Today, Pitchfork.tv presents a new installment of its animated series "Frames". The show highlights first-person storytelling from artists, brought to life by Pitchfork.tv's animators.

This episode stars Carrie Brownstein of Wild Flag, Sleater-Kinney, and "Portlandia" fame, discussing the dwindling allure of the post-show party. It features her bandmates, the White Stripes, and a congregation of furries (yes, furries) during two ill-fated attempts to "cut loose on tour."

Don't forget, Wild Flag perform at this year's Pitchfork Music Festival on Saturday, July 14. Single-day tickets are on sale here.

As mentioned yesterday, Jack White recently criticized Guinness World Records as an elite and arbitrary organization, when he (erroneously) believed that they rejected the White Stripes' attempt to set the record for world's shortest concert. Guinness responded, encouraging White to explore different means of getting into the book.

And now, the plot thickens: According to a comedic press release, Jack White will spend the duration of his current Blunderbuss tour attempting to set the world record for "most metaphors in a single concert."

From the press release:

The attempt may prove very exhausting and at times even dangerous, but the results could prove to be glorious and possibly even vainglorious. White and Third Man Records are certain that the extremely scientific and intricate analysis of the metaphors that occur will be examined in accordance with Guinness' usually very thorough methods probably, or at the very least if somebody answers the phone at the pub.

Third Man Records encourages all attendees of said concerts to please not interfere or interject with any metaphors that they witness occur during the show as to not disqualify or worse yet, trivialize the metaphor in question. In addition all concert attendees are encouraged to entice as many metaphors to occur during the show that they possibly can as long as they don't endanger themselves or Mr. White.

...

Read More

The latest issue of Interview magazine contains a chat between astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Jack White. During the course of the interview, White expressed his frustruation with Guinness World Records. One would assume that White, with his many endeavors to perpetually out-do his own strangeness, must have broken a record along the way, but apparently not.

Back in July 2007, the White Stripes gave a performance that consisted of exactly one note in Newfoundland, Canada. The show, he said, lasted only a millisecond. Afterwards, White tried to have the event certified by Guinness World Records as the shortest concert in history.

"Ultimately they turned us down," White told Aldrin, calling the Guinness organizers "elitist" and their decision arbitrary.

"There's nothing scientific about what they do. They just have an office full of people who decide what is a record and what isn't. I mean, there is some stuff like Olympic records where they have a committee. But most of the records in there-who has the biggest collection of salt-and-pepper shakers or whatever-are just whatever they want them to be. So with something like the shortest concert of all time, they didn't think whatever we did was interesting enough to make it a record. I don't know why they get to decide that, but, you know, they own the book . . . Maybe this will help...

Read More

Band say they'd love to work with the former White Stripes man again

Guitarist also tells Buzz Aldrin about the break-up of the White Stripes

Yahoo! Music reports that Jack White's Blunderbuss has sold 138,000 copies in its first week, making its Billboard 200 debut at number one. This is the first top seller in Jack White's career-- the White Stripes, Dead Weather, and Raconteurs never reached the honor. The album's sales surpassed Adele, Nicki Minaj, Lionel Ritchie, Gotye, the Wanted, and One Direction, among others, in the top 10. He also topped the UK's charts, according to Billboard.

This month's foray into the frontline of music journalism finds some Spin doctors forgetting how many chords kick off Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Oh well, whatever, never mind

In the current economic and publishing climate, any magazine relaunch must perhaps have a counterintuitive element. But the once brand-leading American music title Spin's recent "Retro-Active" relaunch sees your counterintuitive and raises it a paradoxical.

The unbylined "Opening Act" advertorial at the front of this new-look, heritage-feel artefact thanks readers for holding the magazine in their hands, then advises them to drop it. "That sound you heard? The dull gentle thud as it landed? That might be the most important sound in this magazine's history, all apologies to the first three chords of Smells Like Teen Spirit."

Hang on a moment. Setting aside the instinctive concern anyone old enough to remember NME editor Conor McNicholas's "New Rock Revolution" must inevitably feel about a magazine trying to identify itself too closely with a particular moment in musical history, wouldn't it have been more appropriate to refer to the first four chords of Nirvana's self-lacerating 90s youth anthem?

As a music journalist, it is obviously not my professional duty to know anything about how a classic song is actually put together, but surely a reasonable layman's estimate of Kurt Cobain's most celebrated Boston-inspired guitar riff is F5, B Flat, G Sharp, C Sharp? Oh well, whatever, never mind. Readers worried about the fate of that all-important...

Read More

Former White Stripes frontman Jack White goes straight in at number one on the UK album chart with his solo debut, Blunderbuss.

The White Stripes man topples Adele with debut solo album

The second round of performances from Jack White, Grimes, and Alabama Shakes aired tonight on "Later With Jools Holland". This time around, White performed the White Stripes' "Ball & Biscuit" with his all-male band and his own "Sixteen Saltines" and "Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy" with his all-female band. Alabama Shakes did "Hold On" and "Hang Loose", and Grimes did "Genesis" once again. Video of Grimes hasn't surfaced yet, but watch performances by Jack White and Alabama Shakes below, as well as Holland's interview with White.