Jack White Plays With Girls!
I’ve seen the White Stripes in Los Angeles many times - from the Troubadour to the Greek Theater. On August 10, 2010, Jack White, now solo, was touring behind his latest album, Blunderbuss, and was scheduled to play some giant arena dome complex in L.A. I was a little over a year and a half into fatherhood, and much to my regret, I knew there was no way I would get to that show.
My daughter and I were visiting my mom that morning in Orange County. In the afternoon, we got in the car and started driving north up the 5 Freeway, home to Studio City, when I got a call from my friend and neighbor Danny Benair.
Danny was/is the drummer for two critical bands in the L.A. rock scene of the 80s – the Quick and the Three O’Clock. The latter was a lynchpin in L.A.’s much loved Paisley Underground, along with Dream Syndicate and others. Danny always knows the latest, coolest, hippest thing, and like a good friend, he shares.
My daughter and I were visiting my mom that morning in Orange County. In the afternoon, we got in the car and started driving north up the 5 Freeway, home to Studio City, when I got a call from my friend and neighbor Danny Benair.
“Jack White’s playing a surprise gig at Mariachi Square in half an hour. They just announced it. Dianne and I will meet you there.”
Danny is really excited. Where is Mariachi Square? I ask. I don’t know, he responds, but get there. We’ll meet you.
I enter the name into my Waze, and I’m shocked to find it’s right off the 5 Freeway in Boyle Heights (East LA), just ten minutes away. Now I’m all excited.
My daughter and I roll up and park on the street adjacent to the square. We get out, and I look around. I don’t see a soul who looks like they even know who Jack White is, let alone would take the trouble to find out. Still, Danny’s Danny, and he has a way of knowing things about these things. And he shares like I said. So I wait.
Nothing.
I call Danny and explain I’m at the square. I don’t see anything happening. Are you sure this is the right place? It’s going on, Danny assures me. He’s on his way with his wife, the lovely Dianne. So I wait.
Soon a few people who look like they might have come for a show start trickling in, and checking it all out. Then a mariachi band gets on the bandstand and starts to play. My daughter and I stroll up and stand right against the low stage; I’m holding her in my arms, earplugs in her ears, just in case. She enjoys the mariachi band. She’s laughing and smiling. There are now maybe 15-20 people around us, but more are still slowly coming in.
What comes next is like a shotgun blast or a smash cut of excerpts from a Beastie Boys video.
Wheels come to tire screeching halt on the street abutting one side of the park, as a large white van skids in. The mariachi band leaves the stage, and equipment suddenly appears - amps, microphones, some instruments, etc.
Then, without warning, Jack White leaps out of the doors of the van, guitar strapped on, and before I can fully comprehend what’s happening, he and his rocking all-girl band are on the stage plugged into their instruments and without any intro leaping into a pulverizing cover of U2’s Love is Blindness. It’s so jarring I don’t even recognize the song initially.
After the second song, my daughter yells, “Daddy, this is not good music! It’s too loud.” Like her father, she has strong opinions on music. We move back from the bandstand. There couldn’t have been more than 50 people in the park by the end. And I never saw Danny and Dianne.
Jack and his band cover two White Stripes songs – Dead Leaves and Hotel Yorba - plus his then-current single Love Interruption and one more song—twenty minutes of pure, hip rattling garage rock.
Then, again without a word, Jack leaps from the stage, jumps into the van with his band, and before anyone knows it, he’s gone. Like it never happened.
Except I’ve got photos. So it did happen.