Raconteurs in Concert

The other guy who didn't notice there was no bass-player.

Adam, Kyle, Tyler and myself headed down to Comic Con early because we'd purchased tickets for the Raconteurs at a San Diego club called Soma. The converted movie house should have been named Sauna because there was no air conditioning and it made standing in the crowd anywhere near the band a near suicidal idea. Thus we contented ourselves to stand at the back of the rather large facility where it was much cooler and where we figured the sound would be better.

We didn't make it in time for the warm-up act, as we were starving and simply had to get something to eat, but we arrived just in time to see the Racs take the stage and dive right into the title track from their debut "Broken Boy Soldiers." The fellas seemed to be in good spirits and were in good form and when they tore into my favorite track "Level" I was in thrall. This was the first time I'd seen Jack White play live and "Level" is the kind of tune that allows the guitar wunderkind to really chew up the frets.

They announced the following song by telling the audience to sing along if they knew the words so I figured it would be their hit and album opener "Steady As She Goes," and I wasn't disappointed. Or waited, something was wrong, the killer Pixies-esque bassline was nowhere to be found – what the fuck? Maybe I was disappointed afterall. As I feared bassist Jack Lawrence had blown the speakers in his bass cabinet, rendering his instrument into a tuneless percussion instrument. It sounded like someone had put a cardboard box over your head and was beating it with a stick. Incensed I fought my way to the mixing board and asked the engineer if they didn't have a back up amp and he just shook his head, obviously as pissed as I was and said no. I told him they should just switch out his monitor cabinet with his amp cab, but as it turned out he'd blown it out the night before and they hadn't had a chance to repair it – basically they were fucked.

I will admit that the band soldiered on (so to speak) quite admirably (I suppose Jack is used to playing without a bass-player) but it really ruined the show for me. Many of the tunes on the album rely heavily on Lawrence's bass-lines to make them groove and in their absence the tunes from my favorite album of the moment, came off sounding pretty weak. I figured since it wasn't going to sound good, the best thing to do would be to fight my way up as close as I could to the band and heedless of the sweltering humidity, I did just that. Again I'd never seen Jack live and I wanted to get as close as I could. By doing this I was able to salvage the night to some extent, White is a terrific showman and such a sure-fingered guitarist that I contented myself to watch his every move and in this fashion I passed the time rather enjoyably.

The band played every song from Broken Boy Soldiers as well as a Bowie cover off of Ziggy Stardust as well as a couple new tunes and in spite of the bass sounding like a second kick drum it wasn't too bad of a show. When I finally rejoined the crew, I told them of my adventures expecting them to be equally bummed about the missing bass, but it turns out that they didn't even notice. That was the biggest surprise of the evening.