No Responses to “Jack White Poem Severely Lacking in Kick Ass Riff Department”

1. StickyHump on July 7th, 2008 9:10 am

   Are we supposed to believe that this is sincere? What a Jackass.

2. Marcy on July 7th, 2008 9:12 am

   He is fucking delusional. And a shitty poet.

3. T.J. on July 7th, 2008 10:51 am

   I think the poem is fine enough, but more importantly, a nice gesture. if it wasnt a sincere attempt, then why bother writing it? it’s not like he’s lacking customers in detroit, considering both the white stripes and raconteurs sell out large venues in detroit.

   but, it’s clear that jack is aware of how people have percieved his opinions on detroit (though, they’re likely his opinions on a few certain people in the scene, rather than the city itself). and despite the fact that his music should be the only thing that matters to people, its clear his opinions matter too, and it nice of him to at least attempt to clear matters up and extend the “olive branch”, hoping others are civil enough to recieve it.

   this article here on detour requests jack to just let things go. that would be a lot easier if the poeple of detroit did the same. I wish detour would have taken their own advice before writing a backhanded editorial on the matter.

   jack has never claimed complete innocnence in whatever falling outs he’s had with people in the city. nor would i expect him to. and nor should he have to. any grievances he has with people is between them and has nothing to do with anyone else. if all you want jack to do is worry about rocking out, then thats all anyone else not involved in his matters should worry about…his music.

   it’s clear jack is trying and willing to be civil with detroit. it’d be poor form if the people of detroit aren’t willing to do the same.

4. Anonymous on July 7th, 2008 12:04 pm

   I’m guessing his return to Detroit was filled with a lot of backlash, hence the poem. Or it’s just another stunt to rile people up here. Either way, he’s an egomaniac who can’t let things go.

5. T.J. on July 7th, 2008 12:25 pm

   i dont get why you’d think his return to detroit was filled with backlash. there’s been nothing to imply as much. nor do i get why you think he’s an egomaniac. im sure you hardly know him enough to make such assesment of his character. and, it would seem that this poem in particular *IS* his way of letting go and trying to move on. it would appear that the only problem left is with everyone else who isnt able to accept that, as its become clear here.

6. Anonymous on July 7th, 2008 12:54 pm

   and you know him well enough to assert that he is genuine in his motives? don’t be so naive. he’s a manipulative douche and this is just another stunt. he can’t take it that everyone here has moved on and we don’t care about his antics. incredible musician, i’ll never take that away from him but jeez, what a fucking ego.

7. Jack On Fire on July 7th, 2008 1:04 pm

   Everything JW does is carefully planned out and strategic and that includes this poem. That includes saying that you have a sister on drums. That includes beating the shit out of Jason from the Vonbondies. That includes not talking to your hometown crowd and staring into a mirror on stage. That includes flying in for one night to fuck with a band’s cd release party a few months ago. Why did he really leave town? A few people know the truth and it wasn’t because Nashville is pretty in the springtime. Who is the redhead he is always writing songs about? Hint: it’s not Rita Hayworth or his wife. He is one calculated motherfucker. This poem doesn’t mean shit and he wants it that way. He wants everyone talking about him.

8. sourgrapes on July 7th, 2008 1:24 pm

   if people really didn’t care, detour would not have had their sad lackey scribble the official scenester response(very poorly at that) with a title retrieved from the reject column at the Onion, and there wouldn’t have been any responses, since we all have so many better things to do.

9. mr. big on July 7th, 2008 4:17 pm

   It was a terrible poem.
   And only an egomaniac would think it was the best way to set things straight.
   Oh, and T.J. go back to being a guitar tech for the hard lessons and let crazy jack defend himself.

10. x on July 7th, 2008 4:46 pm

    Uh, yeah. Sure. JW is nostalgic for Detroit and is showing the love. That’s why the f’ing douchebag came to town, whored $35 show tix, then flat-footed it out of town as fast as he could. Why bother playing an impromptu gig or afterparty in this wretched hellhole when you can just send us a poem instead. What an asshole. And the poem sucked, too.

