Everything Used to Be So Much Better

"White Blood Cells" was the first White Stripes records I ever bought. I'd seen the lego-video for "Fell in Love With A Girl" on recently turned uncomfortably successful writer Charlotte Roche's Fast Forward. It was a remarkable moment in my personal musical history - the turning point when I started to really discover music, at 14 or 15, broadening my horizon etc. I liked the follow-up-record "Elephant", but the two after that, "Get Behind Me Satan" and "Icky Thump" not so much. Anyways - another thing I started doing back then was watching Conan O'Brien's Late Night show on the weekend, which I loved because of the self-deprecating humour and this odd sentiment of actually getting to see something only one week delayed or something rather than a year (TV shows before the internet became what it is now where only on TV, so I had to hope that Austrian and German networks would eventually pick up my favourite shows...). I never much cared for Leno. Now, after 18 years of hosting the Late Night Show, Conan moves on to take over Jay Leno's The Tonight Show, which is kind of absurd because for me, these shows never were programs or formats for themselves and bound to whoever was hosting them - but I guess the difference will be the more prominent time slot and that Max Weinberg won't be following. The band playing on the last Conan O'Brien hosted Late Night Show was, due to the intimate relationship between the band and the show, The White Stripes. And, which I found particularly nice, they chose to perform a song from "White Blood Cells", one of my favourite, that doesn't have a drum part so Meg could join Jack on the guitar: "We're Going to be Friends".



[via Pitchfork]

Slate: Don't Worry About Conan, February 19, 2009
NY Times: Building A Home in Late Night's Shifting Sand, February 18, 2009