Halloween is over, but you know what’s a bit spooky and very, very cool? The Black Keys were great out of the gate. I suppose this was clear back in 2002 when they tore down Lupo’s opening for Sleater-Kinney, but consider today a healthy reminder to any of those earlier-day fans. The Black Keys appeared on Broken Record, a podcast by Malcolm Gladwell, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Headlam, revisiting the history of the band from day one.
In the interview with Rubin, drummer Patrick Carney cuts to the chase on the duo’s instant chemistry, sharing two recordings he put on his phone from their earliest recordings. As Carney explains, their younger brothers were friends and kept saying the pair should jam. By the time they did, a 4-track recorder was ready to capture the earliest improvisations. It’s fun to hear Rick Rubin’s reaction, but you won’t need it to feel the same: it sounds like it was written and recorded by Carney and Dan Auerbach yesterday. Listen to their first recording/song (a totally killer blues-rock jam) at 6:00 minutes and then their first official demo that got them a record deal at 8:45 below:
There’s a bucket of interesting context to all of this, not to mention context about the way they came into and handled finding themselves with a hit, mainstream breakthrough record 6 albums deep, so give the whole episode a spin.