We’ve heard about enough amazing sounding secret gigs to give us a lifetime’s worth of FOMO, but we must dutifully add Jack White to the list for his impromptu show at a makeshift psych ward in London this week that sounded suitably insane.
How insane? Well the show began with the audience ordered to don hospital scrubs and concluded with White being strapped to a gurney and carted off in an ambulance.
The secret gig-come-slice of interactive theatre was held at midnight last Wednesday in Central London, the conceptual exercise based around the concept of White’s new album (one of the year’s best) Lazaretto, an old maritime term used to describe the quarantining of people with infectious diseases.
Partnering with the local Punchdrunk Theatre Group, the Detroit musician transformed an old disused building into a fake medical facility, complete with a psych ward staff of doctors and nurses played by hired actors who instructed patrons to dress up in powder blue medical gowns and face-masks pre-show, then “tested” audience members and offered them medicine (re: shots of whiskey) for their ailments.
The lucky audience of fans was comprised of those who’d managed to sleuth a treasure hunt of clues left behind by a group called the Vescovo & Co Clinic – including a fake website and infomercial offering “free contagious & infectious disease testing.” Those who’d decoded the hoax and ended up at the London Vescovo & Co ‘clinic’ were dressed up and shuffled off to a quarantine chamber following an outbreak alarm blaring through the centre, as Third Man Records describes.
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The rewarding ‘treatment’ came in the form of Jack White and band emerging from a fog of dry ice to perform a 30 minute set that included ‘Lazaretto’, The White Stripes material (‘Dead Leaves On the Dirty Ground’, ‘Icky Thump’, and ‘St. James Infirmary Blues’), and a cover of Son House’s ‘John The Revelator’.
Fully immersed in his theatrical show, the set concluded with White succumbing to the ‘outbreak’, dramatically collapsing to the floor in convulsions as a team of medical staff rushed out to deal with the musician’s ‘infection’, tying White down to a stretcher and wheeling him off to an awaiting ambulance which then screeched off into the night, sirens blaring, as a first-hand account from The Guardian details.
While leaving the venue, “officials handed out ‘Prescriptions from Jack’: certificates signed by Doctor John A White III of Vescovo & Co that offered handwritten medical advice [like] ‘Be sure to eat your Ovaltine’ -and] ‘Pet a horse’.” (How very Fight Club).
The elaborate secret gig isn’t the only surprise White’s been pulling for fans lately. He’s been airing a series of intriguing live covers at sets in the last week – as Consequence Of Sound details – of Kanye West, Metallica, Talking Heads, and The Police.
Actually, it’s just the latest in a series of crazy events that the musician’s been at the centre of this year. That includes attempting the world title for the Fastest Record Ever, the invention of the gimmick-laden Ultra LP for the vinyl release of Lazaretto, which went on to smash a 20 year old sales record (set by Pearl Jam) in the its first week of sales, and even inspiring an Australian gelato vendor to concoct a Jack White ice-cream flavour. On top of the media controversy he stirs over beefs with other musicians, it’s pretty clear that these 12 months may be regarded as ‘2014: Year of the Jack White’.
