Jack White Talks Internet Frustration

Everyone’s reporting today about the White Stripes’ upcoming Canadian tour documentary that I posted about a month ago and I’m feeling a little left out, so here’s a Jack White bit for the day’s festivities.

It’s well known that Jack’s a purist when it comes to retro recording techniques, but nowadays the Internet has become the bane of his artistic expression. Speaking to The Ampersand, the Dead Weather, Raconteurs, and White Stripes frontman sounded off on Pro Tools for the second time in as many weeks and added that though he can control his method of recording, but the release and promotion of his precious analog gems still requires that pesky series of tubes:

“Do I really need a MySpace page for this f—king music?” White asked. “Do I really need to do that? There’s a part of me, that just out of spite, says I don’t want to do it because it’s so antithetical to what I do. I just question what it all means. If a million people see your webpage, how many people actually buy something, buy a record or a song? Feels to me, if you give them a chance to fast forward, rewind, or click off to the next web page, they will do it.”

What’s more, the Internet also interfered with White’s Dead Weather unveiling. “If not for the Internet, we would have loved to have done six months of small clubs down south to really build up what we are and discover what we are,” White said.

Luckily, Jack’s just a little cranky about the digital revolution and not quite crotchety yet. By the way, one little bit about the upcoming film The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights which hasn’t made today’s reports is that it is slated to close the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

Okay, I feel better now.