As the hour begins, the CDC has arrived to inspect the area and test Jack for exposure to the bioweapon. Meanwhile, Tony and weapon are en route to Starkwood’s facility. When they arrive, Tony is asked what the FBI knows. Of course, he doesn’t answer and is beaten. He stays quiet even after Jonas Hodges offers to let him go if he talks. One of Hodges’s assistants, named Seaton starts to have doubts about the operation, but he tells him to drop it and to carry on. After Tony is kept in a holding cell for a while, another guy comes in to give him one last chance – either talk or get shot. At the last second, the bad guy is shot by Seaton, who then agrees to help Tony contact the FBI and tell them where the weapons are being kept.

On the way back to FBI headquarters, Jack is informed that he tested positive for the pathogen, but he’s not contagious. When they arrive, Larry releases Renee from holding to debrief Jack just as Tony calls in. He explains that this guy Seaton is going to tell them where the weapons are in exchange for immunity. After a quick talk with the President, Seaton talks and a team is sent to Starkwood.

Larry Moss and the team arrive and meet up with Tony. They blast into the wearhouse where Seaton says the weapons are, but it’s empty. As they leave to search the rest of the compound, they are confronted by a giant army of Starkwood people, led by the guy who supposedly had been killed while interrogating Tony. Seaton played Tony, and both sides refuse to backdown.

Soon they are conftonted by Hodges himself, who gives them five minutes to leave the property. Jack tells Larry to figure out a way to leave Tony behind so that he can find the weapons, so he starts to yell at Seaton and punches him in the face. Tony slips away as Larry is pulled off of Seaton, and the FBI flies off.

Back at the White House, Olivia, who has been named interim chief of staff, is dealing with another reporter who caught wind of the bioweapon story. She has to go to his hotel, and we quickly learn that this relationship is a bit more complicated than we knew. Olivia agrees to engage in some adult activities in order to keep the reporter quiet, but afterwards he says he still is going to run the story. Luckily, Olivia taped the whole thing on her cell phone! Fight blackmail with blackmail.

After some sneaking around with the help of the Starkwood chairman, who is not complicit with the bad stuff going on, Tony finds the weapons and Jack identifies them. The President orders an air strike, and that is that – until Hodges calls up the President and threatens to launch missiles with the toxin unless the planes are called off. The President rushes to abort the strike as the hour ends.

As you can probably imagine, this is a radical departure from both of Jack White’s other bands. Although he’ll undoubtedly be the main draw and driving force behind the band (as the producer, owner of their record label, etc.), it will be interesting to see how his relative absence from the spotlight will influence the band’s direction. Their first full-length, Horehound, is scheduled for a June release, and two tracks are available to stream on the band’s site and to download from iTunes.

Last night I learned that The Dead Weather would play their first show EVER for the general public next Tuesday night at the Bowery Ballroom here in New York, so naturally I had to get tickets the moment they went on sale at 10am today. But apparently logging in at 9:45am and refreshing the site every 30 seconds until the tickets went available at 10:00 was not a good enough strategy, because as soon as I got into the site, tickets were gone. Thanks a lot. And this isn’t the first time I’ve been screwed over by Ticketmaster either.

I don’t know what’s worse: Ticketmaster being a horrible place to buy tickets, or the people who get tickets and then put them up on Craigslist immediately for $200. It’s one thing to buy a ticket, realize you can’t go, then put it up for sale. I can even understand trying to make a little profit if this is the case. But to buy a $25 ticket and then immediately post it for $200 is truly a crime worthy of public flogging. It’s clear you have no interest in going to the show and are trying to ruin the lives of people who actually care about the music. To all of you people who are posting tickets to this show on legalized scalping outlets, I wish you the best of luck – tickets are will call only, so no shady exchanges on crowded street corners can possibly take place.

And if anyone out there from Ticketmaster is listening…EVERYONE HATES YOU. We always have.