11. T.J on July 7th, 2008 7:57 pm

    im not defending jack. i never stated he’s some great man who is innocent of all the accusations. i’ve met him a few times and he’s always been nothing but generous and courteous, he has even gone out of his way to do so, in my own personal experiences. but i hardly know him well enough to form any legit judgement of his character. and by that same toekn, i’d easily venture to guess no one else here has legit cause to judge him an egomaniacal douchebag.

    we’ve all heard and know the gossip and rumors about why he left detroit. he’s fucked over some former friends, and some former friends have fucked over him. but that business is between them, not us. and to judge someone an egomaniacal douchebag based on scenster gossip is not only irresponsible, but arrogant and ignorant. and to expect him to be some unflawed human being who has to live up to your personal standards, is just ridiculous.

    the man has lived in detroit his whole life. he has every reason and right to have a negative opinion about detroi if he wants (which he doesnt). despite my own love for the town, god knows criticism of the city (and even the music scene) is highly warranted. but fact of the matter is, whatever feelings he did have towards either the town or specific people, it’s clear he’s trying to clear things up in a civil manner. and you call him a douchebag for that? even if he was a douchebag, does that mean he has to continue to play that role just because its how you categorize him? is he not allowed to take steps to clear up his image? he’s trying to do right, and no one even takes a second to consider it. he’s not asking for anyones friendship or praise, just civility and understanding. and you call him a douchebag? thats fucked up. if anyones being a douchebag, it’s the judgemental pricks posting here.

    and to speculate that the poem is some devisive way to undermine the city’s faith is just retarded! what is he gonna do? wait a few years and then be like “HA! i tricked you all! the poem was a lie! DETROIT SUCKS!” if he wanted to continue to blast a city that he allegedly despises he wouldnt of sent a positive poem to the local paper, he would have written an article for spin magazine about how much detroit sucks. lord knows they have no problem printing an article whenever he takes a shit.

    and oh no, jack didnt stop the tour and throw parties when he returned to detroit! what a dick! he didnt even play secret shows! he’s clearly a shitty human being who isnt worthy of our own perfect being. geez, seriously? what sort of expectations do you have of the man? does he have to send meg to your front door to suck your dick before you can have anything decent to say about him? he doesnt owe you shit.

    i dont care if people like his poem, or his music, im sure you’ve all had proper enough exposure to pass such a fair opinion, and thats your right. but fucking hell, if you dont know the man personally then you probably dont have shit to say about him legitimately, and certainly dont have the right to criticize his character. you talk about wanting him to move on, which is exactly what he’s trying to do here. so why dont you guys grow up and learn to move on yourselves.

12. von bondie on July 7th, 2008 8:55 pm

    does anyone else get tired of jason stool steamer
    writing shitty comments on blogs under
    different names? just asking.

13. curious on July 7th, 2008 9:01 pm

    what bands cd release party did he fuck with a few months
    ago? i never heard of that.

    the detroit scene has a hard time being proud of anything
    that more than two people like. it’s no great surprise that
    detour lays a cynical view to anything jack will ever do.
    as if it’s sooooo hard to right a cynical review and tear
    something apart. all the detroit scene blogs are mostly
    negative, and this site is really no exception.
    i’d like to see a writer here do something positive like
    this poem, or i’d at least like to see a serious writer here!

14. curious on July 7th, 2008 9:02 pm

    it is hard to RIGHT actually.

15. racontears on July 7th, 2008 9:04 pm

    i was at the detroit show of the raconteurs and he thanked
    the detroit fans bigtime, and said it was from the bottom
    of his heart. what’s all this about not talking to his fans?
    that’s bullshit because i was there. he didn’t even look in
    this mirror on stage that someone keeps talking about.
    maybe the mirror was for you. if you were really even
    there.

