No Filler Music Podcast - The White Stripes - Elephant

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

Jack White's appearance on Saturday Night Live a few weeks back reminded those who forgot what a powerful and raw performer he is (and made those who've been cooped up all year long for live performances again). And for a lot of us, our introduction to White's unmatched blend of hard blues and garage rock all started with 2003's Elephant. We take a listen to a couple non-singles off the record, and play a clip of his SNL performance of his "Ball And Biscuit" medley. Tracklist: The White Stripes - Hypnotize The White Stripes - Black Math Jack White - Ball And Biscuit/Don't Hurt Yourself/Jesus Is Coming Soon (live on SNL) The White Stripes - Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine Fake Eyes - Illuminate The Wake - Melancholy Man The Gories - Stranded This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And welcome to No Filler, the music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that filled the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Travis. Got my brother Quentin with me, as always. And Q, it didn't take us long to get back to the early 2000s. Yeah. Our decade for discovering music, branching out, finding bands on our own for the first time, you know, we were teenagers, right? This album in particular, and we're talking about the

white stripes elephant, by the way. Sometimes we literally will talk 10 minutes and then we will realize that we hadn't even mentioned the artist or the record. So we just are thinking that everyone's on the same page when they click press play because, you know, it's in the title. That's a good one, dude. I mean, if you're listening to this episode, you should know what we're talking about because it's the name of the fucking episode. Okay. But we're, We're talking about the White Stripes Elephant, which came out in 2003. We had just got our driver's license a few months after this album came out. Also, I just want to apologize for my voice.

I feel like it's jarring. I got, dude, my allergies. Like today my immune system just woke me up with a huge punch in the base. And it was just freaking out for no reason. Like, dude, we've been over this every year. We've been through this before. It's not a threat. That's the time of here, dude.

it's bad man i took three different end of history means today and i'm still stuffy is mixed stuffins stuff stuffin's stuff yeah oh man anyway sorry everyone you don't sound you don't sound unbearable but well i'm a bit foggy in the hand dude so if this one's goofy then apologies well that's fine but yeah dude we were just we just got our driver's license that was when we started going hard on uh you know hitting a obsidi addict yeah that's right chatting with mark having him point us in the right direction to new bands and the emo garage rock fan that dude that was the jam yes and this was one of the pivotal bands for the the garage rock revival for sure in this album in particular especially the way that that that that it was put together the way that it was

recorded um just like screamed you know garage rock right so and recovering elephant did we mentioned the other. Yeah, we did. You are a little bit foggy here. I can tell. But yeah, so Jack White at this point, it's safe to say, is a living legend, right? I mean, he is... And Jack White is the lead singer of Weistripes. Just kidding. Everyone knows that, yeah. Everyone knows that. Everybody knows who Jack White is. You know, he's up there with all the other guitar grates in my mind. I mean, honestly. Same. And, you know, when you look back at the the musicians that have come out, the guitar players that have come out in the last two decades, he's up at the top of the list in my mind, right?

I would put Josh, Josh Om, is that the- Hami. Damn it. I would put Josh Haume up there as well. And we've done an episode. If you check our Twitter feed and scroll down a little bit, you'll see we've reposted some of our episodes last week that were kind of metal-centric for just leading up to Halloween, you know and one of them was um well two of them actually was queens of the stone age and then caius

which was josh humm's fommy's fuck me josh homie's first band um that he was in so yeah go back and listen to that but yeah jack white is up there and um his approach to blues rock you know his his style like him the way he put his mark on on blues rock is i mean he is he has his own his own style you hear Jack White and there's nobody else it could be, right? Yeah. Even down to his guitar tone and stuff. So anyway, so yeah, let's get into it here a little bit, Q. Anybody who was paying attention to anything remembers the song Seven Nation Army, right?

Mega hit. It was everywhere, right? That baseline that the song starts with is like, unmistakable. Is that a word? Immistakable. Unmistakable is what I meant to say, Q. Shit, maybe I'm taking some antihistamines. I didn't realize it.

We're both foggy today. I think what, and this, you know, Meg White has a lot to do with this as well. Meg White, the drummer of the band, it was their simplicity that made their songs so catchy and memorable in my mind. And that speaks to the garage rock thing, right? Yeah, but she was such a simple drummer and her beats were so, like, rudimentary. but man were they effective you know yeah i mean dude the seven nation army most of it's just her foot on that bass the bass drum yeah yeah yeah definitely well um yeah and of course we're not gonna get into it but back when they first started people were like are they married are they

brother's sister yeah what's the dealio with these these two yeah and there's even a song on this album what does it call it's true that we love one another oh yeah I love Jack White like a little

brother yeah yeah that's the last track of the record anyway yeah I'm just gonna go to Meg White's Wikipedia page because it's gonna be

I don't know way shorter than Jack White's no offense I'm just gonna type the word brother there's no mention of the word brother

on her Wikipedia page that tells me that he's not her brother. All right, let's try this again. Here we go. All right, I got it right here. She began to work at Memphis Smoke,

a restaurant in downtown Royal Oak, Tennessee, where she first met Jack White, a fellow high school senior from a Detroit neighborhood, known as Mexican town. And they frequented the coffee shops, local music venues, and record stores of the area. They began dating and were eventually married in 96.

