NYLPM response: The Strokes Coverage

Sure, there's a bit of Television, some VU, some Stooges, and doubtlessly countless other bands and artists that I know fuck all about in there, but the simple fact is that The Strokes have got some ace tunes and some top pop hooks. Dead-metronome drums and circular chug guitars will always be cool because they sound as if the band in question are too fucking insouciant to even fucking play properly.

The bassline on the opening track is worth £10 of anyone's money in my book.

Strokesband are fine, as I keep saying - OK pop group. Strokespress is more interesting than the band.

But in answer to your question - both. The point - part of the point - about canonisation is that it brings things into the mainstream that may not have been in the mainstream "at the time". It renders "at the time" irrelevant. The VU are a mainstream band now, utterly.

I mean -- cool as teenagers screaming for Britney are, how cool areteenagers screaming for a Television/VU knockoff?

Why would that be cooler? And I've not seen much evidence - over here at least - of teenagers screaming for The Strokes.

A name that hasn't yet come up in Strokestalk which I think might be relevant - Elastica.

Had they called themselves The Grokes I'd be right behind them.

Difference in tone between Strokesband criticism and other bands which get praised and it is assumed have 'retro' influences (eg Oasis when they were starting out): early coverage of Wasis was at pains to point out the ways in which the band modernised and brought up to date its retro template. Strokespraise - what I've seen anyway - makes no attempt to do this. (Maybe it's not the extent of the praise I'm objecting to but its shitty, imagination-free quality - at least with most hypes you find yourself thrilled even if repulsed.)

Again, an OK band from what I've heard. Better them, even, than the things I've heard proposed as more worthy - White Stripes, French Kicks - coz Strokespop is more pop.

In Badger's Making the Pie Higher daily blog (ah, daily updates...), he links to the AMG's BIOGRAPHY for the Strokes. Yes, a BIOGRAPHY borne purely out of the momumental hype these folks have garnered in the past 3-6 months. (Has it only been three months?) I'm sorry, but three to five songs on various singles do not a career make (unless you're Jordy).

It's hard to say who (in the music writing community) is truly inspired by the music and who's just inspired by the hype. Since most of the press that I've heard about (2nd & 3rd hand) has come from usually suspect British sources (present company excluded, of course), my overwhelming curiosity for the Strokes is offset by wariness. I mean, how am I supposed to take this stuff seriously when AMG ends their "bio" thusly:

"In support of its debut CD, Is This It?, the Strokes toured America and Europe in 2001."

Hi, I'm your fact-checking cuz. Newsflash - THE TOUR HASN'T HAPPENED YET! It's hard to come off as prescient without seeming presumptuous. And I think the name of the band is And the Trail of Our Dead..., NOT Traildead.

But that's a reference to another funny little article tic. (Like the mention of all those rock-n-roll icons - Orbison, Lennon, Buddy Holly. Pardon me while I clear my throat.) The article in question, by the way, is here. If that doesn't work, just scoot over to allmusic.com and do some typing.

I dont have MM, I live on the edges of commercial radio land and even Brand New Waves & Radiosonic come in faintly so rather then searching them out I will let them pass. Its one of the few parts about living deep in the hinterland for 8 monthes of the year that I really enjoy. Hype is easy to ignore.

Having said that, however, I think there are several reasons why they're doing so well. First off, one has to realize that NY rock music has consisted of dozens of poor garage rock/ MC5-VU-Television knock offs for several years (example- Mooney Suzuki). These groups are in a sense less influenced by the original groups (iggy, MC5 etc) and more so by bands such Jon Spencer, Jonathan FireEater and the Make Up who, no matter what one thinks of them now, seemed quite exciting around 96-98. I personally think that all three of these groups were highly innovative and important when they came out. It seems as if what followed them, such as Mooney Suzuki, sort of turned the whole garage rock thing into a very tired campy bore. Consequently, it is hard to even listen to someone like the Make Up now, because you can't help remembering what they've spawned.