The album leads off with the title track, which is a decent enough song. It’s then followed by three long (over five minutes) songs. Now obviously there is nothing wrong with long songs, but these just don’t go anywhere. It reminded me of Enya with rock instruments, and believe me, I won’t be using U2 for mood music any time soon. The sixth track is the single, “Get On Your Boots,” which they performed at the Grammys. I wrote then that the song was too overproduced in order to create a spectacle for the show, but I thought the song was probably good. I was wrong. It’s easy to see now why the song was made so theatrical at the Grammys: it’s boring. There is nothing to the song, and it just isn’t that good.

The one bright spot was the song “Breathe,” which is the only one I recall that has a guitar solo. The rest of the album is just Bono yelling. He screams “OHHHH” and “AHHHH” as much as he sings actual words; it’s almost like they are trying to make every song epic. But these songs don’t rouse nearly the emotion of such classics as “Pride” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”

Disagreeing with Rolling Stone is nothing unusual (“Single Ladies” by Beyonce is the best song of 2008? For real?), but I cannot see how No Line on the Horizon got five stars. For such a rare rating, it seems that it’s something they would take a bit more seriously.

Hazards of Love is a modern day concept album dreamed up by lead singer Colin Meloy. The story is quite interesting, and the album includes female lead roles and other guest spots from singers such as My Morning Jacket’s Jim James.

The story is told as one continuous song divided up into 17 movements, and the music crosses genres from indie pop to new wave to folk to blues rock, which is prominent on “Won’t Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga),” which is the standout track of the album in my opinion. Start to finish, Hazards never lets up and always keeps you on your toes. 

This one of my favorite albums so far of 2009 and definitely has convinced me to go back and catch up on what I’ve missed since Her Majesty.

• Juma is planning another attack, the target is in Washington
• Ryan Burnett, Senator Mayer’s chief of staff, is involved in the conspiracy
• Dubaku is killed by a mystery man in the hospital
• Jack returns to the White House to question Burnett, ties up Bill Buchannan so he can’t be implicated with Jack’s rogue operation
• Jack finds Burnett and tortures him until he’s nearly dead, but he was about to talk when the President busted in
• Jack is placed into custody
• Meanwhile Renee Walker is following a lead, learns that Juma is in the country, planning attack on the White House
• Walker barely gets away alive, attack is launched on the White House, Bauer is set free to help, too many people, President stuck in lockdown with Jack, several hostages in White House, including President’s daughter, Aaron Pierce, Senator Mayer and Bill Buchannan
• President comes out when Juma threatens to dismember her daughter, Jack now hostage, President forced to make statement on TV
• Jack makes plan to save President, Bill does it instead and blows himself up, RIP Bill Buchannan, hostages are safe and Juma is killed
• Larry Moss lets Jack question Ryan Burnett again after Renee goes behind his back to Ethan, Jack not to do anything, hopefully Burnett’s fear will lead him to talk
• Renee is relieved of her duty
• While locked in Burnett’s hospital room, Jon Voight’s operative disables Jack and kills Burnett, Jack is framed
• Jack escapes and calls Renee, she helps him figure out who framed him, and sends him to Senator Mayer’s house to follow up on a lead
• Morris O’Brian helps them figure out where Renee sends Jack in exchange for Chloe’s immunity, Renee placed under arrest, teams sent to Senator Mayer’s house
• Jack finds connection between Juma and Starkwood, Jon Voight’s company, Starkwood building bio weapon, bringing to US to kill
• Knock on Mayer’s door, it’s the police, Senator convinces Jack to let him open it since he has the power to help Jack out of trouble, it’s the same guy who killed Burnett
• Senator Mayer shot dead, Jack framed again, flees and is chased by the bad guy as FBI and police show up, Jack kills bad guy and learns where weapons are coming in
• Out of options, Jack calls Tony, they meet at the port where weapons are coming, find guard, who has agreed to help the terrorists but doesn’t really know what’s going on
• Guard leads Jack and Tony to the bad guys, Jack saves guard’s life but starts fire fight, they are outnumbered
• Jack runs and steals truck with weapons, Tony captured, Jack makes it out and calls Larry Moss, bad guys catch him back on the edge of the city, bad guys stole weapons back, Jack is exposed to the gas

Wow, that’s a solid five hours of Bauer. These bullets don’t do it justice, but I don’t have time to write a novella.