Well, you heard it here first, folks. Now, get this, dude. He took her last name. Now, that's wacky because I thought I would have put money on it that the white stripes was a name that they came up with. I wouldn't have guessed that that was actually... That's her real last name. Her real last name that he took him.

That's cool. That's awesome. Because, I mean, when you look at them, they are the two pastiest and other efforts, dude, that you've ever seen. I swear that's got to be makeup that maybe at least early. early on. Because whenever you see Jack White, you're like, he hasn't seen sunlight in decades. He just hasn't. All right. So I wanted to start the episode with, there's a documentary out there, came out a long time ago. Let me get the date, but it's called it might get loud.

And this tells you how even back in 2008, so this is when it came out, 2008, Jack White was already, you know, making a name for himself and essentially, like a legend in the making, right? He was on this documentary alongside the edge of YouTube and Jimmy Page of Zeppelin. And they were just talking about, you know, their approach to how they play guitar, the sound that they would make. Jimmy talked about, you know, some of the recording sessions of the Zeppelin records. The edge, like, showed off his freaking effect library, whatever the fuck you want to call it,

his massive effects board. And when I step on this one and goes, wow, wow, wow, wow. it usually when it when the edge steps on it almost nine times out of ten it's going to do some sort of a delay yeah wow wow wow that's not delay that's wahwa that's close enough um but jack white went into you know he talked about his his very famous guitar that he played and uh just in general like how he approaches like the creative process and stuff like that so i wanted to play that clip real quick. There's so much like folklore and legend around that guitar. Yeah. Well, he kind of goes into it a little bit. So let's let's let him, uh, explain it to Q. So here it is. Jack White, this is back in 2008 on the documentary. It might get loud.

Technology is a big destroyer of emotion and truth. Opportunity doesn't do anything for creativity. Yeah, it makes it easier and you can get home sooner. But it doesn't make you even more. creative person. And I don't worry, Lord, I'm sitting on top of the world. That's the disease you have to fight in any creative field. Ease of use. I keep it guitars that are, you know, the necks a little bit bent and it's a little bit out of tune and I want to work and battle it and conquer it and make it express whatever attitude

I have at that moment. I want it to be a struggle. This is my main guitar that I played live for like 10 years and the white stripes. It's a hollow piece of plastic. And you got to set Montgomery Awards, department store, Sears sold silver tones, and Montgomery World sold airlines. Okay, so this is a plastic body guitar bought at Montgomery Ward. So yeah, it was a 1964 J.B. Hutto airline, it was called.

that was made for the Montgomery Ward department store in the early 60s. It's a cool looking guitar, and it's perfect for the aesthetic that they were going for, right? It's red and white. Now, you think that they based their aesthetic around that guitar? He's had it forever. Sure is possible. I mean, because if it wasn't red and white, it certainly wouldn't have, like, matched everything else about everything they did back then. Yeah, I mean, just look at the elephant cover.

Exactly. I mean, of one of many, like, yeah. And dude, I love Jack White's like passion for old stuff. Yeah. Like, it's like that's the world he lives in. Well, yeah. And that's kind of what you're somewhere in that clip where, you know, technology doesn't really help the creative process very much, you know. And he said he likes to have to struggle with something to get it to sound the way he wants it to.

And that's kind of what he's talking about. That's why he uses this old equipment. Because in his mind, it's a battle and like a fight, you know what I mean, to get it to bend it to his will and whatnot. So what's cool about this guitar is that it became so popular because of Jack White that this guitar company called Eastwood started making a replica around 2000. Not cool. And yeah, not an exact replica. It had like a, it didn't have the plastic body that the original one had. They made it out of wood.

but I mean, pretty cool. So anyway, let's get into our first clip here, Q. So we haven't even really talked too much about their sound yet. Do you want to just play a song and then come back to it? Yeah. And that's the thing. Like, I think if you know Seven Nation Army, but you might, but you're not familiar with maybe some other songs that appear on this record,

you might be kind of surprised, right? Because Seven Nation Army was, I don't know. It definitely had this signature Jack White and White Stripes sound, but, you know. It was more. contemporary. Yeah, it wasn't very blues base. So, all right, we're going to...

It's no wonder that that was the big single. Huge. Yeah, huge hit. All right, so let's play track two. So this song is called Black Math. Dude, so as we were fading out there, that might be one of my favorite white stripes moments. Or maybe just Jack White moments. The way that he delivers that those lines, dude.

Oh, yeah. I like how the tempo slows down, right? Here on that bridge, and then they pick it right back up and goes into that guitar solo. And we'll play that here in a second. We'll pick it back up with the guitar solo. When he says mathematically turning the page unequivocally showing my age, I'm practically center stage. Dude, I love the way he delivers those lines.

Undeniably earning your wage. Well, maybe I'll put my love on ice and teach myself. Maybe that'll be nice. His cadence, though, man. Yeah. So here's the story behind the song, Q. I've got a quote from him. He says, I was thinking about a time in high school when I turned my books into the math

teacher and said, I refuse to learn from you anymore. The song is about asking questions. Wow. A lot of people are taught just to regurgitate information. People don't care if you learn anymore. Opinions get trampled on. Now, the funny thing about math, though, is that, I mean, it's math. It's math.

There's no real opinions, dude. It's just, yeah, cold, hard facts. Except for maybe like, how do you long divide or whatever the fuck? Apparently, they've changed it to Q since we've... Dude, I heard that too. Yeah, apparently they've changed it. Apparently, like, you and me, if we try to do it, yeah.

