Fans stand their ground at Jack White’s show
Jack White had been rocking the Rave’s Eagles Ballroom for 95 minutes, encore included, when he smiled, lined up with his bandmates at the end of the stage and took a bow.
Then the house lights came on, roadies started stripping the stage and the sound of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” filled the ballroom.
Sorry Louie. The world was not wonderful. Because there was one huge problem: White hadn’t played The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army,” arguably the most beloved song he’s ever made.
You’ve been to enough concerts to know once cords are unplugged, lights are on and the music plays, there’s no going back.
But the thousands of fans on the ballroom floor would not stand down. Back in January, they fought to get tickets before the show quickly sold out and no doubt, many of them ended up getting tickets for marked-up prices on sites like StubHub.
They obliged White’s controlling request to seal their phones in pouches at the door, the first musician with that requirement for a full tour. And they came even after White released the most polarizing album of his career last month, “Boarding House Reach,” a bizarre genre-jumper complete with some ill-advised rapping from White.
So the fans stayed put, screaming for “Army,” and joining forces to sing the immortal, introductory guitar line: “Bummm Bum Bum Bum Bum Bummmmm Bum.”
And, against all odds, democracy won. Every flurry of a roadie’s scramble elicited hopeful cheers — and when several guitars were brought back onto the stage, the place erupted with high-fives and leaps and hugs and screams. One of the roadies exuberantly pumped his fist in the air, and a moment later, White was back on the stage.
“Well damn Milwaukee,” White said. “Are all the bars closed tonight or something?”
For a second, there was stunning silence, like the air had been sucked out of the room. Then came those familiar guitar lines, and White and the band attacked “Army,” the crowd screaming along like blood-thirsty warriors.
It was a really great moment. Before that, White had put on a really good show.
The debate’s out whether “Reach” is a rewarding example of a rocker pushing his creative boundaries or a mid-life crisis from an artist desperate to seem fresh.
I lean more toward the former, but it’s hard to imagine “Reach” haters not getting swept up by “Corporation,” with White’s murky guitar flexing over ‘70s funk shuffle, and barking like a preacher, his voice distorted by three microphones. At one point he hollered like a digital banshee.
And before “Army,” the intro to “Reach” track “Over and Over and Over” was the most electric moment, with White stalking around the stage like a shark, breaking the tension with an occasional thrust of his guitar and a speaker-rattling riff.
There was plenty of older material too — eight White Stripes songs, plus one song each for former side projects the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather. Familiar as they are, White still treated them like white-knuckle thrill rides, and his four bandmates (including Soullive’s Neal Evans on keys) were clearly having a blast. The standout supporting player though was definitely drummer Carla Azar, evoking the raw power of Meg White with casual backstrokes for the Stripes’ “Cannon” and speeding up the Raconteurs’ “Steady, As She Goes,” pushing it into punk territory.
And White still got to do his “Reach” rap on “Ice Station Zebra.” So in the end, everyone was happy.