Notes by long time White Stripes fan Mike:

The White Stripes @ House Of Blues / Atlantic City, NJ / September 28th, 2005

Unity In Diversity

Without a setlist, every show is different. This was especially the case on the Get Behind Me Satan tour, where many of the performances were in places that the band had never been to before. And yet, night after night, each show was still a "White Stripes" show, where even if you weren't there, or there was no recording available, you could still imagine how the evening probably went. The exception to that rule would be a show like this, from their one and only visit to Atlantic City, shared here for the first time twenty years (give or take a week) later.

The day before this show, the band had concluded their fourth engagement on public media, with a concert at Merriweather Post Pavilion that was webcast on NPR's All Songs Considered. The night before that, they were on PBS, for an in-depth interview with Charlie Rose, where they also performed "As Ugly As I Seem." A month earlier they had been interviewed on NPR member station KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic and performed a live set there as well, and in June they were featured on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, just before the US tour kicked off. With each of these events preserved online for repeat viewing, fans were given free access to both sides of the band, the raw and unfiltered live performances as well as the honest and transparent interviews where Jack and Meg talked about everything from the origins of the band, the recording of the new album, the locations they had recently visited on tour, the changing attitudes of the crowds they were playing to, their feelings about Detroit, and a rundown of influences including Son House, Loretta Lynn, Orson Welles, and even Pablo Picasso, whose quote about taking years to learn how to paint like a child was cited by Jack as a metaphor for both Meg's drumming and the band. As a set, these broadcasts are a treasure trove of content, highlighting the band at their most professional, reverent, and polite.

With that in mind, the performance in Atlantic City is about as hard of a U-turn as you could make. Look no further than the impromptu performance of the Modern Lovers' song "Pablo Picasso" where lyrics joyously rhyme the once-in-a-lifetime artist's last name with the word "asshole."

The show took place at the newly-built House of Blues, which was located within the Showboat, a Mardi Gras-themed casino on the Atlantic City boardwalk. In May that year, photographers had captured an executive pouring a bucket of mud from the Mississippi delta into the floor of the unfinished stage, with the substance streaming out of a HOB branded pail into a trough filled with rocks, like a container of melted Ben and Jerry's Mississippi Mud Pie ice cream. This "mud pour" had been a longstanding tradition at all House of Blues venues, alongside various decorations unique to each location, including a wall with the faces of famous blues legends, and a set of frames above the stage with imagery representing various religious and cultural symbols. The center space at the Atlantic City venue featured a Hamsa, an upward-raised hand with an eye in the palm, a symbol common to both Jewish and Muslim cultures to help ward off the influence of the evil eye - like the one that can be seen in Picasso's anti-fascism painting Guernica, where the evil eye is depicted as a lightbulb. Outside the venue, another hallmark of the House of Blues could be seen right beneath the marquee, the motto "Unity In Diversity". When the Atlantic City location of the House of Blues closed nine years later, the mud-imbued stage and the symbols inside would remain as part of a new venue, but the motto outside would be removed.

Given the setup that the Stripes had brought with them on the tour, which included a Rob Jones'-designed backdrop featuring a giant apple, white palms on the stage, clamshell footlights, and a marimba and timpani, the overall presentation at this show was like a world within a world within a world. The duo dressed in red white and black, surrounded by an eclectic assortment of instruments, playing in a Garden of Eden setting, on a mud-imbued stage with religious symbols overhead, inside a Mardi Gras-themed casino, in a hotel named for a river boat, at the boardwalk on the Jersey Shore.

And yet, with all of that going on, this show absolutely fits right in. Like that one puzzle piece with the odd edges that can't possibly squeeze into the remaining gap in the picture, and yet somehow does. Starting with Jack taking the stage, assessing the audience and then leaving with Meg, only to come back a few minutes later and deliver one of the most visceral and raw shows of the tour. There are unique moments throughout the show, both gifts and challenges to the audience, with the songs flowing loosely from one genre to the next. Featuring a setlist that mashes up everything from that irreverent cover of "Pablo Picasso" to Jack teasing the riff to "Seven Nation Army" before jumping into a cover of "Louie Louie" to the version of "Little Room" reworked as a confrontational voiceover to "Aluminum" before segueing into a masterful version of "Ball and Biscuit" that would make those bluesmen proud. This show mimics the mashup of influences and imagery all around them, balanced out by a beautiful acoustic version of "We're Going to Be Friends" and flawless versions of "The Nurse", "Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)", and "Red Rain" coupled with a healthy dose of jokes, including a throw down to the audience to make some noise during "My Doorbell" ("Man, you people are quiet!"), and a running gag on the name of the city they were performing in ("Good evening citizens of Atlantis!", "Alright Greece, thank you very much!"). It's pure and unpredictable entertainment from start to finish. Every show is different, but there aren't many shows on the tour quite like this.