Friend-nephew Jackson, who's 10 years old, said, hey, Uncle Travis, can you help me with my long division? I'd look at it and be like, I don't know what to fucking do anymore, dude. Now, you're talking about the steps to get to the answer, because surely the answer hasn't changed. Sure, the answer is the same. I'm just saying if I wrote the way that I, I'm used to doing it, he'd be like,

are you trying to make me flunk this? That's what he'd say. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that dude. That was a big part of it was you had to, like, showing the steps was part of the answer. She'd be like, what is this? What is this? 2000?

Is 2003? No. And you'd be like, yeah, it is. That's why we're listening to Elephant right now, the brand new album by the windstrings. But yeah, dude, this line popped out of me. I wrote it down, but I don't remember where I found it. but the white stripes are rocks present, past, and future all rolled into one. Yeah, dude, that's perfect.

Right. I love that. To me, that bridge in the middle, that breakdown in the middle where the tempo slows down and stuff and that the riff changes, that almost sounds a little, a little hard rock metal almost. Yeah, grungy, yeah. Yeah, big time. Totally. It's present, it's past, its future. So, yeah, let me talk about this real quick and then we'll play the solo.

So the story behind the recording here is that it happened in a, this studio called To Rag Studios in London. And listen to this, this is badass. In defiance of digital recording techniques that had become the standard in studios, tow rag didn't contain any recording equipment manufactured after 1963. So everything that was used to record this album was something that was. was made prior to 1963. I mean, how cool is that? Yeah, that's really cool.

And then in the album notes of this record, it says, no computers were used during the writing, recording, mixing, or mastering of this record, which is badass, right? So that's, you know, that's why you get this sound. So Jack White wanted to specifically explore how big they could make the sound that only two artists could create, right? Because it was literally just him and Meg. Yeah, no bass.

while being limited to just eight individual tracks per song. So, yeah. Yeah, that is not a lot to work with. Really, really cool stuff, right? So anyway, let's get back into the track here. We're going to pick it up and listen to the solo just to hear a snippet. Basque in the glory of Jack White's guitar. Well, let me tell you, dude, some of my favorite Jack White guitar work shows up in the last song that we're going to play.

So this is just a little sampling here, a little tease. So here we go. This is the guitar solo from Black Math. Man, the tone and the distortion, just the sound of that guitar, man. It's just haunting. Yeah. And what I love about his voice, dude, his voice is clean almost. Like, he delivers it clean, but also has this kind of this bite to it, right?

Yeah. And like frenetic almost, you know, like. So he's using a guitar pedal, a whammy cue, which is funny because that's what you were kind of talking about. Oh, you mean my flawless? Where the sound that you were making was, yeah, sort of Whammy-esque, you know. So he used a Digitech W-W-H-4 and says here, while it's most well known for creating the rumbling faux bass parts scattered throughout the LP, so their debut LP, the pedal was also used to take the guitar to new ear-piercing heights, best heard on Black Math and the guitar solo on. There's no room for you. here. So when he gets that really high pitched sound out of a guitar, he's getting that out of a

whammy pedal, which is cool. I mean, it's crazy. You said it was the WH4, dude. I would have placed money that it was the WH5. No, but yeah, dude, that's part of that signature sound is this like the ear piercing high pitch, you know, that with the slight distortion is what makes it so like charing almost. Yeah, yeah. Now, I don't want to get, you know, I don't want to be this guy, cute. But I don't, I doubt that that pedal came out before, you know, 64. So he brought something in that was younger than... You kind of cheated a little bit here. Wow.

It's okay. That's all right. But now, you know, I just question, I question everything now. But now, that's fine. Well, but going back to that, you know... But that's all, but let me step back, though, before I, you know, I can make that joke and, ha-ha, it's fucking funny. But what I like about this is that, that is what made Jack White,

Jack White is the decision to bring in the whammy pedal, right? Because he wouldn't get that intensity out of his guitar solo, that jarring, like, squeal had he not brought in the whammy pedal, right? So I'm going to overlook the fact, Q that he introduced something made in the 80s into the studio. He tainted it, but that's okay. We wouldn't have the record that we have had he not, right? So that's part of his arsenal too. So, all right. So going back to that quote, White Stripes being Rock's present, past, and future all rolled into one.

So he was on Mark Marin's podcast, the WTF podcast a few years back. And Mark Maren said something along the lines of, you know, like it's almost like you're haunted by like the ghosts of rock and roll pastures, something like that. I'm going to let Jack finish this quote here. I really like what he says, so here we go. You seem to be haunted by the spirit of American music. That's a good way to put it, yeah. It feels that way to me too. And if you sit down on the piano and I play a chord,

they're not my chords. They're not my feelings. I think there's like if you grew up like in an Appalachian family, you played, you know, that kind of hill music, Southern music, you would always feel like, yeah, this is a hundred-year-old stuff I'm playing. Right. And there's nothing wrong with that. Right.

And that's great. I didn't write this, but nobody cares. Right. We're not in and for breaking new ground right here. We're into this for the tradition of the respective at all. And I feel that same way about the blues, no matter what, it's other contexts are like punk rock or country or whatever else it split up into the thousand things it split into. It's all the blues to me. So I'm immediately respectful to it as soon as I play the first chord.

