I am The White Stripes

I haven't been blogging at all lately, truly a dissapointing development for all of my loyal fans, but I have been keeping track of all the things I want to write. Right now, I have saved up about 10 blog entries and tomorrow I think I will finally get around to it, but something happened tonight that I feel I should write about before the adrenaline dies down.

John, Garret, and I were getting sick of eating the same three Chinese dishes that we're comfortable with, so in order to take a step out of our "comfort zone" we were going to go the Pizza Hut in Beijing. The closest one was about 20 minutes from our dorm, but that was no prob Bob. Now a felt a little guilty about eating a lot of pizza, so I decided to start running at 8 pm. When we were getting ready to leave at 9:30, it occured to us that the Pizza Hut's in China might not be open 24 hours a day, so we decided to get a move on. At 9:55 (apparently it closed at 10, how Communist...), we skidded in the door and demanded that they make us a peperoni pizza or face the wrath of America. They did, and there was much rejoicing.

This is where things start to get interesting. They made us go outside to eat it, so they could close the restaurant. While we were eating outside we noticed a woman singing in front of a decent sized Chinese crowd at some sort of sidewalk bar, but at the same time wondered what was going on, because she was a pretty awful singer. When she went to go sit down with her friends, we realized that it was some sort of open mic night, and they had a guitar sitting right there. John said I was thinking:

"Do it man. You gotta do it."

At first I was pretty petrified of the idea. It didn't seem like I could just waltz up to the stage and start playing, but in the end, after about 15 minutes of debate, that's exactly what I did. In front of about 100 Chinese people, I walked up and asked if I could go, and they handed me a guitar. At first they tried to tell me that it cost money, but this was obviously a bluff, because they didn't care at all when I said no.

The first thing I realized when I was in front of a crowd of 100 Chinese people is that the only guitar songs I know well are White Stripes. I tried to think of anything else, but all the my fingers would allow were Jack White's blues. I was possesed, and the White Stripes it was going to be.

"Hello!" I shouted, and then for good measure "Nii hao!" which means hello in Chinese. "I'm gonna be playing a rock and roll song for you by the White Stripes. Who likes the White Stripes?!"

Dead Silence.

From this point on, I decided to keep audience interaction to a minimum and just show them what my sould looked like. Before I had walked up, I was planning on playing "Fell in Love with a Girl", but I just didn't think it would go over that well on the accoustic guitar that they gave me, so I went with "Hotel Yorba" and it was a mighty good choice. For the most part the Chinese people were eating it up, though there was one little kid that didn't seem to be into it--he stood about 5 feet from me with his hands over his ears. I sold the act as much as I could, yelping and dancing and pretty much making a fool of myself. When I finished, if I might say so myself, the crowd went wild.

When I had decided to go up there, I had planned to play one song and get the heck off the stage. But when I went to leave the owner of the place told me I couldn't go. The funny American was attracting a ton of people to his bar. By the time I was about to start my second song there was at least 200 people that had gathered around.

For round two, I went "Fell in Love With a Girl", because I had located an electric guitar on the stage, and figured that if I was really gonna rock them out this is what it was gonna take. This was probably a mistake, because the electric guitar sounded awful. Furthermore I started forgetting the lyrics about half way through the song (is that even possible for this song?), and as anyone whose ever song in front of other people knows, this is a problem that just gets worse and worse. Also, my pick broke, and I accidentally unplugged my guitar while dancing around the stage. This was actually kind of perfect, because the same thing happened to the White Stripes when they were on Conan, so I felt like I was truly in their shoes. Also I handled it like a pro, plugging it back in and then shouting out:

"1234!"

and then finished rocking them out, though again, this performance was not up to the same standard.

But they didn't seem to care. They cheered me on, and I was again forced to continue. I slowed things down considerably, playing Blackbird, and I think this one went really well, although Garret said he thought that the failure to continue rocking was probably a mistake. Blackbird, by the way is a song that literally every American who's ever picked up a guitar seems to know, but in China that didn't matter. I gave a good vocal performance and the couple of British guys that were sitting on the right side of me, seeed to enjoy it thoroughly.

By now, I had given up on leaving any time soon, so I went into a funny little White Stripes medely, because with Blackbird out of my system, they were again all that I could remember. I kicked it off with "Lord Send Me an Angel" and then moved into "Let's Build a Home/ Memphis". This was by far my craziest moment up there, but the nuttier stuff I did, the more they seemed to like it, so that by the end of the song I was on my knees thrashing the guitar and screaming. I knew this would get a reaction, but artistic integrity was important to me to, so I decided to go out with a bang.

"This is my last song," I told them, and let ring the opening riff to "Dead Leaves in the Dirty Ground". I absolutely destroyed (in a good way) the song, because it is one of the few White Stripes songs that never ventures out of my range. Although, when I finished, and told them goodbye, the bar owner vehemently protested (there had to be 300 people at this point), I had learned long ago to leave them wanting more.

"Thankyou!" I shouted to the crowd, and for good matter added the Chinese word for thankyou, "Xie Xie!" to a roaring round of applause.

So what did I learn from my Kareoke experience? First of all, rocking out in front of people is lots of fun. Who knows how many times I've stood in my music room playing the guitar dreaming of thousands of screaming fans hanging on my every word. This wasn't thousands, and, ok, they didn't understand a word I was saying, but it was great. I amazed myself a little, too: I wasn't nervous at all.

Second, and I think this is a big one, I need to get really well-rehearsed at something besides "The White Stripes". Yes, this worked in a setting where noone had any clue what I was playing, but I think, should the opportunity ever present itself again, then it would be good to have a couple other tricks up my sleeve. After the show was over, I realized a couple other songs I could have played (The Shins!), but as they say no regrets.

Finally, and most importantly, this experience led to me to realize something about myself. Though I have had doubts along the way, though at times my vision was blurred and this truth seemed strange and impossible, though some might have protested, and to this day may continue to, there is one thing in this world that is, in the end, undeniable: I am the man.