THE WHITE STRIPES
The White Stripes were an American rock duo, formed in 1997 in Detroit, Michigan. After releasing several singles and three albums within the Detroit music scene, The White Stripes rose to prominence in 2002, as part of the garage rock revival scene. Their successful and critically acclaimed albums White Blood Cells and Elephant drew attention from a large variety of media outlets in the United States and the United Kingdom. The band dissolved in 2011 after a lengthy hiatus from performing and recording. Their last three albums each won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. (More from Wikipedia)
With all of that as background, the first hint that garage rock might at long last find widespread appeal came with the 1998 release of the first album, The White Stripes by the rock duo the White Stripes. At first guitarist and vocalist Jack White and drummer Meg White pretended to be brother and sister (they were actually previously married; the members of the new wave band Eurythmics, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart were also former lovers), causing Rolling Stone magazine to run a tongue-in-cheek cover story on the band: "The White Stripes: The New Carpenters?"
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The White Stripes' third album, White Blood Cells, featured hit songs like "Fell in Love with a Girl" (the video for this song that used animated Legos is one of the most amazing that I have ever seen) and "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground". Besides having a definite retro attitude in his music, Jack White also used vintage microphones, instruments and amplifiers in recording his music. While there had been a few two-person rock bands over the years – such as House of Freaks, a band from Richmond, Virginia that formed in 1986 – the power trio of guitar, bass and drums is about as small as most rock bands were previously willing to go. Being able to successfully pull off a rock duo requires an adept drummer; but Meg White, for one, is more than equal to the task.
Jack White has since formed another successful rock band called the Raconteurs. He also performed music for the 2003 Civil War-era film Cold Mountain and even had an acting role; for a time, Jack White dated one of his co-stars, Renée Zellweger. This was a hint of White's appreciation for classic country music as well: He master-minded acclaimed comeback albums for two different country legends, Loretta Lynn for her 2004 album Van Lear Rose; and Wanda Jackson, the "Queen of Rockabilly" in her 2011 release, The Party Ain't Over. Jackson has a concert scheduled at the nearby Hollywood Casino in Bay St. Louis next month, and I can't tell you how excited I am at the prospects of seeing her!
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The king of all of the new garage-y bands is probably the blues-rock duo the Black Keys (sometimes viewed as a sort of twin of the White Stripes).
(January 2013)
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