I love that, man. He's just respecting the gods of blues, you know? And, yeah, he might just be barring these chords or whatever, but like it's about tradition and it's about respect for the music, for rock and roll. I just love it. Yeah. And you were saying that it's all blues, right? Yeah, it doesn't.

Yeah, if it's branching off a punk or country or whatever, it all goes back to blues. Sure. Yeah. And that's what he's all about, man. All right, here, we're going to do something different here. It's been a while since we've done a live, a live clip. But we talked about this last week, his S&L performance a couple weeks back, maybe three weeks back at this point. Yes.

But before we do that, let's take a quick break. So, yeah, if you caught it, he played two different songs. And one of him was actually like a melody. It was a collection of songs. It was ball and biscuit. Don't hurt yourself, and Jesus is coming soon. The song Don't Hurt Yourself is actually a song he co-wrote and performed on Beyonce's Lemonade record. And then Jesus is coming soon, he just incorporated lyrics basically from this song, which is an old blind Willie Johnson song.

And if you know anything about Jack White, like, he is a... He's all about the Mississippi Blues. Yeah, he's a student of like, of Blues, right? Delta Blues, yeah. But since Ball and Biscuit appeared on this record, I thought we'd play it so we could hear now this is a long clip so let's just listen to the first part of this

and then we'll fade it out and then skip back into ball and biscuits what you're going to hear is I honestly couldn't even tell you what don't hurt yourself sounds like but and this version of ball and biscuit is very different from how you hear it on elephant it is it is but it's so awesome though but it's great yeah and you get to hear him

you know destroy the guitar and it is worth mentioning because this is important. He is playing a guitar that Eddie Van Halen designed for him. Oh, shit. Which, and this was, you know, very close to when Eddie passed away. So it was also paying tribute to Eddie, which is amazing, right? So anyway, all right, Q, let's listen to this, this SNL clip. And then, you know, we'll get a call from NBC and then we'll be, you know.

It's going to be Lauren. Yeah. Excuse me, you can't play that. And I can't do one, Michaels, but, you know. That's close enough. Let's go ahead and cease and desist. It sounds like, yeah, it sounds exactly like him. All right, Q.

All right, so that was, I feel like that was like the first part of Ball and Biscuit. And then it may have faded into Jesus is going soon. It's like he incorporated the lyrics from that into like the Ball and Biscuit melody and something like that, which is cool. Yeah. And the first, I think the first very beginning of the song was Don't Hurt Yourself. Yeah. Dude, I just noticed for the first time hearing that just now.

The first line in Ball and Biscuit, it's quite popular. possible that I'm your third man girl, but it's the fact that I'm the seventh son, third man records. It's all coming to gathering out, dude. Is that the label that this was put on on? Oh, Travis. Is that his label? Yeah, yeah. That's his label, dude. Oops. Anyway, so the guitar he's playing, I'll describe it in a second. He actually posted a picture of it. The night that he played SNL, he posted a picture and wrote up a little story about the guitar. So I'm going to read that after the guitar solo. But, um, beautiful guitar.

Beautiful, beautiful. Yeah, beautiful. Um, but I'll talk about that here in a second. So let's get back into it and then I think he's got like another verse and then he gets into one of two guitar solos. We're going to play one. All right. So yeah, let's get back into the song here.

Could those lyrics be any more topical, dude? Yeah. Did he fucking change the lyrics just for that performance? That's from the, uh, the, uh, the blind. Willie Johnson song. Great disease was mighty and the people were sick everywhere. It was an epidemic. It floated through the air.

So yeah, he definitely. He chose that as part of that. Yeah, picked that song to play for the times that we're living in. But yeah, I made a mistake, Hugh. I didn't realize it until I watched the clip again. He is not using the Eddie Van Halen guitar for this song. He used it for his performance of Lazaretto, which was also on, you know, that was the first song that he played on S&L.

And that was, you know, that's just a Jack White song, right? But anyway, let me tell us the story about that guitar anyway, because it's cool. The fact that he, number one, like, he had a guitar that Eddie built for him, like, to spec or whatever. But it was an EV, so Eddie had his own, his own guitar line called EVH, you know, Wolfgang, EVH basically what it was called. And as Jack says here on his Instagram post, I thought it could be a

nice gesture for me to use this blue Eddie Van Halen model guitar for one of the songs tonight on S&L. The guitar was designed by Eddie with a few customizations I had added. He was very kind to me and sought to whether the guitar was made for me to my specs. I won't even insult the man's talent by trying to play one of his

songs tonight. Thanks again, Eddie, for this guitar and rest in peace. So it is interesting to note, though, that during that Lazaretta performance, he did some, like, two-finger-tapping stuff. So, yeah, he did nod to him, you know, which is cool. But anyway, all right, Q, so let's bring it back to the white stripes in Elephant, dude. Well, Ball and Biscuit is from this record. Funny thing is that we didn't really even get to him doing the chorus from Ball and Biscuit. But, you know, I wanted to play that clip because that's his performance on S&L.

basically what it did to make you was remind me just how like you how how you cannot reproduce a live rock and roll show um like there's nothing that compares to it you know what I mean it just made me yeah long for the you know the time when we can go see live music again which you know I don't know if you caught those pictures flowing around of the um of the uh damn what's the band's name Q uh flaming lips did you see those pictures of the oh yeah dude so they've been doing that for decades they have but they haven't had the audience oh no bubbles too right so flaming lips you know they do these performances in in these bubbles they each performer stands in a bubble well they had a a bubble concert where all

the audience members were in these bubbles as well and I was like that's fucking cool yeah it's I would do that so trave what was I'm just now that I'm thinking about it what was the last concert you saw let's reminisce for a bit it might have been dive oh nice i think mine i think mine was corny barnett which was that's a good

awesome yeah yeah but i miss it man i really miss it yeah it really it's sad man but i think i uh mentioned this before but like we had three or four shows lined up for this year that we had already bought tickets for now one of them was team and paula and they've actually picked another they've actually picked a date in um in in 2021.