The Strokes are just another manifestation of this present day NY garage rock, though my guess is that they know little more than the names of the preceding groups above. I really think they are genuinely slow people. Still, the big difference between them and some other derivative bands is that the strokes sound more professional. Other groups tend to copy the amateurishness of Make UP/Jon Spencer recordings and come off sounding like total trash (far worse than the Strokes). Next to much of NYC music (and Detroit, Chicago, etc..) the Strokes sound positively modern.

If all goes well, perhaps the strokes could have a big hit and then fall apart, bringing attention to other NY bands who are already pushing and shoving to get away from the whole garage vibe such as Interpol, The Walkmen, or Navy.

Interpol is some fine New Order / Joy Division-influenced stuff. Who is this Navy? And what's with badmouthing the Mooney Suzuki? Good ol' fashioned rock-n-roll has its place in the grand scheme of things, too.

What sets The Strokes apart from the generic-nyc-'76 bands is how BRITISH they sound. I hear Morrissey and Ian Curtis and even Jarvis Cocker & Damon Albarn in the vocals as much as Lou or Verlaine. And their "posh" background - that's so ENGLISH! I'm sure they were all huge Brit Pop fans. They dress EXACTLY like Menswear in Converse all- stars - another NME "saviour of rock" - or any number of those "new wave of new wave" bands of a few years ago. The fact that they embody, to NME et al, some sort of mythic ideal of what a New York band should be is mystifying.

I really like them, by the way. It's so nice to have a rock n roll band to argue about again.

But -- and I suppose you've heard me say this before -- I really think people's excitement over them (even if it is still limited mainly to a set of tastemakers and critics) represents a reaction to the prevailing tone of music over the past 5-7 years: we've been soaked in futurism, an unprecedented emphasis on arrangement and "sound," a pull toward sparkly studio amazements that are meant to feel like something much more than just people playing music. All of that's been great, in my opinion, but I think it's essentially led people to forget what the old mode of playing was like, so much so that the slightest reminder (the Strokes) suddenly seems like a revelation -- and for those young enough not to have much memory of that mode, even more so.

None of which is to say that the Strokes are particularly good at this. But I bought that single and spent the rest of the day listening to it over and over, and I had to stop to ask myself why -- and the answer was that I was in the mood to hear something come from that particular place. Not the Strokes, not something so devoid of its own innovation -- but I do want to hear some really fresh brilliant bands come out of the "faithful recording of people playing specific instruments" vein, and I think it's going to happen soon.

Sorry to restate My Overarching Theory of What Will Happen, but it's my honest answer to the question.

their name is: And you will know us by the trail of dead

Does anybody know specifically where all this Strokes hype originated from? Is there a Ground Zero? (Is there ever a Ground Zero?)

I had to reread this a few times before I realized I basically agree with it (cuz I'm friggin tired today, sheesh.) It's probably the best use to the word important, since "importance" is only ever bestowed in retrospect and seems to follow Eno's Velvets dictum of "sold no copies, but everyone who heard them formed a band." People have been covering this axis (Velvets/Stooges/Dolls/Television/Ramones) for decades. There are whole labels devoted to it (Sympathy For The Record Industry, Estrus, anyone?); I guarantee you drive to any major American city and you'll find at least one, if not a handful, of bands "exploring" this retro/trash/garage sound. It's never going away, and I suppose it's popularity will wax and wane based on the popularity of bands like The Strokes. It can be a lot of fun, but nothing to assume is going to spearhead any sort of rock revival. (Wasn't their a similar what's the hub bub, bub? a few years ago about Jonathan Fire Eater?, and then boom boom shake the room, where are they now?) My question is why do the Japanese do this sound so much better than most Americans? Guitar Wolf is about the only band I've enjoyed in this idiom in the last five or six years..."Jet Generation" gives me an ice cream headache everytime I listen to it. (Which is a plus.)

Garage rock is originally by 60's american bands who were inspired by british invasion bands who were inspired by american blues and r&b, it is not '01 american bands who were inspired by american bands of the mid-70's who inspire british rock writers to cream their jeans.

