AUGUST 2017 _ http://www.popularmechanics.co.za 55BY KEVIN DUPZYK
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
REED YOUNG
MADE in the USA
presses, and they bought eight of them; enough to make
5 000 records in an eight-hour shift. Tonight as those execu-
tives gather – with friends and family of Third Man, music-
business people, and Detroit people – the new presses will be
running.
White says Third Man is entering the lineage of what he
calls “ancient technology”, pointing out that records were
originally made of shellac, a substance humans have been
using for thousands of years. “You gotta understand,” he
says. “When you’re a musician and you started entering the
late ’90s and the early 2000s, things became more and more
digital, and it started to seem like – whether it was blues,
jazz, or rock and roll, whatever genre you were involved in- you kind of felt like the world around you was dying in a
big way.”
Records are analogue, meaning the mechanisms that
make sound exactly mimic the original recording. Digital
sound files are actually collections of discrete sounds that,
played in sequence, approximate music, like a flipbook for
the ear. On an average CD, there are 44 100 of these indi-
vidual sounds in every second of a song. That is a lot, but it
means there are 44 099 gaps. There’s something missing.
To Jack White, this is an acute condition. Technologies
come and they go, replaced by something cheaper and faster.
But what if the old technology – the slower, more expensive
one – is better? What if it’s worth preserving, even if pre-
serving it won’t stop the forward march of the new stuff?
What if it’s still relevant? You can complain about the new
technology, and you can reminisce about the old. You could
write an op-ed. But is there anything a person can do to stop,
or at least slow, a cultural shift? If you’re a person who cares,
and who has means and, in this case, who has some fame,
what exactly can you do to maintain quality in a world that
seems to care about it less and less?
ROUND 8 PM, GUESTS BEGIN TO ARRIVE,
come to witness the latest proof that you can still
make things in Detroit. It’s colder and a little wet
out, and the tent city is now fronted by a valet
kiosk, and the guests are dressed semiformal.
Tonight Third Man Records welcomes Third Man
Pressing. Inside, you first walk through the record store.
Then you worm through the thick crowd near the concert
stage where the Craig Brown Band is playing. Finally you
find yourself in the factory itself, where, amid high-tops and
bottomless craft cocktails, workers in black and yellow jump-
suits man the presses. The point White seems to be making
is this: music is made and sold by people, yet the transforma-
tion of music into vinyl – the step of making the invisible
visible – is done by people who have been made largely invis-
ible. This thing Jack White is talking about, about things
dying, or disappearing, is not just about music.
And then there is Jack White himself! Now in a black suit
and a yellow tie, he makes a toast to craftsmen: “Thanks to
everyone here. The carpenters, the plumbers, everyone who
worked on every pipe. Every painter. Everyone who worked
on every inch of this place...” Clapping, heartily, everyone.
The older men – must be record executives or scions of the
city – wearing suits that have never been in style; the mid-UTSIDE THE THIRD MAN RECORDS’ STOREFRONT
on Detroit’s long, lonely Cass Corridor, a line of tents,
sleeping bags, and lawn chairs stretches fifty metres.
Many of the people who crawl in and out of the tents
and who sit in the lawn chairs wear shirts bearing the
logo of Third Man Records, the independent label
founded by Jack White, frontman of The White Stripes, the band
that emerged from this very neighbourhood. The men have hip
beards and the women wear flannel and beanies; it’s cold, Detroit
in February. Some rub sleep from their eyes even though it’s three
in the afternoon. The reason they’re here is that Third Man is
opening a new venture: Third Man Pressing, a record factory. The
opening will include concerts, and tours, and special coloured edi-
tions of albums that will never be available again. But the opening
is on Saturday, and this is Friday afternoon, and it is cold, and a
storm is rolling in.
Inside, on a wall in the back office, is a yellow and black map of
the world. The labels on it are not the usual labels. Where it ought
to say “United States,” it says “Concrete”. North Africa says “Sand”.
The Pacific Ocean: “Water”. The Southern Ocean: “Colder Water”.
A legend in the southwest corner explains: “We have avoided
most political and cultural names and labels since they change
frequently throughout history: i.e. if a location has sand, it will
probably have sand longer than this map will exist, but how long
will a place be called ‘Russia,’ for instance?”
If you could zoom in on the Detroit of forty years ago, it would
have said “Autos”. Now, who knows? Later tonight, Jack White
will plant a flag in this corner of his hometown, and the flag will
read “Vinyl”.
“I think a lot of people think, oh, you’re a Luddite, or you live in
the past, or this is nostalgia or golden-age thinking, all that,”
White says of his plans for Third Man Pressing. He’s on a couch
under the map, wearing a yellow jacket and black shoes. His black
hair is parted down the middle, longer in front than in back, and
he occasionally reaches up to do the opposite of smoothing. “I
disagree. I like to take what’s beautiful about what’s already been
proven – what works – and ask, how can we marriage that with
what’s happening right now? And what can we do with that
tomorrow?”
Tomorrow is the grand opening for the public, but tonight is
the VIP party for the industry. Third Man has invited executives
from every other record plant in the country. As vinyl has made
its comeback over the past few years, pressing plants have tried to
keep up with old equipment held together with salvaged parts
and tinkering. But Third Man found a company making newFRIDAYA concert stage is tied
to a mixing board and
a giant lathe, so live shows
can be cut directly to acetate
just a short distance away.