So do you have those tickets? Like, those are your tickets to have? Yeah, they already, they already, cool. Basically what they told us was like, oh, we're going to reschedule it. Yeah. Okay, yeah, right. And then like they actually followed up with us like recently.

He said, okay, the new date's been picked. It's like summer 2021 or something like that. So anyway. Nice. Something to look forward to. But yeah, I was going to see foals this year, dude. Yeah. Oh, sorry.

But anyway, so just seeing Jack White tear it up on stage. just seeing him the way that he performs, it just kind of, again, like, it just made me like, God damn it, we got to get back to this, man, you know? Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Let's play our last pick, dude. Yeah, let's wrap it up here, Q. This is one of my all-time favorite White Stripe song.

Same, brother. So this song is second to last track. It's called Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine. Cute. Dude, I know you were making guitar face during that solo. I sure was. Yeah, you can't help it. Dude, I love he just kind of like, I almost feel like that was a verse sung by his guitar.

Sure. Yeah, I was going to say, I love it when a guitar solo does that where it's, it's sort of chopped up. And like, you know, there's a, and usually what's great about it is like it builds up, like each time it kind of gets more involved, I guess, like more complicated. Yeah. That was one of those examples where, you know, it's just a little ditty. and then like it goes back to the main kind of like riff and then it comes back and then it's another line and it sort of builds on top of itself. Speaking of Queens of the Stone Age, we played a track that does something similar on

song for the dead. They do that kind of thing where it's sort of this every time like the little guitar riff is slightly altered or it adds on it from the previous time you heard it, that kind of thing. Yeah, it was a little he, do. That's one of my favorite parts of that interview. Go back and listen to our Queen of the Stone Age episode. Yeah, listen to Josh mimic his guitar sound. It's hilarious.

Well, actually, he was mimicking the, like, Billy Gibbons' guitar sound. Oh. Like, Billy was showing him kind of this thing that he did. Yeah. Anyway, and yeah, man, the lyrics in the song are just a blast, man. Dude, and the way that he sings it, man. Yes, he is such a, his vocal. I mean, that's another thing.

Oh, he is Jack White, a legendary guitar player. I'd say his vocal deliveries is also part of it, you know? I think it's top 10 best vocalists in the rock. I may have to agree with you. Yeah. Seriously, man. I think you're right. But yeah.

Dude, my favorite line and the way he says it, dude. The verse three, yeah. Yeah, just strip the buck right off the tree and just hand it this way. I guess he's saying, just give me some bark off a tree. That'll work. That's what I'm using for my, to treat this fucking stuff he knows. Dude, I just walked outside and strip it off the tree. the park from the tree in my backyard. Well, that would explain why you're so fog.

Apparently, the song is about the placebo effect. Here's a quote from Jack. I suppose it is just about this tongue-and-cheek take on male and female relationships when things are bothering girls about headache medicine. What? Aspirin, Tylenol, and things like that. It's like men can take anything like a sugar pill and it will make their headache go away, but there's always some sort of special care for women. It is sort of a metaphor for taking the time to care for someone, I guess. Huh. Yeah, okay.

I like how you threw that end of the end. Interesting. This is about caring for somebody. It's like, it sounds like you're annoyed when your girlfriend's like, I got a headache. And the Tylenol's not working or something. It's like, all right, Jack. Yeah. Good save there at the end.

Yeah, nice save. But yeah. Okay. That's one of those things where it's like, that's funny, that that's what it's about. Yeah. The inspiration that some songs, like the inspiration behind some songs are kind of funny when you hear them. But I just like the, I just think you have no faith in medicine is a cool line, you know, and then to turn a whole song into it.

And then it fucking destroys like that. And it's just so aggressive. And like I said, it's a song that it's face melt worthy. you know, if you were to categorize songs into general categories, I feel like did it melt my face is a category, right? And there's not too many songs that where you have to grab them off afterward, you know. But this is one of them. It always has been.

Dude, we were 16 when we heard this song for the first time. Yeah, this is the one that. Yeah, I'll never forget this song. Like, you know, like this was just one of those moments that I'll never forget. Yeah. Hearing this song for the first time. The guitar solo especially, right? It's just such an interesting solo, man.

I love it. You want to just play it? Let's play it again. Just solo, sure. Just right. Yeah, so grab your mop and get ready to start mopping up your face. And it's so like sporadic, but like. Yeah.

But like. Organized. Calculate. Yeah. It sounds so like sporadic, but calculate. I don't know, man. Yeah, I know what you mean. He's just so like precise.

