Cool Enough to Make You Ashamed

The announcement of The Dead Weather—Jack White from the White Stripes, Dean Fertita from Queens of the Stone Age, and The Kills’ Alison Mosshart, all in the same room—left me strangely unmoved. Partly I think it was residue from one of the worst concerts I’d ever seen, years earlier, when the White Stripes came through town. Some experiences leave a mark.

But then Treat Me Like Your Mother arrived. Jack and Alison shooting at each other, impossibly cool. Watching it I felt that specific embarrassment of being confronted with something so stylistically correct that your own existence feels like a rough draft. I wanted to be out there in the dirt with them—in black everything, post-apocalyptic leather jacket, boots that communicate a threat.

I went and got Horehound immediately. From there it’s a short road to getting adopted by the Hell’s Angels and acquiring a few tasteful Uzis. A dramatic future awaits.