Timeline of Almost Every Jack White Gimmick

[Kali Durga]

This article is cool, mildly offensive, and hilarious all at the same time-- http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-wh ... te-gimmick

What it all comes down to, apparently--

[higherlimits]

Some notes:

They blacked out Jack's address though it's public knowledge as it's written on the sleeve of the italy records releases

The Upholsterers record that is hidden wasn't "Makers of High Grade Suites" it was a second one. Pressed on Cass Records and released a few years later I believe.

StripeOut was the best

Red Death wasn't released with the Mojo Magazine, you had to send out for it.

"March 2004 — The White Stripes release “There’s No Home For You Here” as a vinyl-only single." - There are so many vinyl only singles it seems weird to include this..

Now I'm going for lunch so I can't read the rest

[Kali Durga]

I didn't catch this, but they list the wrong year for the RRS, too.

[cwja]

Read this earlier when you tweeted it out. Like Ian mentioned there are some factual errors, but over all it was a pretty interesting read. Nice to see them all summarized. I wouldn't personally classify everything listed as a gimmick, but still found it interesting.

[Jamie]

The 0 for 2006 is incorrect if you consider the 9 UK tour Raconteurs CDs. They also didn't mention things like the ice cream boxes or the Coke ad.

The Virgin gig would have been a pretty major gimmick had it panned out.

[cwja]

The Virgin gig would have been a pretty major gimmick had it panned out.

What was this?

[Jamie]

They were going to play a gig on a plane at 35,000ft but it didn't work out logistically, plus Virgin Mobile started putting cardboard cutouts of the band in supermarkets advertising phones before anything had been agreed. It got a bit messy.

[orangeshoeskid]

The Virgin gig would have been a pretty major gimmick had it panned out.

What was this?

I think around 2004 because that's when Virgin America (the airline company) was founded, and it was after the success of Elephant in 2003.

[cwja]

Whatever happened to the cut outs? Seems like that would be an interesting collectible, but I don't remember ever seeing them mentioned.

[chaptertwentyone]

Whatever happened to the cut outs? Seems like that would be an interesting collectible, but I don't remember ever seeing them mentioned.

+1

[Kali Durga]

Shame on Motherboard for overlooking one of TMR's best gimmicks-- Triple Reverse Cryptophonica ™ .

[wolfeisjack]

Shame on Motherboard for overlooking one of TMR's best gimmicks-- Triple Reverse Cryptophonica ™ .

Thanks to that I just spent over an hour reading about the edgar oliver record... ha.

[DeeBee]

It's a fun article, but it leaves a lot out. And some of the ones that they do list don't seem like gimmicks to me. (The White Stripes break up. That's a gimmick??) Also, it seems to overlook The Raconteurs.

One of the best-conceived pranks was the Old To Gold promo spots for The Raconteurs songs. It seems like nobody remembers it now, but the Old To Gold website is still there, and videos on youtube. (There was also, as I recall, an invitation to people to make their own videos of vintage items that they found creative new uses for; or something like that. But it never seemed to actually go anywhere, maybe because people were confused on just what was expected and how to do it.) The original Old To Gold video seemed to be a spoof on the collectible antiques roadshow kind of thing.
http://www.fromoldtogold.com/

The video at the website is gone now, but the OldToGold youtube channel has three short videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq3GXwEpbTw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK7eU_x49Ak
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34cfZKddhyg

Longer version video of 'The Raconteur' vintage contraption:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcPZJ9dHgY0

Also: how does taking bullfighting lessons from real matadors and getting in the bullring with an actual bull not rank as one of the greatest rock video 'gimmicks' of all time?

Add: Come to think of it, The Raconteurs' whole website is a kind of gimmick, with the vintage (dare not use the word 'retro') computer graphics and user interface facsimile. http://www.theraconteurs.com/

[videogremmie]

Thank you for posting a link to this article. A very interesting read indeed!