Yeah. Chaotic. Yeah. I think that describes his his guitar playing style and his vocal style too, like chaotic. Yeah. Yeah, that's white stripes in a nutshell. You know what I mean? And this album, I will always remember this record.

You know, I got to say, like I honestly didn't really pay much attention to the wide stripes after this. I mean, honestly. I didn't even. I clued in like, you know, I listened to all, you know, I listened to all, you know, he's got so many side projects that he's done. And I would tune in to them sort of here and there, you know. Like, let's name it off. I mean, he's got so many side projects.

The Racconteurs, dead weather, and then all of his solo stuff. And, you know, I always thought it was interesting that when he, I think it was dead weather, maybe, that maybe it was just his solo stuff. When he started doing his solo stuff, he noticed that he started wearing blue. It was blue and black, which, you know, I thought it was a cool way to be like, you know, this is not the white stripes. This is me, Jack White. Yeah. No more red and white. I'm going to go blue and black, which I thought was cool.

Anyway. Did you ever go back and listen to their older stuff? I think I, yeah, I think I did. Like I'm familiar with, and maybe this is just because I know it from, I think it was the, what was that song that was on the intro to Napoleon Dynamite? Yeah. I like their stuff on distil. I think that's how you say it. Which came out in 90, or I'm sorry, 2000.

There's some good stuff. But it's even more of that like raw, just classic blues kind of stuff. And on their self-title from 99, dude, so there's some good stuff in there. All right, cute. As we like to say a lot, we just scratch the surface there. Barely, there's like 14 tracks on this record. we played two and then we played a mashup from that SML video. But let's go through the singles real quick just to remind you of what else is on this record.

Obviously Seven Nation Army. I just don't know what to do with myself, which is a lot more laid back. Like I feel like we brought the more intense tracks from this record. There's a lot of slower songs on this. Yeah, there's even a song that Meg sings. Acoustic, yeah. I like that one too. I think it was in the cold, cold night, I think.

There's no home for you here. It's another one. I like that song. And I think that I already say hardest button to button. No. That's another one of my favorite white stripe songs, dude, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, man.

The hardest button to button. Uh-oh. The record's amazing. It's, it made it to, uh, it wasn't very, very low on the list, but it's on Rolling Stone's top 500 list. I think it's like four something. But top 500 of all time. So that's a big deal.

Anyway, go back and listen to Elephant. It's probably been a long time since you have, you know, just like it was for me. Like I hadn't listened to this from start to finish in a long time. And it was great to kind of reminisce. But yeah, this was a good time for rock, man. I feel like he was the last decade of good rock and roll that made it to some level of like mainstream attention. You know what I mean?

I think, honestly, I feel like MTV had a lot to do with that. Like MTV was still around. MTV was still playing stuff like this. They would do Seven Nation Army. They would do the corn stuff. Oh, yeah, man. That's right. Jimmy World.

You know, like everybody remembers the video for the middle. At least I do. Oh, yeah. And then you would see the strokes like last night. Remember that video? So like this was the last time that rock and roll was still somewhat in the mainstream. I feel like.

And then now it's just, I mean, you know, they would consider, and, you know, people might not like this, what I'm about to say, but like 21 pilots and like, well, that's that other band, dude, that. Imagine. Imagine dragons. Like, those are considered rock bands, right? And, like, now I'm just going to sound like an old dude. Well, it's not. You're not alone, dude. I promise you that.

Yes. I'm definitely not alone. But, I mean, that is what is considered rock. that's what's going to be played on quote unquote rock radio now right but that's the thing you play imagine dragons that's like top 100 pop radio too you know yeah i can't do it man i cannot do it i can't imagine dragons i will say this cue my what you heard today if you're bringing imagine dragons i'm no my what you heard cue is another example of a band that gives me hope okay don't want to say so Let's transition into that.

So, okay, white stripes. I think everybody knows who they are. Hopefully you learned something new about this record or about Jack White's gear or something. But anyway, all right, Q. So next week, we're going to do another sidetrack. We're going to try to keep this street going. White stripes related. Where we do a proper sidetrack.

And like I was mentioning earlier, there's so much out there that we can pick from for a side track on the white stripes because we've got all of his side projects that we could choose from. We've got some stuff that maybe like influences that he has because he's very like, you know. I mean, like Mark Marin said, dude, it's kind of like you're haunted by the ghosts of the blues or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, but he doesn't hide it, right?

Like he doesn't like keep that to himself like who his influences are. He's very upfront about all that stuff. And that's like what he said in that clip, dude. You know, it's just respect for the. They are, too, whatever. Respect for the ancestors. Yeah, exactly. That's why that quote did.

Let's just close with that quote again, because it's perfect. White stripes are, what was it? The ghosts of... No, no, no, no. The past, present, and future. Rock's present, past, and future all rolled into one. Yeah, it's perfect. There's no better way to say it.

That is perfect. So, all right. I will find the proper... I'm going to properly credit that quote. I'll find the article I'll post it in our notes because that's a great line. Yeah, that is a great line. All right, Q, it's time for our Watch-Jard segment. And I feel like it's been a while since I went first.

Yeah, dude, go for it. What you've been heard, brother? So, as you know, Q, I am sort of obsessed right now with finding bands that are ringing the 90s, alt-rock, grunge, post-hardcore sound back. It is coming back in a small way. And that's what I was saying with, you know, this is another example of a band that kind of gives me hope that there might be, even if it never hits mainstream success, there are bands out there that are putting out music that sounds like 90s rock again. So grunge resurgence. And dude, I want to quote Mark when we had Mark.

