Black and White Stripes

One of most treasured memories from my six years in Detroit came on my grandmother's 74th birthday. We piled into my grandfather's Buick and drove down to Hamtramck, once the largest community of Polish inhabitants outside Poland itself, to the Polish Village Cafe.

The Cafe is barely big enough for a small bar and a few picnic tables. Besides the authentic Polish golumpki, the real attraction of the cafe is the music. A tiny three-piece band—drums, trumpet, and piano—squeeze into the corner on weeknights and play old jazz standards so the old and faithful can dance in the narrow aisle. This is where I saw Meg White. She walked down the well-trodden staircase to the basement restaurant; I made her instantly. She was wearing a white leather jacket dyed with a black 1950s pattern and had a very tall, very attractive pre-hipster boyfriend in tow. They sat down and ordered beet soup, otherwise unnoticed. I turned to my grandmother to explain that the tall girl sitting one table over was famous. Worldwide-tour famous. Biggest-garage-rock-band-on-earth famous. My grandmother turned to me and said, "Forest, I want you to meet my friend Meg."

That was 2005. The White Stripes have come a long way since then and a long way from Detroit. Jack White now resides in Nashville, Tennessee. I've heard that Meg spends some of her time in Silver Lake. They've been a band for more than ten years. Jack’s more willing than ever to hang up the red-and-white outfit to play with other bands: First the Raconteurs with Brendan Benson and more recently with The Dead Weather and Alison Moshart. Reportedly, his favorite quote about The White Stripes is about how they are simultaneously the most fake band and most real band in the world.

But that’s always been the case. From the beginning, it's been easy to predict the demise of The White Stripes. Their tenth anniversary tour, for instance, was primed for overreaching; there were shows in each of Canada's 10 provinces and 3 territories, shows booked in towns smaller than the capacity of Madison Square Garden, and free concerts given for early bird fans.

Thank goodness Emmett Malloy was there to document everything in his new tour film Under Great White Northern Lights, which came out on DVD on Tuesday, March 16th. Flux screened the film screened at the Egyptian Theatre on Monday.

Malloy's technique (filming most of the tour in grainy, black-and-white reversal film) deftly handles one of the band’s detractors’ most persistent criticisms: That the Stripes more concerned with image than importance. Malloy's footage grounds their image in realism. That's not to say that Malloy's journey with the band doesn't dip into the surreal—scenes too strange to be fake appear throughout. Witness Jack and Meg, exhausted but smiling after a show, walking through the backstage door at midnight to see that the Yukon sun is still shining. Witness the Stripes' "One Note Show" (a free concert where the duo appear on stage, play a very spirited F-note, and then walk offstage to chants of, "One more note!"). These moments (and there are many others too good to spoil) were Malloy's focus and the reason why White Lights doesn't move like a typical concert film. There are few full-length songs; Malloy only has time for the breakdown of "I'm Slowly Turning Into You" or the guitar solo from "Icky Thump." He would rather point his lens back on the tour itself. And yes, Malloy captures the heat that the pair still pack, ten years later. Meg, when pointedly asked to explain the popularity of the band by a Canadian truck driver, gets to the heart of it: "We make a lot of noise."

In White Lights, the Stripes songs you love are dragged out on stage, drenched in napalm, and set afire. Leading the attack is Jack White, who has kept things authentic with that ethereal scream, those deafening guitar chords, that midwestern (dare I say "Detroit") work ethic. Malloy captures all of it. Every note. My grandmother would be proud.

Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog_post.aspx?id=24290&blogid=2160