Jack White’s “Record In Space” Certified as the Whitest Thing Ever
When Jack White assembled a few hundred patrons at his Third Man Records headquarters in Nashville on Saturday (7-30) to celebrate the seventh anniversary of his label and shoot a record player into space, they knew they would be making history. They just didn’t know the day’s festivities would result in the achievement of now one, but two “record” setting events.
This weekend a team of Third Man engineers took a record-playing space vehicle known affectionately as “The Icarus Craft,” loaded it up with a gold-plated 12-inch master disc of Carl Sagan’s “A Glorious Dawn,” and sent it aloft tethered on a high altitude space balloon capable of reaching the portion of the atmosphere referred to be NASA as “near space.” The Icarus Craft achieved an altitude of 94,413 feet before the balloon burst and the record player drifted gently back down to earth via parachute—the whole while the record spinning and playing inside the module on a continuous loop.
Meanwhile at Third Man’s “mission control,” a party was going on with beer, burgers, sno-cones, and the band The Soledad Brothers playing on stage. The entire mission took about an hour and 21 minutes according to The Tennessean, and when there was confirmation the record was still spinning during the descent, confetti was dropped from the ceiling and attendees immediately broke out into a dance party.
Along with achieving the first official instance of an audio record playing in space, according to Cornell University, Jack White’s Third Man mission was also officially the whitest thing that has ever occurred in mankind, just behind Martha Stewart going to a suburban pumpkin patch in a Prius, and Taylor Swift’s Instagram account.
“We define something as being ‘white’ through a complex algorithm that graphs the necessity the event has to mankind, and the unlikelihood that anyone of even the slightest non-white ethnicity would be in any way interested in it,” says Enrich Frankenfurter, spokesperson for Cornell’s Cultural Research and Sociology Division. “Involving both space and a record player really put a charge in this event to be considered at or near the top of the recorded events we’ve tracked since the endowment of our study in 2007.”
Yet Cornell researchers say Jack White’s extra-terrestrial pursuit didn’t put the event over the top in itself, even with the help of the quirky Third Man Records party at “mission control” in Nashville. It was the news that upon its descent, The Icarus Craft actually landed in a vineyard of all places.
“Basically if you were a hipster Millenial white guy, you probably experienced multiple orgasms upon that news,” says Enrich Frankenfurter. “The vineyard landing in itself was basically the white equivalent of driving out of your way to save 0.03¢ a gallon on gas, or insisting on white noise or a leg pillow to be able to fall asleep.”
Cornell researchers believe Jack White’s achievement will hold up for quite a while, but one event may rival it for first place in the future. “There’s been rumors of a episode of CMT’s crossroads pairing Cole Swindell together with James Taylor,” says Frankenfurter. “It that occurs, it may take the cake.”
August 1, 2016 @ 8:33 am
Didn’t I have Prof. Frankenfurter for Soc 101? Trying to remember . . .
Fourth place on the whitest of whites list is the unbroken string of over 15,000 of those ‘Whistling Hat Men’ performances without one person of color ever stooping to be associated with such an embarrassing display.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8oaVoT9KqY
August 1, 2016 @ 9:04 am
I don’t even know who this guy is or what type of music he plays.
August 1, 2016 @ 12:41 pm
I never heard of him until Colter Wall did a cover of Hotel Yorba. I researched it and listened to the original White Stripes tune. I like the original but Colter does it better.
August 1, 2016 @ 11:45 am
I’ve never disliked Jack White and even had some respect for him at one time but it seems he’s one of these guys that get caught up in their own image and world that they just start becoming more and more bizarre in the name of ‘art’. Switching gears, I can’t wait to see what other stories get tagged with ‘leg pillows’.
August 1, 2016 @ 3:58 pm
You guys have never heard of the White Stripes? Jack White is great. You should listen to some of the songs that he produced for Dwight Yoakam. Its good stuff.
August 1, 2016 @ 4:50 pm
Aw, I loved the Stripes. 🙂 Plus, the album he did with Loretta Lynn (‘Van Lear Rose’) was excellent.
August 1, 2016 @ 7:45 pm
Pretty funny. Imagine if something had been labelled the blackest thing ever? Probably would’ve been cries of racism haha. Not a Jack White fan but that’s funny.
August 2, 2016 @ 5:23 am
As a service to the uninformed, I provide the following info as to Jack Whites relavance to folks who frequent this site: 1. Jack loves traditional country music.2. He produced Van Lear Rose album for Loretto Lynn and it won a Grammy.3. Jack released the new Margo Price record on his label and is heavily marketing her. 4. He just produced, recorded and released a pair of songs for Dwight Yoakam.5. He regularly uses the legendary Fats Kaplan on his records and live performances. Fats is known as one of the most recorded steel players and fiddlers in country music today.
6. Jack produced and recorded and released a successful Wanda Jackson record which helped revive her career.
Tho Jacks own music may not be country per se, the above mentioned reasons make him still more country than Sam Hunt!
August 2, 2016 @ 8:28 am
Yeah, little surprised how many folks are feigning, or actually don’t know who Jake White is. I’m having a little fun at his expense here, and sometimes his ego can get a little ahead of him. But his contributions to music, including country are undeniable.