Liner Notes| August 2016

“Now wouldn’t it be just as ridiculous to pay two fiddle players a different wage because one of them is male and one is female?” JACK WHITE asked at a press conference about gender equality. “I think so.” A council has been formed in the city of Nashville to study and report on gender equity. Jack White, drawing on his years of experience keeping THE WHITE STRIPES at a 50/50 gender representation, has been appointed to this council as well. He hopes to do some good for the city of Nashville and for gender equity in general, a problem he sees as paramount in the coming years.

“All human beings on this planet and in this society that we live in deserve to be treated the same,” he said in the speech, “They deserve to be treated the same in their social lives, and in their financial and business careers as well.”

He used his own company, Third Man Records, as an example of how to make social progress through paying men and women equal wages and by extending to them the benefits that White believes are a necessity in modern life.

“Since 2015, all employees that are expecting mothers, can expect six months of paid leave after giving birth.” White said, “All fathers of newborn children at Third Man Records can expect three months of paid leave. Nothing is more important than a new life and new soul being brought into the world, and newborn parents should not have to worry about anything but the health and welfare of their child.”

In far less substantive news, FATHER JOHN MISTY, a favorite of the young and hip everywhere (including talented ones like Aziz Ansari), “claimed responsibility” on Instagram for a crystal taken from Echo Park Moon Juice, a juice bar in Los Angeles.

He wanted to clarify that he did not believe that what he did (removing the crystal from the store without paying for it or asking to take it) constituted stealing.

He called the use of the word “stolen” a “tacit endorsement of the capitalist values that blended superfoods and locally sourced produce stands, ironically, in direct opposition to. The universe, however you may define her, brought this crystal into my life at what can only be described as a ‘pivot moment.’”

I’m honestly not sure what to make of this explanation, or further when he goes on to say that he believes there is “a larger lesson to be gleaned from this experience: Namely that material goods, no matter how sacred, WILL come and go from your life.” After this, he “name-drops” Buddhism and the concept of randomness, saying that “if [the crystal] HAPPENS to find its way into my pocket, and that pocket HAPPENS to leave your store, creating some ownership/theft/possession narrative will only cause you more pain—as you will be attempting to find significance where there is none.”

I mean really, this stuff is just golden. I didn’t even want to cut it up much because the structure, the language, etc. are all just so delicious. To me, if he’s being ironic or if he’s being sincere, this post and this story is equally entertaining. It feels like something that you’d find shoehorned into the plot of a movie that has a hipster-musician character and it would be the plot you felt was “a bit too unbelievable” or “a bit on the nose.”

With these two stories, I see the yin and yang of music news: There are some people who are socially conscious and who are striving through their music or through other actions to improve their communities; however, it’s also fun to just sit back and watch the grand spectacle of the other bunch as well.