Apparently the suits behind the Guinness World Records book didn’t take well to Jack White’s claim that they dismissed his record-breaking attempt at playing the shortest public concert ever.

White was under the belief that he and former bandmate Meg White held the record for shortest concert ever, consisting of a single, quickly muted cymbal crash.

According to a dialog between a Guinness rep and British music magazine NME, “The White Stripes were in fact recognized in the 2009 edition of the Guinness World Records book for the shortest music concert ever when, on July 16 2007, they played just one note at St John’s in Newfoundland, Canada.”

The Guinness representative continued, “Subsequent to this appearance we received a large volume of applications from bands and performers seeking to beat this record. The ultimate results of this was individuals claiming that simply appearing onstage was enough to qualify them for this record. The nature of competing to make something the ‘shortest’ by its very nature trivializes the activity being carried out, and Guinness World Records has been forced to reject many claims of this kind. As such, we have been forced to cease listing records for the shortest song, shortest poem and indeed the shortest concert.”

In an ironic twist, Guinness expressed that many of their personnel are fans of the musician and hope he will one day attempt to break one of the 40,000 records that already exist in their database.

Bottom line… even if Guinness likes you, getting into their record book isn’t any easier.