A word about The White Stripes: Jack White has said, on more than one occasion, that he's always thought of the band just as much as an art project as a rock and roll group. That's fairly obvious, really. But think about it: how many people could do this? How many people could form a band that's as interested in the visual and conceptual possibilities of rock as The White Stripes are and still, y'know, f*cking rock, hard and never precious? That's something I would've said, pre-Stripes, was a practical impossibility. I *did* say that, in fact - how I used to rail against bands that had a preconceived image, or even just a "look"! Yet Mr. White has done it, and in doing so I believe he's joined the pantheon. First-ever art rocker to reach it. Good on him.