Fuck the Dead Weather. Also Fuck P.J. Harvey, Karen O., Sleater-Kinney, Patti Smith and any other clever girl-rocker comparisons people have been making to Marissa Paternoster of the Screaming Females. And not just the guitar chicks. Fuck Jimi Hendrix. Fuck Jimmy Page. Fuck power trios that don't start with Screaming and end in Females (I'm looking at you Cream and Nirvana). Fuck Jack White. Fuck Meg White. Fuck the Queens of the Stone Age. Fuck the Kills. While we're at it, fuck people who hold up their iPhones to take five-minute videos of the Dead Weather. The Screaming Females killed last night at Terminal 5. The Dead Weather, eh. I could have done without.

The Screaming Females took the stage at 9:15 and played a crazy 30-minute set of exquisite rock 'n' roll to the mostly unknowing crowd of Dead Weather heads. The bass was funky, the drumming was heavy and the guitar was out of this world.  Paternoster, dressed in a polka dot librarian dress and hiding behind very long bangs, proved she can shred like the best of 'em. On record, her guitar skills are obvious, but live the whole band is jaw-dropping impressive. Jared (drums) and Mike (bass) hold down the fort and Marissa runs wild up and down the neck of her guitar.

After every blistering solo, I wanted more. She made it look so easy, especially when she started screaming. A lot of people in the crowd around me jumped every scream. How could anyone make such a sound? One guy grabbed his throat, feeling her pain. It was beautiful. Marissa introduced the band three times and you could barely hear her she was so timid. Seconds later, she was flailing around with her guitar and ripping her vocal chords. The crowd was stunned. After every song, the place cheered. They had been converted. A girl next to me actually said, "She's on fire." And she was.

When the Dead Weather took the stage with all their fancy lights and back tapestry, I had checked out. The younguns had won. None of the glamour and flash, but all of the power. To be completely fair, the Dead Weather set wasn’t terrible. They finished well. That's all you can ask, really. Jack White played guitar for one song, "Will There Be Enough Water," and the band played a three song encore coasting on the fumes of his four-minute guitar shred and wonderful singing/kissing/tonguing duet with Alison Mosshart. For the first few songs, I was bored. Unlike the White Stripes or Mr. White’s favorite Captain Beefheart (who blared as the band sauntered on stage), the Dead Weather don’t bring anything new to blues rock. They trample on it. If they are going to do this whole dark/mysterious thing, they should follow through with some feeling.

The band is full of great musicians, don’t get me wrong, but they only have the beat, not the soul. Except for “Will There Be Enough Water,” I didn’t feel any energy between them. In one song the entire band starts chanting like a chain gang and it was laughable. Who do these hip dressed-all-in-black, rich rock stars think they are? When Jack White started singing about sitting on a bus to Birmingham I couldn’t help myself and I laughed out loud.

As for drumming,  White can hold his own, but he doesn't exactly add anything to the instrument. He does, however, add something to the guitar. So why doesn’t he play guitar all the time? I understand a man in his position is allowed to experiment. I understand being a rock god and all gets a little boring, but Jack, please, next time don't invite a band with such brutal intensity and technical prowess at your supposed instrument of choice to open for you. It makes you look bad.