Jack White is a true original, do we need another proof of this? We just got one… According to Pitchfork, two copies of The Upholsters’ second single, ‘Your Furniture Was Always Dead… I Was Just Afraid to Tell You’ were found by two different individuals, hidden in a piece of furniture! What does this have to do with Jack White? I explain: Jack White was actually part of the band the Upholsters with his friend Brian Muldoon a decade ago, and they were actually working as real upholsters, so they decided to release their singles by ‘sewing copies into pieces of furniture’ that they were renovating, without saying anything to the customers.
According to Third Man Records, 100 copies of the single were actually hidden in furniture, so 98 are still out there, inside someone’s sofa or armchair…. White even described the process in an interview with KROQ in 2012:
‘I used to write in them,’ said White. ‘I used to believe that upholsterers should leave messages for each other because we’re the only ones that see the inside of furniture. I was always shocked. I worked at a shop with five other guys and I said ‘why don’t we write messages to each other?’ So I started writing messages. First I would write jokes or talk about the client who was a jerk who owned this chair. Then I started writing poetry and started getting more elaborate. By that time Brian Muldoon had his 25th anniversary so he wanted to do something special. We had a band called The Upholsterers so we released a 7″. We made 100 copies of a 7″ on clear vinyl with transparency sleeve so you couldn’t even see it if you x-rayed it. We left those in a hundred pieces of furniture that he upholstered that year… to one day be found, or maybe never be found.’
Then two were found a few days ago… If you live in Detroit at the time, and had your couch repaired, my guess is you are in luck. But I know, Detroit is currently in shambles, so you may as well have sold/burnt/traded a treasure coveted by millions of hipsters.
