In 1999, Jack White was just a furniture upholsterer from Detroit who was playing in a fairly new band with his then-wife Meg. On June 15, 1999, they released their first album, a self-titled debut. It didn’t make a huge impact (“Fell In Love With a Girl” is not on it), but the album greatly affected Adam Beales — as his magnum opus of an Amazon review clearly indicates.
People being amused by old Amazon reviews is nothing new, but usually the amusement comes from bafflement at, say, somebody complaining about a lack of trains in Trainspotting. What makes this review stick out is Beales’s unabashed enthusiasm for The White Stripes, as well as his eclectic word choice on display throughout the 535-word review. He doesn’t like emo, has an axe to grind with Led Zeppelin, and loves the way this record sounds:
A mysterious, somewhat sinister two-piece that comes to you via the impeccable taste and unflagging dedication of Long Gone John and his SYMPATHY FOR THE RECORD INDUSTRY label. What we got here is a boy, a girl, a guitar, a rudimentary drumkit, and a Led Zeppelin fixation like the Aswad High Dam. You take all that, you stuff it through the rama-lama-fa-fa-fa with more cheap speed than a normal ninth-grader can handle and you will most definitely get you somma that WHITE STRIPES.
Mr. Beales may have been early in his love of The White Stripes, but clearly the music world caught up with him. Now, his review serves as a humorous reminder of a bygone era when Jack White wasn’t one of the largest luminaries in the world of rock music.
(Amazon via Consequence of Sound)
