Redd Blood Cells

This one goes out to Wes, who loves the White Stripes (and even my accordion cover of Fell In Love With a Girl).

You’ve probably heard of the White Stripes — the two person lo-fi band with the garage-rock sound and catchy tune with the Lego video — and their latest album, White Blood Cells. The band is made up of two members, Jack and Meg White, whose relationship to each other has been purposely kept secret to add to the bands mystique — are they brother and sister, or husband and wife, and estranged ones at that?

(The latter option is correct: Jack and Meg were married — “White” is actually Meg’s family name, Jack’s is “Gillis”. You can take a look at their marriage licence and divorce certificate if you don’t believe me.)

You might not have heard of Redd Kross, a much-loved but not-quite-heard-of alt-guitar-rock band who’ve been at it for over twenty years. I first encountered them in 1993 when they released Phaseshifter (which opens with the damn near-perfect track Jimmy’s Fantasy) during the Great Grunge Era, when I was a DJ at the engineering pub at Queen’s University.

The White Stripes have a slightly different sound from most rock bands because something’s missing from the sonic space: the bass guitar. Jack plays power chords on lead guitar and Meg drums; the lack of bass gives the band an interestingly sparse sound. Prince did the same thing with When Doves Cry — there’s no bass in it either — and Peter Gabriel made his album Security (the one with Shock the Monkey) sound interesting by not using cymbals.

While the White Stripes sound good on their own, Steve McDonald, leader of Redd Kross wondered what White Blood Cells would sound like if they had a bassist. The end result of this pondering is Redd Blood Cells, in which he took the original tracks off the album and added a track with his bass playing. The Stripes have given this project their blessing, and you can download the MP3s for your legal listening pleasure (hurry — they’ll only be available at the site until August 26th).

I tip my hat to McDonald for his excellent bass playing and restraint (his playing complements the original tracks, rather than relegating them to the background) and Jack and Meg for letting him go ahead with the project. In the current climate of the recording industry, this is a nice little spot of sunshine.