Mark Burke. Owner of Mad World Records. Yeah. He said something that always stuck out to me. because I think you mentioned your love for narrowhead to him. Yes, I did. And he said something along the lines of, you know, yeah, I mean, like these grunge bands that are coming out now, now we have the recording abilities, you know, to capture that sound that was lacking in the 90s. You know, it just wasn't there, you know, with in the studio quality, just wasn't there for what they were going for.

And now they can do it properly. And it just sounds amazing, you know. Yeah. And not to mention like, it sounds like a lot of bands from the 90s, you know, if it wasn't Kurt Cobain, like, giving you shit because you weren't technically grunge in his mind. You know, it was the fans of grunge music that were like, you're not grunge enough or you don't, you don't belong in the grunge camp. It sounded like there was a lot of, you know, when you're in it, you don't necessarily, you know, you're not doing it. I mean, does that make sense? Like, unless you're...

Yeah, yeah. Now we're a couple decades removed and now they can just kind of... Yeah, and now it's just you're fully removed from it. You can incorporate the sound. Yeah. You can grab, you know what I'm saying? So, um, but what's great about these artists is that they lean in so hard that like, even the record label, like the album art looks like a 90s record.

They even dress like it a lot when you look at the pictures of them. So it's like, they're fully leaning into the aesthetic, which is funny because I used to make fun of the, this band called Temples. You don't remember the temples right here. Oh, yeah, dude. I used to make fun of them because it's like, they were going hard. Don't get me started on Greta Van Fleet, but like when you, you know, there's one thing to like mimic a nod to a decade and then it's another to like, you know, almost do it like a gimmick. Rip it off. Yeah, to rip it off. So I'm acknowledging that I'm being sort of hypocritical here because I like it that these guys are doing

that. But also the 90s look, it, you know, it's still contemporary in a lot of ways. The 90s look in general is coming back. But anyway, the name of the band here, 10 minutes later. This band is called Fake Eyes. And this is a brand new record. It came out in July of this year. And I'm going to play a song that was actually a single that came out last year. They put this out as a single.

And then it made its way onto their EP here. So the name of the song is called Illuminate. And it's from their record, A Drip is All We Know. Yeah, good stuff. So, um, taking, getting back into those roots. Yeah. And if you're, those 90s roots. If you're a fan of the band, hum, which I brought as a, what you heard months ago, um, there's an obvious, obvious influence.

And they even talk about it. Um, there's a quote here from the lead singer. He said, um, when asked what quick description they'd give someone just listening for the first time, he says, I would tell them the hum influence is fairly obvious, but we definitely take in a lot from various 90s, emo, alt, and shoegaze bands. I also encourage anyone that smokes weed to do so when they listen to it. Ha ha. It even has the ha ha. So he laughed at every said it. Anyway.

That's funny. So yeah, if you're a fan of hum, you will love this band because they, like he said, they were highly influenced from him. He sings a lot like the lead singer of hum. But yeah, there's not much, like they haven't put out a full length yet, but there is a demo from 2018. There's Eliminate the song I just played, which actually was a single in 2019, and then there's three songs on their EP that came out this year. So go check them out. If you'd like that, they're called Fake Eyes. If you want to desperately wish that the 90s were still around and new music was coming out, bands like this are doing that for you.

So anyway, Q, it's your turn. what you've been heard of. Yeah, so last week I brought a song from the Shugay's band Peel Dream Magazine. And another thing I like about Spotify, and can we get some money at this point, please, Spotify, if you're listening. They have like artist playlists. Do you ever dig into those, dude? Yeah, all the time, dude.

I brought, I think I talked about the dude equip. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's so cool, dude. It's so cool. So the lead singer of Peel Dream Magazine, his name is Joe Stevens. He has a bunch of his own personal playlists tied to the Peel Dream Magazine Spotify page.

So his username is J.T. Stevens 360. So this is just he's pulling it from his Spotify account. He's got, I think, four or five playlists. And there's one playlist called Silent Running. that is just nothing but New Wave goodness, dude. There's the classics like Craft Work, Depeche Mode. He's got some Smiths on there. He's got some cure songs on here.

But he also has quite a few pretty obscure artists, mostly from the 80s, early 90s. There is a band on here called The Wake. They're a UK band active in the early 80s through the 90s. And they're just a post-punk synth-pop kind of a new wave band. The song from his playlist I'm going to play is on a record of theirs called Here Comes Everybody, which came out in 85. So this song is called Melancholy Man. Yeah, that's great, man.

I love the two-minute long instrumental intro. Yeah, I love it. I love stumbling upon bands from the 80s or 90s. or 70s, any decade really. Any decade besides the, you know, up to the point where finding indie artist was just a lot easier, you know, because of MySpace and band camp, right, SoundCloud. Yeah. Finding bands that, that, you know, didn't make it to the mainstream, or at least if you

weren't alive back then, it probably would have been difficult for you to stumble upon them and this seems like one of those bands right these are bands that you know got lost in the mix yeah and those are like the yeah those are the bands that to me when i find him it's like it's like it's like i it's like i discovered something special you know what i mean and then it's like where have you been on my life kind of thing you know right yeah but yeah that's a that's a great great example of uh of that that classic sound dude from that area you know yeah so shout out again to joe stevens the leader of the peildering magazine band for making that playlist public.

