Con(cert)ey Island

Last night yours truly could be found in Keyspan Park, home of minor-league baseball team the Coney Island Cyclones. Oh, and the Shins and the White Stripes were there, too.

I was treated to a fabulous concert as I stood in center field; a stage was constructed in the outfield, and was open in the back to let in the night sky and the breeze coming off the Ocean.

The first band, M. W. something, was terrible. The Shins, however, were solid and terrific. They performed a lot of their hits, but, truth be told, were so very much themselves as they are on their albums that it doesn't really make sense to see them live. It's exactly like listening to their music on mp3.

The same could not at all be said for the White Stripes, however. The difference between the music of their albums and the music of their live show last night in Coney Island is like the difference between seeing a tiger in a zoo and seeing a tiger devouring a gazelle in the wild. Jack White is a maniac, a Robert-Johnson-esque guitar devil who must be seen to be believed. He flew from instrument to instrument and from song to song, stopping only to take polaroids of himself and Meg (which he then threw out to the audience) and to make a few suitably bizarre comments like "This morning Meg had breakfast with Dennis Hopper. (pause) No, that's not true."

Speaking of Meg, she is far more impressive a musician than anybody gives her credit for. With a very proper air about her, she's able to keep up with and adjust to Jack's almost feral perfomance. When Jack broke a string for the second time, he merely tossed aside the guitar he was playing and picked up another and started playing a totally different song, then, when his roadie has fixed the string, Jack took up his now fixed guitar and continued the first song where he'd left off. This was done without pause, and Meg never missed a beat, despite there passing no apparent cues between each other.

Even the songs from their newest album that I don't like sounded incredible last night, to the point where I was made to think "oh, that's what that's supposed to sound like." Score another one for the Detroit music scene...