The Dead Weather

Everyone in the band--Alison Mosshart, Dean Fertita, Little Jack Lawrence, and Jack White himself--totally threw themselves into the performance. Alison was great at working the crowd and spent a lot of time within arm's reach of the front row. You see those two monitors that were right in front of me in the photo above? Alison did a lot of standing, sitting, and jumping up on them, and occasionally she came right down the space between them and us. I did briefly touch her boot but otherwise abstained from the kind of creepy touching that the other denizens of the front row seemed intent on every time she was near enough to seem touchable.

I don't typically take photographs at concerts--I am, after all, there to listen to the music and watch the band put on a good show--but it was so stunning to see these guys performing up close that I needed to take a few pictures.

However, I was not able to snap a photograph of the moment, during a break in the vocals, when Alison Mosshart tilted her head to the side, smiled and stared at my eyes for an extended moment that felt like thirty seconds or so (in reality probably a lot shorter). But taking a picture of that moment would have ruined it for both of us, anyway. It was simultaneously very uncomfortable and very awesome.

The audience wasn't exactly a rough crowd, but it felt very young. The show was for ages sixteen and up, and it seemed like quite a few minors were grouped at the front of the line. And they seemed sort of like "superfans," for lack of a better term. Obsessives. There was a fellow next to me who shouted, "JACK! JACK WHITE! JACK!" literally every time Jack White did something. During one of the last few songs Alison actually crouched and grabbed that same guy by the hair, which I guess teaches us all that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

And then there were people who threw things on stage, including a cigarette and at least two glasses of beer, the latter of which seems to me not only rude to everyone there, but a little dangerous, at least for the band, who are working with a lot of powerful electrical equipment. I got doused in beer and ended up with my arms resting on the stage in a puddle of liquid for a while. It was terribly hot in there, though, so getting wet wasn't so bad.

I was really hoping that there would be high fives distributed during the show, but the horrible, sweaty seas of hands didn't make voluntary contact with the performers most of the time. There was a lot of grabbiness from the audience (not just reaching out hoping Alison or Jack would touch their hand, which was my M.O. when they were nearby, but actually grasping at them or caressing their legs if they were close enough). I am not sure if this is normal for a Dead Weather show, or any rock show with a famous enough band, or only rock shows with female lead singers. But the grabbiness creeped me out, and I was in the audience. I cannot imagine how creepy it must have looked to the band.

Jack himself actually stayed away from the edge of the stage, even when he was singing or playing guitar and staying back wasn't strictly necessary. He didn't seem to really be into teasing or touching the audience like Alison was (to be honest, I might be wrong, but I thought he seemed a little scared to get too close). The other gents, Dean and Little Jack, stayed exclusively back in their respective areas of the stage until the very end of the show, when they all came forward to bow at the edge of the stage. It was at this point that the crowd surged toward them, and I was pushed close enough to Jack to touch his lower leg, and everyone else was stroking at his legs and feet in a manner that was hard to perceive in any way except terrifying, so I figured why the hell not? Brushing my fingertips against his pantleg was my moment of unabashed creepiness for the evening.

I hung around the area for a while after the show in the hopes that the band would come out and say hello to the stragglers--and it's not like I wanted to be part of that mass exodus through downtown Denver anyway--but the bouncers shooed us all out. When I went with a few other people toward the creepy alley behind the venue where a member of the opening act (Snake Rattle Rattle Snake, which was actually quite good) was hanging out and where, presumably, the Dead Weather would eventually be emerging, a bouncer told us to "keep walking." At that point I gave up and went back to my car.

Great show, though. The music was fantastic, and the band was just a lot of fun to watch. And for once in my concert-going life, I was not trapped in a space where I could only see the shoulder blades of an extremely tall person in front of me. (Unfortunately, taking front row seems to be the only way to prevent this, if my limited experiences are any indication.)

I brought along my sketchbook, but I was way too shy to actually draw the band when they were up on stage.