#105 "Hotel Yorba" by The White Stripes

The 2001-2002 school year was an awesome one for new music. At the time, I was sharing a classroom with my buddy Scott. He was a drummer and I was just learning guitar. We talked about bands we liked all the time and spent lots of our off-periods grading papers and listening to new stuff we were finding. In the beginning of that year The Strokes broke out, I discovered Ben Kweller, The Hives came to America, Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot became the most talked-about album in a long time, and Scott read about some band called The White Stripes who were supposed to be pretty cool. I remember listening to "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" one day during lunch. It didn't really do anything for either one of us. It took a while for us to catch on to them.

Some time later I was flipping through the channels and as I ran through my usual selections, I came by MTV2. There was this song playing that just hit me right away. It ended up being The White Stripes' Hotel Yorba. I thought it was great. Very simple... a simple stomping beat... just a few basic chords. To be honest with you, it sounded nothing like the usual stuff I was hearing on MTV. It certainly didn't fit in with all the rap music and Britney Spears crap that was on TRL every day. The voice sounded familiar, but I didn't pick up on it right away. When I saw the name of the band come up at the end, I thought, "Ok... yeah. I remember now." I came back to school and told Scott about it. It wasn't long after that Fell In Love With a Girl came out, complete with that awesome LEGO video, and The White Stripes were everywhere. I still remember emailing the mp3 of that song to a friend of mine and his response was three words, spaced out across the page "THAT WAS AWESOME."

To be honest with you, I'm not a big White Stripes guy. I love the idea of them... the back-to-basics approached, the stripped-down style of just fuzzy guitar, vocals, and drums. And they certainly have some songs that I think are just fantastic. But whenever I listen to a full-length album of theirs, I always get a headache. I have no idea why. It most likely has to do with the recording style or the level of treble on Jack's voice and guitar, but whatever it is I just can't listen for too long. That obviously hasn't stopped the rest of the world.

"Hotel Yorba" is from the album "White Blood Cells." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.