This one is a doozy.

Roundabout July/August 2000, the White Stripes were in the attic at home base 1203 Ferdinand working on a song that would eventually be titled "Red Death at 6:14."

Through some sort of sonic alchemy, Jack's amplifier had turned radiophonic. The amp was either a Silvertone with a too-big-for-it's-own-good 15" speaker or a silver faced Fender Twin Reverb. Based on the hum I'm hearing, I wanna say it's the Silvertone, but can't imagine why Jack would be using that once he'd already had the Twin.

When an amp turns radiophonic, you can send and receive sound transmissions from it. Someone way smarter than me will have to explain the nitty gritty, but apparently this occurrence isn't all THAT uncommon (though in twenty plus years of being in bands I've never experienced it except for this instance).

So in short...some guy just starts talking to Jack and Meg through the amplifier. He's most likely speaking through a CB radio and seems to go by the handle Rude Rick. He drops his location as the intersection of Michigan and Scotten which is not even a mile-and-a-half up the road from the Ferdinand spot.

Towards the end of the recording you can even hear Jack say "Hey Ben, come here..." and that's me, walking into the room, confused as hell as to what was going on, but insanely intrigued at the same time. I won't spoil anything else because the entire running of this tape is just worth it's weight in gold.

Listening back this seems so weird, so unexplainable, so once-in-a-lifetime. An overall feeling that seems less and less common with the advent of the internet. I keep coming back to the documentary about Toynbee Tiles and how this reminds me of all that weirdness. A simpler time. I miss these oddities.

Quick bits:

- this recording was made on the end of the tape containing the acoustic "De Stijl" demos that are part of Vault package #44. Stars right after the "Vanilla Fields" track. The flipside is the master take of the Stripes cover of "China Pig" as featured on their Sub Pop single. All seemingly recorded on a boombox with a condenser microphone. One-track.

- We had originally planned on including this Rude Rick audio as part of the Vault set, but as there's no music and it's so oddly esoteric, we thought actual music would make way more sense. It's possible that this Rude Rick session recorded over some other acoustic demos, but I've got no real way to prove or disprove it.

- to this day I have no idea who in the hell "Rude Rick" actually is. I imagine a canvas of old school Southwest Detroiters would be necessary to discern his true identity, and if I ever get back to Detroit, such an investigation is on my long-list. If anyone reading here has any insight, through QSL cards or whatever, please do tell. I'm dying to know.

- this recording is edited for length. The full exchange was approximately 3 minutes longer than you hear here. All that was removed was dead air with that amp humming in the background. Seriously, there is no other sound that could immediately bring me back to a specific room than that amp hum. That hum smells like carpet remnants. Like broken guitar strings wound into miniature crowns of nickel and copper. Like an oppressive summer heat with nary a fan to cool you off. Lots of good times in that attic.

- the photos here are all taken in the aforementioned attic. There's also film footage of the band in said attic, both the VPRO Lola De Musica special about Detroit garage rock and the Arthur Dottweiler vignettes. If you've not seen 'em, check it out...

Third Man Records · Rude Rick Meets the White Stripes