Moss

Last post in the join-the-dots sequence of this week and it’s a hop,a skip and jump from DJ Shadow on Monday to Kate Moss today. Kate collided with pop culture in 1990, the Third Summer Of Love issue of The Face magazine (Spike Island, rave, De La Soul etc) and a football and music fashion shoot in April 1990 (E For England, World In Motion etc). I had the Brazil jersey from the range she’s modelling above and wore it to Spike Island. Since then she’s floated around the music world, dipping in and out. Yesterday’s post included Jack White’s Raconteurs. Jack has at least two connections to Croydon’s supermodel- in his primary band, The White Stripes, Kate starred in the video for I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself, an ace, raw cover of the Dusty Springfield song. Your enjoyment of this video will depend on whether the prospect of Kate Moss pole-dancing in her underwear interests you at all.

Ahem. Moving on.
Another of Jack’s projects, The Dead Weather, saw him playing drums behind Alison Mosshart, whose day job was singing in The Kills. I’ve posted Baby Says before but that’s no reason not to do it again. Stunning song.

Alison’s musical partner in The Kills is Jamie Hince, Kate Moss’s husband. She sang vocals on Primal Scream’s 2002 cover version of Some Velvet Morning (originally sung by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra). This song, and the Disco Heater Dub version which followed it, were produced by, and you knew this was coming surely, Andrew Weatherall. I’m not sure it’s any of those involved’s finest hour but there you go. I’ve more or less managed a Dry January- no, not alcohol, that would be stupid- a Dry January of no Weatherall and no Clash/BAD etc. Abstinence until today.

Seven Nation Noise Revelator

Found this, I think via Twitter. The charmingly named Bastard Brothers have taken this pair’s best known song…

…and this man’s biblical acapella John The Revelator…

… and this band’s Bring The Noise…

… and stuck ’em all together- good fun. Some blues purists seem a little upset about Son House being used in this way but I reckon he wouldn’t have minded. Due to ‘copyright restrictions’ I’m not allowed to embed it. Youtube link here.

>Lost Your Stripes

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The White Stripes announced their split yesterday which probably didn’t come as a surprise to many seeing as they haven’t released an album for four years, cancelled several tours a while back and Jack White’s got two other bands, a production career and a record label. But still, a shame I think. Their first four albums are all first rate and the fifth (Get Behind Me Satan) has got it’s moments. The last one was rubbish, but even that had You Don’t Know What Love Is on it. They made the blues exciting and popular again, had an interesting angle and image, prefered vinyl, made a good racket for a two-piece, could tear it up on stage, chose good cover versions, and Meg’s drumming was perfect whatever the snipers and technique bores say. They were also much more interesting than either of Jack’s other bands, neither of whom I can get a tinsy bit excited about.

This is Red Death At 6.14, which I’m pretty sure was a mail order only 7″ available in red or white vinyl.

Red_Death_at_6_14_-_The_White_Stripes.mp3

Missing File

This is strange, and I guess it means I’m about to get a DMCA notice. The White Stripes Black Jack Davey link and file have been removed and deleted from my Mediafire page. Seems Jack’s cover of a traditional song, released as a b-side nine years ago, can’t be shared. Ah well.

The White Stripes ‘Black Jack Davey’

I’ve become less interested in Jack White as time’s gone on, but when White Blood Cells came out in 2001 they seemed pretty exciting. The whole contrived colour scheme thing, the husband/wife-brother/sister tabloid angle, the Detroit scene they’d spearheaded. Most of all though the primal force of Jack’s vox and guitar and Meg’s drumming, coupled with turning highly unfashionable music (electric blues) into a mass market phenomenon. White Blood Cells was a blast, and the follow up 3l3phant turned them into pop-stars, whilst being one of the best rock albums of that time, streets ahead of peers like The Strokes. I liked large parts of Get Behind Me Satan. The most recent one, Icky Thump, despite it’s Lancastrian dialect title and traditional British influences, was to these ears, a mess. No tunes, over-wrought, squeeling guitars replacing the punk-blues. One song You Don’t Know What Love Is was good, and that was an FM rock ballad. They lost the simplicity, and with it the spark and lightness of touch. I can’t say I was moved by Jack’s heavy 70s style rock bands The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather either. Still, nothing good lasts forever.

This song is fantastic, and shows the imagination at work back in their prime. Black Jack Davey is a traditional British folk song, maybe from the early 1700s, and has been covered by tons of people. The White Stripes take the borders folk song, marry it to their primitive electric punk blues, and run with it. As it’s a British folk song, it concerns class- Black Jack Davey is the wandering, raggle-taggle gypsy, and spies a fair maiden married to the local Lord/Laird. He steps in to save her, liberates her from her wealthy, aristocratic husband, her fine feather bed, her long blue gloves made of Spanish leather, and even her baby, and she declares love for cunning but penniless rogue Black Jack Davey. Even so, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for the Lord, hearing all from the servant, and finding his wife on the river bank in the arms of Black Jack Davey. This retro-updating of a traditional British folk song was the b-side to their breakthrough hit Seven Nation Army, and as a result must have sold bucketloads. Top stuff.

Black_Jack_Davey.mp3