You know what I mean? Yeah, man. So thanks for sharing that music with us, Joe. And that's that, my friends. All right, Q. Yeah, that's going to do it for us. We're going to have a sidetrack next week. And then I feel like we have a plan of what's next after that.

Well, dude, actually, shit, by the time this comes out, Halloween will have come and gone. Yeah, happy Halloween last week. Check it out. We just posted our John Carpenter bonus Halloween episode. That was a lot of fun, dude. Yeah. You know, we like to do, this is our second bonus Halloween episode. So, you know, we'll try to keep that going. But I got proper spooks, dude, with those Carpenter teens. I'm sorry that.

Did you? Yeah, man. That's my favorite time of year. I love fall. I love the weather. Did you finish Bligh Manor yet, dude? Yeah. I haven't finished it yet. Well, then I can't. I can't say anything.

I'm just, I'm just waiting for something really bad to happen with that fucking Miles kid, dude. Kid is scary. How many episodes are you in? I think I'm six episodes in. Okay. Yeah, he's proper creepy. That's for sure.

But there's a reason, I think I'm figuring, I'm starting to figure it out. Yeah. I'll just say that I liked hunting and feel else better. Yeah. Yeah. That one had more scares and had one of the biggest jump scares.

of my entire fucking life. I'm not ashamed to say it. If you've seen that show, I don't want to spoil it because it's such a, it's such an effective jump scare. I don't want to even prime me for it because, I mean, then you'll be ready. There are some,

some audible screams on my end, dude. That's what I'm saying. Like, I don't often, jump scares all day long. They can get me, I can jump,

all that stuff. But I often, you know, it's usually not paired with a audible sound from my mouth. You know what I mean? Basically what you're saying is, you know, we all use the three letters, L. Well, well, quite often, but how often are we actually laughing out loud, you know? Yes.

That's like with jump scares. How often did you actually jump from being scared? Not very often. Yeah. But this is one of those moments where I was just like, holy shit. You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway.

All right, Q, that's that. So you can find us on our website, nofoolerpodcast.com, where we have all. of our previous shows, obviously, and show notes for every episode. So he was talking about, he was going to post the article that he was quoting from. I had a few sources that I pulled from. So on our show notes page for each episode, you'll see lists or links to any article that we read or pulled from. So for this one, I'll post that YouTube video that had a clip from It Might It Loud. We'll post both of the SNL performances because I've talked to about his Lesoretto, then you can see him play that, the Eddie Van Hilling guitar.

And anyway, and then we also put the track list. So any song that you heard today will be on that. Yeah, and let me say this on the record so that I hold myself accountable. I will tweet a link to Joe Stevens playlist that I got that wake song from because it's great. There you go. I'll tweet a link to that, and maybe I can find them on there and give him a show. I'm all about a good playlist, dude. It's really good. It's a lot of good songs on here.

And one of my rules that I live by is that you have to shuffle a playlist. Oh, yeah. Most people don't structure. I will say this, Q, that would be a shame if he actually took the time to put these in the proper order because then you're not hearing his vision for the playlist. But it's possible. Dude, he also has yellow magic orchestra on here, dude. Yeah, and he's got orchestra maneuvers in the dark. Radio waves. The song that we played on one of our John Hughes tunes. It is a fantastic playlist, dude.

There's a lot of great stuff on here. Psychedelic furs. Yeah, dude, there's a lot of good 80s stuff on. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, dude, I'm telling you. All right. You think he called it silent running for? Shugays.

I don't know. Silent running. Isn't that a film from the 80s? Probably. All right. Anyway, all right, Q, we've got to grab this stuff here. So follow us on Twitter. That's at No Filler podcast.

We're trying to be more active on there. So follow us on there. We're going to start tweeting. out links to old episodes because we have a ton of episodes and if you're somebody who's just tuning in and you don't scroll through our our episode catalog you might not ever find you know an artist that we cover that you maybe maybe enjoy you know so we're going to start pulling from the vault if you will in the post episodes on Twitter so we are fast approaching 150 episodes dude I feel like it's going to come and go without us even noticing yeah probably

All right. Also, one last thing. You can find this on the Pantheon podcast network. That is a home to many great music-related podcasts, including our own. Chances are, if you like our podcast, there will be one or two, maybe three, four, maybe even five. Other podcasts in the network that you would enjoy listening to. So go over there, pantheonpodcast.com. So we have an outro song. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so tell us about that. Yeah, yeah. So Jack White was mentioning other bands that were coming up around the time he was coming of age in Detroit.

That's where he was born and raised. And he was talking about how the garage rock scene was kind of blown up before, like before Whitestribe was around. And of course, you know, as they were coming up, as a band in Detroit, that's what was, you know, all their age was garage rock. He mentions a band called The Gorey's that he got major influence from. He's actually released a live album of theirs on third man records. So yeah, he's a huge fan of the Gores.

It shows, dude. Like, I mean, if you listen to any of their stuff, it's like, man, this is straight up, like that gritty white stripes kind of blues. So I'm going to play a song from the Gore's album from 91. called I know you be house rockin. The song is called Stranded. And yeah, that's going to do it for us today. Thank you as always for listening. My name is Quentin.

My name is Travis. You all take care.