I mean, these are songs -- structurally and melodically -- that one could essentially imagine a more rudimentary version of Belle and Sebastian playing.

This is pretty well correct, although they were together as a band -- with, for a time, a different manager who they left despite being under contract with her and who actually booked the band's first Mercury Lounge appearance -- for a couple of years before anyone paid notice. And those lawyers, publicists were hired right after that new manager, Ryan Gentles, came on board. His contacts got them to Geoff Travis at Rough Trade and the (near?) unanimous hype started from there.

Key to their appeal, as well, I think is that like Oasis they not only return a guitar-bass-drums setup with familiar consensus-building roots to rock but they act and, arguably first and foremost desire to, be rock stars in all of the elegantly wasted, groupie-shagging conotations. Reading the press from their first UK tour one learns that not only do they rock, but they get drunk, start fights, make boasts -- like Oasis did, like Proper Rock Stars should. They photograph pretty well, too. It makes the press' job pretty easy. Outside of that much maligned nü-metal or hip-hop we have to go "Behind the Scenes" for this type of personality and decadence these days -- Travis and Coldplay are hardly cutting it in these departments, are they?

This is also one of the characteristics that they share with the Dandy Warhols and the neo-garage bands: fetishizing the attitudes as well as the sounds of the past. VH1 is reportedly negotiating a second season of "Bands on the Run," to feature more established bands and -- surprise, surprise -- in a brilliant stroke (heh) on the station's part, they are, acc. to Buddyhead and others, rumored to be considering the Strokes, Dandys, BRMC, the Warlocks, and Brian Jonestown Massacre.

And, as always, Nitsuh seems to speak a lot of truth. His career trajectory, in the U.S. at least, seems as if it will be the band's fate.

As for the music, we're looking -- more specifically on the Post-Punk Canon thread -- at the trees, but I think most veteran critics may be pleased as punch with the forest: Pop music being inspired by Lou Reed and Television! Finally! Some of these writers, whether they've known it or not, have probably waited a long time to be able to back a band such as the Strokes.

The NME is marking their every little step, in great detail, having them on the cover once and the lead of the I Love New York issue. This is where most of the band's ubiquity lies.

Q covered their first-ever London show as a FOB; THE FACE ran a lengthy feature on them, ditto with (I think) Dazed and Confused some months back.

Kris, Jess, I don't where you two live, but they are certainly more of a UK phenomenon at the moment. I assume there is some level of radio/newspaper coverage there as well.

As I didn't contribute here yet. I still don't like The Strokes but I don't find them as annoying as back in 2001. They are better than Oasis but that doesn't mean much.

I'm a "teenage kid", and I would class the Velvet Underground and Television as two of my favourite bands. I haven't heard much NY Dolls, but what I have listened to I like. I hear the "leading the kids to appreciate good music" thing a lot, and I guess there would be a lot of merit in it, if it worked that way. I know a fair few other teenagers, though, a reasonable amount of which are Strokes fans, and I wouldn't credit any of them with caring enough about the band to go and search out their influences independantly. It seems to me that now that the Strokes are a 'mainstream' band, the kind of people that this gives them appeal to are not the kind of people that care enough about music to want to find out about it on their own. Pretty much every teenage girl I know finds out about their favourite bands off the radio, and wouldn't waste their time searching for music outside this. For example, lots of the same girls like that like the Strokes say they are Nirvana fans, but they've definately never head of Sonic youth or the Pixies. Most of them seem to think Nevermind is the only album Nirvana ever made. This may just be specific to the place where I live (Christchurch, New Zealand), but if you ask me your average Strokes fan isn't going to care about the Strokes influences, when they can just listen to the Strokes. I've never heard Television on the radio, and very much doubt I will, therefore Television aren't gaining any fans, however good (if slightly belated) that would be.

(also, how many of you have your stupidities captured in a BOOK? that you DIDN'T GET PAID FOR.)

This phrase amuses me greatly now.

What was so good about this thread?