16. scott on July 8th, 2008 10:02 am

    you know Paul Westerberg said something like “if you have to leave home to be something, then you’re never anything.” i think what serilla is saying was Mr. Gillis made a lot of us feel proud of the d, like we were the coolest city in the world for a minute. and sure he has ever right to raise his kids somewhere else and yeah I think empirically Detroit is “pathetic,’ but imagine if Yzerman had signed with the Rangers after his first cup, talk a bunch of shit about the wings, his teammates and the city. OK NOW imagine he comes back in 3-4 years, writes a lame speech how he always loved the fans and laundry lists a bunch of names and places and tells us to retire his number.

17. tucker 816 on July 8th, 2008 11:44 pm

    jack’s become an interesting character these past few years. first he starts looking like michael jackson with his fedora, eyeliner and cropped long hair, then–if rumor memory serves correctly–he may have had an affair with a friend’s wife and penned blue orchid about it–and once he shit the bathtub, headed south.
    so he found sucess in a city of haters, largely as a novelty (who remembers those early tours with pavement?) and enduring being booted from the go. can you blame him for putting his wife on the drum throne and dressing like a nursery school blood if for no other reason than to have full creative control in a city never really felt that on top of? detroit tends to eat its young and always has, there’s too little success to go around and the bleak creative horizon becomes a kind of frame for fickle, insecure egos to blame not getting further on. things can gestate too long, and without the midwifery, a lot of creativity gets stuck in the birth canal. and it’s easy to be a big fish in what sometimes seems like a dead sea.
    which is why, while his poem could have been, oh, I dunno, maybe something about the detroit of his taxidermy days,talking about how on a personal level maybe detroit was to him a city of frustration where he was just another guy trying to make it, he pens a literally phoned-in account of a detroit chotzkes and curios instead of any real sense of the people and mentality and him in it. it’s curious he mentions its people bound by its borders, as if being bound were as much a challenge and liability as a fact. see sammy davis jr’s hello detroit for an example of this kind of tourist-guide name dropping. I don’t doubt jack white loves detroit,but he doesn’t love himself in detroit. he’s either a dick for being a better and more successful musician than everyone, or a prick for extolling the virtues of the gentlemanly while bagging his friends wives. he may have just shit the tub y’all. jack we love you, but you and emily gail and pooh need to slow down your fun run to the detroit loves match at cobo and tell sonny eliot it’s okay to be a shirlebrity. otherwise, yr just another bill kennedy in a city of bill bonds’. like eminem said 10 yrs ago, “all i represent about detroit is frustration.” maybe it’s with himself.

18. cantstoptalkinaboutit on July 9th, 2008 6:59 am

    ^skimming the surface by generalizing what amounts to plain old resentment-that’s the Detroit we all know, and how we want it to stay.
    Your musings of the Gold Dollar era are quaint, but also ain’t coming back anytime soon. I don’t recall anyone “in the know”, calling out any of the strange idiosyncrasies or eccentricities back then, so why has it been fair game now? no,in fact,they bought in, encouraged it and anticipated what could happen next, and before anyone knew it, they found themselves unprepared and under-appreciated as the chances opened up to venture out on tour, to stick together, and to have someone with vision who was willing to support that effort and share in the new opportunities helped present them on an even playing field. Only when these things started to not work out, and there was never a “next big thing” and people didn’t get what they thought was their fair share, did it become, and has remained, the fault of their “leader”, even though it’s a pretty clear minority involved.
    One by one the wagon train circle has dwindled and the circus left town. Many may have benefitted with some record label signings, or some notoriety somewhere else in the world. Maybe there’s someone who feels slighted his band isn’t on tour with them right now. Others sell off the last of what’s left of their memories with lawsuits or a “lost” tape held hostage via Ebay, or record given as a sincere thank you.
    Add it up any way you want it, but he, and Meg let’s don’t forget, did more good than bad. Nobody seems to want to remember anything good that was done, so all that is left is gossip and conjecture and bitterness.
    If your band is the next big thing, pay close attention to what happened before you. Like they say, it’s not you that changes, it’s everyone around you.