After a short opening set by the keyboard man (I forget his name, it was Steve something), Maserati came on. Maserati, another Athens band, plays really tight instrumental math rock with a huge focus on the drums. And rightfully so, because the drummer, Jerry Fuchs, is absolutely incredible. He ranks up there with the best drummers I’ve ever seen play live. The guitars and bass kept up the whole time and created a seamless rock experience. The energy level was a little low, but I blame that fully on the table-and-chair set up. You could tell the band wasn’t too thrilled with it either, as they even made a comment about it during the set. 

So now I’m thoroughly exhausted, but it was well worth it. I saw some of the best bands that Athens and Atlanta have to offer, and if you ever get the chance to see any of these bands, don’t pass it up.

First up was Black Lips at the Bowery Ballroom on Monday night. The first opener was a band called Georgiana Starlington. They were an interesting band to say the least, mixing noise-rock with folky/country-sounding music and a female lead singer. Unfortunately they were not very inspiring.

Second to play was Gentleman Jesse and His Men. These guys from Atlanta, all dressed in suits, played some killer punk/garage music. The sound was great, and the lead singer/lead guitarist played some excellent solos. A few songs into their set, the mosh pit began to break out. I’m personally not a fan of the mosh, but on this particular night it felt nice to push some strangers around.

After a quick intermission, Black Lips took the stage. I had heard of these guys for a while as their popularity grew in and around Atlanta, but I never saw them until last Spring when they opened for the Raconteurs at Terminal 5. They were greeted much more kindly this time around, and from the first song the crowd was absolutely nuts. They tore through their fast songs that sound like a mix of 50′s music and 70′s punk. These guys are the ultimate garage band and put on one of the most energetic live shows I’ve seen. The mosh pit lasted the entire show, but unlike most of my experiences, it was pretty tolerable. 

Two down, one to go in the hometown concert series. Maserati is up next.

But in addition to the festivities over in New Jersey, Saturday was also the day that the Whigs’ headlining tour made its stop at the SOLD OUT Bowery Ballroom. Joining the Whigs for this incredible journey were Dead Confederate and Trances Arc, two more bands from Athens, GA. First on stage was Trances Arc. Having not had the pleasure while I was at UGA, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I’d heard some of their studio releases, but they in no way prepared me for the rock I was about to witness. There is nothing too specific I can say; it was just the solid live music that has made Athens into one of the best music towns in the country.

Second up was Dead Confederate. Unlike Trances Arc, I’ve seen Dead Confederate several times and knew exactly what I was in for. As I’ve written before, Dead Confederate is what I would envision happening if Nirvana and Pink Floyd had a love child. They ripped through several tracks from their debut full length, including “Start Me Laughing,” “Heavy Petting,” “The Rat” and the title track “Wrecking Ball.” I never get tired of seeing these guys play because even if you know all the songs, no two shows are ever the same.

Finally it was time for the Whigs. They took the stage once again with the Tomahawk Chop playing over the PA – not sure if this is a permanent fixture or just a New York thing, but I like it either way. They started the set off in unique fashion with “Mission Control” from their second album of the same name and never looked back. They played a great mix of both of their albums, along with three great new songs that seemed destined for their next record called “Alabama Stars,” “I Am For Real” and “Hundred Million People.” There is nothing in the world quite like a Whigs show, and it’s already about time they come back for more.

This was one hell of a way to start off the March concert season, but as you can tell from the headline, it’s only the beginning.