Give the White Stripes honorary Canadian citizenship…

Cape Bonavista Lighthouse on Bonavista peninsula, Newfoundland, Atlantic Canada.
Originally uploaded by Gebuys.com Photopgraphy.

I almost fell out of my chair when I read the news in my morning paper:

“I told them when I handed in the album and we started talking about touring, I said, ‘Before anybody starts getting any ideas, this time we’re doing a solo tour of Canada, and I will not take no for an answer.’ I put my foot down before anyone even mentioned any shows we were going to play,” Jack [White of the White Stripes] said.

“I told our tour manager and our manager, ‘I want to play in every province and territory in Canada, and I want you guys to call up people and make sure that if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it. I don’t want to come home and say, well, we technically didn’t play every province because we didn’t play Prince Edward Island or something like that.’ You know what I mean?”

…”When you don’t take the easy way out, something interesting happens. Maybe we’ll have the best show of our lives in Nunavut. Maybe it’ll be a disaster, who knows?”

…”I want to push to see how far we can go with it. Okay, we’ve never done a tour of Canada. Well, let’s not take the easy way out and just play all the major cities. You play Winnipeg, Manitoba. What about the guys who live 200 miles north or whatever? I always think that if I lived in the Northwest Territories or the Yukon, it would be nice if bands came here once in a while.”

I gotta give ’em credit, I’ve been thinking about it all morning, and I can’t find the cynical angle here. If it was just about getting some publicity, they could do some beer company event one-off in Tuktoyaktuk like Metallica did. The logistics of that northern territory swing will be killer. And in addition to Iqaluit (population 6000) and the north they’re stopping in places like Thunder Bay and Glace Bay further east. Hell, even The Tragically Hip doesn’t tour like this. And this will be happening during prime summer touring season — they could be doing a succession of shows in the States or Europe for huge dollars. As it stands, it’ll be almost impossible for them to make money on this tour…

Maybe they saw Hard Core Logo and decided they wanted a first hand experience. My current theory is that somehow Stompin’ Tom Conners, esconced in his hidden bunker in an abandoned Sudbury nickle mine, has somehow gained remote control of Jack White’s mind, perhaps via advanced Mufferaw Ray Gun technology.

Anyhow, I hope to be at Deer Lake Park on June 24 to welcome the White Stripes to Canada in person.

In other music news, I am finally seeing LCD Soundsystem tonight, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been so excited about a show. If you don’t know them, the audio section on the website has pretty much all their stuff.

Just to bring it back home, at the end of their single North American Scum James Murphy’s last line as the track fades out is “don’t blame the Canadians…” which is a nice sentiment. Except lately I don’t feel like Canadians have much justification for our characteristic sense of moral superiority.