19. in the know on July 9th, 2008 12:37 pm

    Chris Handyside wrote about it, and got treated reprehensibly as a result. He became a pariah overnight…totally undeserved. There is no one more decent than Handyside. The same people who shunned Handyside got theirs from ol Jacque Blanche in the end. It’s a really sad story, actually.

20. chaka on July 9th, 2008 9:25 pm

    the comments on here, from both sides, definitely have their respective points and merit… but the fact remains that jack has talked a LOT of shit about detroit in the press, and unnecessarily i might add.

    I mean, people in Detroit understand musicians moving away. Jack’s own “sister” meg moved to LA and she’s gotten no shit about it, mostly because she’s kept her mouth shut. Brendan benson, who probably also got shit from people in Detroit for getting more famous, also left detroit, but people don’t hate on him for the same reason as meg: he doesn’t talk shit. He has moved on. All the drama jack has around his departure was created as a result of his own actions and has been goaded on by his own actions. He is at fault and the evidence of this is littered in any music magazine he’s ever been interviewed by.

    consider this: he moved away how long ago– 3-4 years or so? yet he just recently called detroit “an iron maiden” suffocating him to death in rolling stone in an article about THE RACONTEURS new album… i mean, it’s years later, different band, different scene, and second album: why did he have to make these negative comments if this shit is behind him? i’m asking because it’s a mystery to me. i’m sure he was goaded by the journalist to talk shit, but saying “no comment” is not that hard to do, especially if a) it’s 4 years later and b) you’re as seasoned of a vet at talking your way around lies/BS as jack white has become. it’s the numerous instances like that that prove jack is not exactly repenting his mistakes.

    here’s my main issue with jack white, though– i wasn’t in the scene back in the day, i didn’t feel jealous of his success, i didn’t rip on him as he ascended to his glorious throne of rock’n'roll, and A LOT of kids/people in the D are the same way. whatever the number of scenester haters he had at the time because of the whole (jack white perpetuated) miller fam debacle, it is undoubtedly much smaller than the thousands of fans he has here in the city who love him and support him (as evidenced by his many defenders on this blog).

    …so why has jack white always spoken about detroit like it’s a cancer he’s so grateful to be rid of? And why does he refuse to recognize this as his mistake?

    at this point, i’m almost in my 20s. i caught on to the white stripes at the release of “white blood cells” when i was in high school and the white stripes hit it big, and i know i’m not alone. Still, as long as he’s been famous outside of detroit (which is, once again, as long as me and many others have been cognizant of his existence) he’s been dissing the city in the press. I don’t think I’ve ever read an article where he didn’t say something catty about the scene. so, that’s what at this point, 5 years of spewing haterade? and i’m supposed to lay over like a sad puppy at some pedantic, shtick-y poem he writes 4 years too late? It’s sad to admit but I’ve never been acquisitioned with a jack white that likes Detroit. The concept is foreign to me.

    I can’t help but chuckle at the person on here who was like “jack doesn’t owe us anything.” I’m sorry but that is bullshit. as is true with any musician, he wouldn’t be anywhere without his fans, ESPECIALLY his hometown fans. The sad truth about what he may or may not “owe” us is that all anyone wants is for him to apologize or at least seem remorseful. I don’t care if it is on stage or in a magazine or whatever, all he has to say is “I’m sorry.” No one is asking for a parade, or a song, or, I don’t know, A POEM, because that’s stupid and trite. No one is asking him to move back. We’re not electing him mayor. all anyone wants to hear is to admit fault in some form. Of course, evidently that is where jack draws the line.

    I guess I’m just tired of hearing people blame detroit for jack hating us, and then this BS where it’s like “wherever did you assholes get the idea jack hated you when he obvs. Just hated those other people?” oh, I don’t know; from every quote he has given on the city in the past 3 years?
    guess what, America: i’m from detroit. all i ever did was like the white stripes and all i ever got from jack white was reasons he’s so fucking relieved he got out of there while he could.

    i don’t want to be a bitch about this. I mean, love the white stripes. i think jack white is talented as all hell AND a fox. i really appreciate the sentiment/attempt I semi-perceive behind the poem, but at the same time i’d prefer him to get off his pedestal for 2 seconds and, if not apologize (because this is evidently too much for him), make me feel proud again that as great of a band as the white stripes has its roots in my city– a city that needs all the support it can get. All he has ever seemed to do as a person is disappoint me. I know it shouldn’t matter because he’s a musician, but, in mainstream music, personality will always be tied to music when it comes to great musicians. And his sucks.

21. racontears on July 9th, 2008 11:02 pm

    you treat him like shit, and then you want him to apologize.
    apologize for what? saying that people treated him like shit?
    that’s ridiculous.
    what you want is for him to lie and pretend that everyone was incredibly supportive of him. they weren’t.
    jack is saying in his poem’s introduction that he wasn’t talking about the city or the people of detroit. just the music
    community. what’s there to apologize for? if i were him
    i would apologize for even thinking of not telling the truth
    when asked in an interview how he felt about detroits scene.
    if he was hurt, then he should say that. not lie to protect
    those hipster assholes.
    by the way, he actually lived in the city from childhood, not
    some suburban immigrant pretending. if he wants to say
    anything he has a right. eminem’s from fucking st. clair shores.

22. sukka on July 10th, 2008 3:32 am

    Jack said many nice things about Detroit in the past. He started talking bad about Detroit in interviews in late 2004

23. what up what up! on July 11th, 2008 6:52 pm

    yo, shouldn’t we be gettin’ our minds on the fact that jason stoolsteamer hasn’t paid his taxes in years?

    http://forums.detnews.com/redesign/blogs/taxingdetroitblog/index.cfm?blogid=19

    i mean, c’mon, we’ve got garbage to be picked up yo! you’re
    as bad as kwame jason!

24. Name on July 14th, 2008 11:54 pm

    “Who is the redhead he is always writing songs about? Hint: it’s not Rita Hayworth or his wife.”
    “then–if rumor memory serves correctly–he may have had an affair with a friend’s wife and penned blue orchid about it”
    You guys mean Tracee Mae Miller, right?

25. Anonymous on July 16th, 2008 2:31 pm

    no we mean stoolsteamer and marcie bolen getting it on
    on stage one night!

26. Dustin Charles Leslie on August 1st, 2008 7:00 pm

    In Repose:
    The unreading of Jack White’s Sunday Poem

    I.
    What tripe. What gazing.
    Who at the glue earned posey?
    Who keen, who romantic
    Shirked? Derelict, innocuous at best
    On a mantel of con-celebrants,
    A glimpse of adolescence,
    Wet as the infants tongue to teat,
    A crowning of blathered indolence.

    II.

    Whose fair father walked which pew?
    What whet the barb of gory youth?
    This noose weathers claim
    and blues the maddening usury
    of fame. Beauty’s unknown,
    Yet, girdled in each busked truth
    The fang makes meal,
    the meat makes use.

    III.

    High praise con-madonna,
    For your billy boats and Cassanovabody.
    What wethepeople neglects
    Spinspray from their hobby horse?
    Belated by doubts, no nearer course
    Towards good, this virtue by praise,
    An ingrate pose for the cottar
    Spayed White, Jack for minstrelsy.

27. igrate poet on August 2nd, 2008 8:55 pm

    doesn’t it seem really easy for all detroit hipsters to tear down jack white relentlessly? and shouldn’t any artist from detroit fear
    actually connecting with people in a successful manner
    lest they fall victim to this jaded, cynical town too?

    you people all champion the underdogs, as long as the
    underdogs don’t remove the under from their title. cause
    if you make it, it’s crucifixion for all.

    i have a question though? when does the uber smart ass
    cyber hipster going to get crucified like we do to anyone
    who’s successful? it’s only fair right? this town is
    depressing for any artist. you people should be ashamed
    of yourselves for not supporting local art, jack certainly
    did for years spreading the good word of this town to
    the world. until you ingrate pose(R)s threw it in his face.

SHWFLYR