champions” because we all know it’s not true.). But you came and showed us music is truly sacred. Thank you. :)
I remember sitting 5 years ago at my neighbours house. We were waiting for the rain to go off to continue a game of football (soccer, im scottish so hence the different terminology and hence the rain). My friends dad turns to me and says he got a new album through the post that day, one he’d been waiting on for quite sometime. He placed it on the turntable, sat the needle on the vinyl (which was also my first every vinyl experience). The album that commenced was Blunderbuss. That night I went home and listened to all of Jack’s catalogue that I could find as the rain never ceased. I’d waited 16 years to hear Jack’s music as well as any form of music on vinly, and both were more than definitely worth the wait.
My comment didn’t show up…oh well.
As a child I use to listen to my dad play stairway to heaven all the time on guitar, he played it so much that I believed it was the only song he knew. Some years later at the age 14, I took one of my dads old guitars and started teaching myself, the first thing I ever learned was the riff of purple haze, at the time is was my favorite song, it took me weeks to get it down. A year later i was introduced to jack white. And I have to say, jack white has changed my life completely and how I view life, he has introduced me to great musician like son house, blind willie mctell, Loretta Lynn and much much more. I have this obsession with him that I bought any equipment he used, so I saved my money for a big muff fuzz pedal, after playing with that for a while, I decided to buy an octave pedal after saving for a while. That pedal has changed m life and the way I write music. Because of jack, i want to become a musician and change so many peoples lives like how he changed my life. Also if it wasn’t for him I would never have gotten into vinyls. I remember going to the third man shop in Nashville and in Detroit, I was so amazed. I even recorded a cover of pay day by Mississippi john hurt in the vinyl recording booth. I would play countless hours on guitar listening to the white stripes and jacks solo stuff trying to learn every single song. All I got to say is thank you Jack for changing my life completely. I waited my whole life for something like this to give meaning to my life and change it for good