Jack White Handed Me His Microphone

*****Sorry this is the only picture I have. This is not what I expected to happen. I had to choose between using my photo pass and keeping my front row spot. You can ask anyone in the front row with me... it was a difficult group decision to make. If I had used the pass, I would have had to leave the seating area after the alloted 3-song time period you get in the photo pit, and there's no way I'd be able to fight my way back up to the front.*****

Wednesday I saw Jack and Meg at the Wallingford Theater, which is in the middle of Nowhere, CT. It was there that I stood front row, right in front of Meg for a show that made '07 feel like '67. I felt like I was in the crowd for a Jimi Hendrix show.

Jack wore bright red pants, a bright red shirt, and a pair of bright red aligator leather shoes he jumped around in all over the bright red slick floor his incredibly well-dressed stage hands (pictured below) had put there for him. His iconic shadow lingered on the bright red wall behind him as he tore ass through each blues-smothered song, especially when he played keys and guitar at the same time. Or when he pressed the guitar up against the stairs and the mic stand, because who uses fingers to play guitar? Or when he moon-walked across the stage. This guy knows all the tricks. Oh, and Meg is very sexy. I have no idea why anyone would divorce her, but I trust Jack's decision. She was simultaneously silent and ear-shattering and her sassy attitude was priceless. I've completely fallen in love. She's a sly little coy beauty who, along with Jack, belongs in another time period entirely.



Me and my small Asian sidekick showed up to the event 3 hours early. We had GA Pit tickets, so we were determined to be front and center. But we were not determined enough, it seemed. If at some point you ever decide you're a really big fan of something... you're probably not. And while obsession isn't always a bad thing, let me tell you about the time I went to a White Stripes concert and saw a bunch of fans that made me sick, made me hate fans and made me pissed to be a fan....

There is always someone showing up for the show earlier than you. And we didn't care, this was a concert. We'd done our part to shwo up early and we were excited for what Jack had in store for us. This was his and Meg's night and we just happened to be there. This was a White Stripes concert, the only real concert left for us these days. We were all in this together, but these fools were ready to kill to get what they wanted...front and center. If the Whites knew about these people, they would have left.

As the pompous ones formed a line at one door to the seating area of the theater, the decent folks (me and my new friends who shared my disgust) banded together and formed their own line at another door on the other side of the rear of the theater. For the next 45 minutes the two lines remained at war until the dickhead line got let in first. We ran down stairs, throw hallways and right up the stage. It was, as I'd assumed, big enough for everyone. The decent folks helped eachother out, once more people came. We saved spots for eachother on the front line when someone went to the bathroom or the merch table.

It was exactly the way a concert should be. A celebration of the one thing that has the power to fill the world with color and sound and meaning: real music made by real people, seemingly untouched by anything evil. Jack and Meg have found a way to produce pure creativity and pure energy, without a filter and without apology. But who'd ask them to say sorry?

I found the setlist on a few sites, but only one gave me what I wanted. I wanted to know the name of the song that Jack asked me to sing. That's right...you read the headline...he handed me his fucking microphone. It was during the encore, and Blue Orchid was over. Jack had started a new song, and I was surprised to have never heard it.

I was singing along for virtually the entire show, but I had to just listen to this one. It could have been a minute into the song, it could have been five...I'll never know, but he stepped out of his red-heaven stage setting and walked up to the front of the stage where no lights could find him. Right in front of me. He's singing, playing guitar, and towering over me. I reached up for a fist-pound and locked eyes screaming something. Then he handed me (or maybe it was the girl next to me) the microphone. She got it first and just held it. Still as death. She handed it to me. Jack mouthed the words to me. I stopped screaming and actively dropped my jaw. I was as stone-still as anyone should be when Jack White hands you something. I screamed "OH SHIIITTTTTTT" into it and passed the mic down the line of people reaching for it. Someone yelled "You're excellent!" but nobody knew the words to the song. Priceless. Awkward, too, I guess...but priceless.

The man in red walked back to his red zone and I think I saw him laughing at us. His classy stagehand yoinked the mic back by the cord and he put it back in the stand. Jack went right into "Ball and Biscuit" and the crowd went wild for the impromptu keyboard solo he slipped in there.

I don't know if you've ever gone to a concert hoping to actually get on stage and spend some time with the band, of course not actually believing it'd happen, but I felt like it'd had just happened to me. Turns out the song I was supposed to sing (Party of Special Things to Do) was released by SubPop in 2000 as a 7-inch single. It goes for $50 on ebay now. It's like the rarest song they've got or something, and he basically asked me (and the girl next to me, whatever) to sing it with him. I think I have nothing more to say about that show, but that'd probably a lie.

Thanks for reading...here's what they played:

Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
Yer Blues
I Think I Smell a Rat
Icky Thump
Sugar Never Tasted So Good
Hotel Yorba
I'm Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman
The Big Three Killed My Baby
Now Mary
Catch Hell Blues
I'm Slowly Turning Into You
The Same Boy You've Ever Known
As Ugly As I Seem
300 M.P.H. Torrential Blues
Astro/Jack the Ripper

Encore:
Blue Orchid
(Captain Beefheart’s) Party of Special Things to Do
Ball and Biscuit
I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself