mixed by Vance Powell Ten years and one week ago, Jack White unleashed what was arguably one of the best performances in the history of the Bonnaroo festival. In an expansive field in Manchester, TN, filled with approximately 70,000 fans, White let loose a tour-de-force, two-hour and forty-five minute career-spanning set. From White Stripes songs like “Hotel Yorba” and “Icky Thump” to Raconteurs numbers such as “Top Yourself” and “Steady, As She Goes” through “Blue Blood Blues” by the Dead Weather…not to mention a wide selection of his solo material and covers of two surf rock classics “Pipeline” by the Chantays and “Misirlou” by Dick Dale. And Led Zeppelin’s “The Lemon Song”? He did that too. To be in the field that evening was to truly have one's mind blown. As Jack pulled trick after stupefying trick as the set went stratospheric, all I could do was look to Ben Swank next to me and say "Can you even believe this?" Originally released as a Vault package back in 2014, we've updated the setlist to include to previously unlisted covers...snippets of "Cool Drink Of Water Blues" by Tommy Johnson and "Fried My Little Brains" by the Kills both couched within medleys of other songs Listening back a decade later, these recordings hit just as hard as the initial blast of soundwaves reverberated off our bodies in that sweaty Tennessee field back then. - Ben Blackwell
|