Sorry to be late with this. Didn't get back `til late on Sunday night, and had jury duty today. Here's the report I gave to the utterly unimpressed Gathering/Firewatercircus...
Ahoy mateys....
Just got back from an impromptu roadtrip to see Les Stripes Blanc in the foreign environs of Rhode Island. My friend Rob, who lives in New London, Connecticut, rang me up asking if I'd be interested in checking out the band in Providence, Rhode Island. Being that PreggyPeggy had a business conference to goto this weekend, I was given the green light (and I really do have to stuff in as many rock shows as I can before our offspring hatches). Needlessly lengthy details to follow....stop reading now if that sort've thing pisses you off.
So on Saturday, I subway out to Queens to meet Rob, who was in town to see his buddy Tom deliver his dissertation and gain his doctorate (rendering him forever more: "Doctor Tom"). From there, we drive to Rob's former haunt, City Island to meet an old colleague of his for whom he writes commercial copy. After a quick couple o' beers at Gallaghers (populated by a lot of stony-faced fisherman and portly Hell's Angels, who drink somberly to a seemingly endless soundtrack of early-career Bon Jovi on ye olde juke box), we proceed to drive from there to Rob's place in New London to pick up our tix and get directions to the venue....somewhat intriguingly called Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel, which conjured images in my head of an Elvis-themed
Italian restaurant. After a lengthy car ride blasting Firewater, the
Misfits, Suicidal Tendencies, Cop $hoot Cop and....er...Ice Cube, we arrive in Providence, a city I'd neither of us had been to before (noisily crooning a tunelessly a capella rendition of Blue Oyster Cult's "Dominance & Submission", only substituing "Dominance" for "Providence").
A tangled, pre-enlightenment New England city, the rhyme and reason of urban planning seems lost on the relatively ancient town of Providence (second oldest city in the States?), but we eventually found the seemingly elusive (and tiny) Westminster Street. Lupo's turns out to be a fairly run-of-the-mill "rock club," with high-raftered ceilings (and a number of view-blocking columns), but pleasantly plenty of bars wherein to purchase beers. Right as we enter, the opening band shuffles onstage. Dubbed The Whirlwind Heat, these three chicken-chested indie goobers in matching red t-shirts launched into a deafeningly shrill performance of migraine-inducing racket. One drummer, one bass player, one "vocalist"/"keyboardist" (bothw words are in quotations, as the gent in question seemed unable to master
either task). Simply put, they sucked so bad that we were *ALMOST* tempted to leave. The second said band left the stage, the PA started pumping out Funhouse by the Stooges, and our frowns and moods were immediately lifted and buoyed as we simultaneously lurched into some embarassning air-guitaring to the melifluously menacing strains of "Down on the Street."
Prior to leaving for this event, my wife had asked: "Where are you going again?" "Oh, to see the White Stripes in a rock club in Rhode Island." Peggy's eyebrows arched: "A rock club in Rhode Island....like that rock club in Rhode Island that burnt to a crisp last year?" Indeed, prior to the White Stripes coming onstage, there was a very thorough and detailed announcement about the fire-exits, the fire-retardent composition of the stage and the proper way to leave the venue should a fire breakout, casting a somewhat chilling palor over the otherwise celebratory atmosphere.
Without further ado, out come the Whites (Jack looking a bit like a hirsute cross between Johnny Ramone and Robert Smith, Meg looking beautific and....er...busty). In the plug and *BLAAAM!* high volume rock action for the next hour and a half or so. I don't know how many of you feel about this band, but as a live act, they completely cook. I'm quite shocked that more metalheads don't appreciate them (maybe they're put off by the stridently eccentric schtick or the indie rock trappings), but in certain points, Jack and Meg recall and rock as equally hard as AC/DC, Sabbath and vintage Zeppelin in that mutated blooze bombardment sorta way. It's really hard to believe that all that fuckin' sound is coming from only those two performers (you don't miss the bass guitar at all, oddly).
I can't provide a set list (`cos by this time I was well drunk), but suffice to say there was an ample smattering of tracks from all four albums, most of "the hits" included (though due to the maximum capacity crowd, I must confess that Rob and I made for the exit before the end of the first encore, meaning we missed "Fell in Love with a
Girl", if they did indeed play it). I'm somewhat surprised that they ended up in this comparitively tiny venue, but it was very definitively sold the fuck out, as you might've guessed.
More than that, however, by the time we'd reached the end of the set, both of us were pretty exhausted. There was something about that very high volume performance in such a compressed space that really takes the wind out of ya. Every time Meg hit the bass drum, you felt a palpable blow right in your solarplexus. It was a relief, honestly, to be out of there. My ears didn't ring as much the next day (Sunday) as I'd expected, but I have tinnitus anyway, so it's kinda hard to tell. It wasn't any worse than usual, in any case.
Anyway, a fine time. There you have it....
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 17 November 2003 22:08 (twenty-one years ago)