with some snotty little loud friends the yeah yeah yeahs and hot hot heat and summoned the ghosts of robert johnson and jimmy page and danced with the devil ‘neath the pale moon light, and people if this is the future of rock n roll sign my jaded ass up.

the yeah yeah yeahs made me want to get out of the pinks hotdog line and shreik right along with holly gorockly, i have no idea what that crazy chick is all worked up about but maybe it had something to do with rock being dead and it needing 1000 ccs of post postpunk to snap it out of its john mayer coma.

she pouted and pranced and yelled and culled up the bile from on top of the hollywood hillside and turned that shit into shinola and paved the way for the jack n meg one two punch and by punch i mean upside yr head.

supporting the best record to come out this year, elephant, the stripes are back on the road after jack injured his hand after holding it too tightly with renee zellweger. pretty much the only respectable alt rock on the billboard top forty (currently hovering at #38), the brother sister ex wife ex husband power couple of the year took the stage and laid down the blues with the unrelentless vengeance upon the record industry, most of whom were in attendance to witness what could only be considered soul music.

as in music of the soul as in music that gets into every crevice of your soul as in music that makes the guitarist take the strap off and show the crowd the chord and then the drummer and then the amp.

soul music unlike anything since stevie ray vaughn and hendrix and early clapton. super early clapton when he didnt give a fuck. jack white fell to his knees and it wasnt bullshit, it was the spirit of rock who brought him to his knees and pushed his nose into the twangy roots of bb and muddy and reinvent themselves through the swirly peppermint facade of the two whitest blues stars in america.

ninety one percent blues and nine percent satan was the formula and even the keyboards couldnt stand up straight, they fell over, were retrieved and sounded better for the fall, all old skool and damp and moody and ideal.

i can usually keep my cool at a concert. i can usually tap my feet to the slowjam beat like the one delivered perfectly by the super femme meg and her lil pigtails, but jack white had me gyrating around like a spastic born-again during the frenzied peak of a tent revival.

more than once i cried out hallelujah to the highest and i wasnt the only one. the hipster girls in their red dresses twirled and did the bump and the baldie boys bobbed their domes.

suprisingly older crowd at the classic griffith park amphitheatre which is too bad because most of us have seen it all, its the kids with the linkin park patches on their backbacks who could have used the force of the seven nation army realized in just two kids from motown to let them know what rock tastes like. and its nothing like the candy theyve been spoonfed all their soft lives. the stripes showed last night that its murky and metallic and mysterious and moody, and best served hot on a cool september eve.

cubs won. theyre alone at the top.

blackmask + dirty fez + i heart kate sullivan