The Strokes - Classic or Duds?

"An iconic era where NYC musicians once again thought they were they only thing that mattered."

It was a silly scene for sure and I think the excerpt acknowledges that, the fact that these guys really didn't sell a whole lot of records. Doesn't detract from how great the debut was though (and yeah, Room on Fire was very strong as well).

saw some excerpts here it reads like the most delicious parody ever, but then it gets kind of sad.

still a damn fine band there for a minute though

weird how them turning down a Heineken ad is considered "dumb", i mean smart move i'd say.

weird time to release a book about the 2000s rock revival, since that scene has virtually no lasting significance, at least not right now

Like, the bands profiled in Our Band Could Be Your Life, another book about a burst-and-boom scene, mattered even after their commercial window closed. Much harder to make that argument about most of the 2000s bands

If nothing else the excerpt proves that Ryan Adams is without a doubt, a total ding-dong

sorta interested in the claims of them being an amazing live band -- were they really that good? Casablancas always struck me as a pretty uninspiring frontman, and the rest of 'em seem dull as well. maybe i just haven't seen the right clips.

I saw them once in a very small room right when the first album came out. They were fine. Def could have been three out of four on a wknd night in Mpls.

"An iconic era where NYC musicians once again thought they were they only thing that mattered."

lol Ned otm

One reason I hoped I would live to see 2017 is that I thought people would finally be done talking about The Strokes by now.

Nah, nostalgia cycle at work. Makes sense. If everyone's been muttering about a nu-metal revival for the past couple of years, this might as well follow. (In that respect, Ja Rule returning to public attention does too.)

If nothing else the excerpt proves that Ryan Adams is without a doubt, a total ding-dong

On this we can all agree.

lol yeah, this part is great
When he shows you a song, he doesn’t stop for hours. You’re like, “Oh, that reminds me of a song I wrote.” And you play a G chord and he’s like, “I know what you’re talking about,” and he grabs the guitar back. There’s no way to play music with him. It’s the Ryan show, always.

I mean, that whole Ryan Adams/John Mayer douche crew thing. Imagine being stuck in THAT room.

"You two have inspired me to form a band consisting of nothing but evil industrial noises and anti-heterosexual lyrics."

YOUR BODY IS A DEATHTRAP/I'LL USE MY TONGS*

* I don't know any Ryan Adams songs, completely by choice, so I can't parody them as effectively

Ryan Adams (musician): One night I was hanging with the Strokes guys and Ryan [Gentles, the band’s manager]. We were really stoned because we were basically always smoking pot.

Ryan Adams: I didn’t do drugs socially, and I don’t remember doing drugs with Albert ever

i listened to the ryan adams maron episode and man, he is irritating.

all of these people seem like dumbbells

I saw the Strokes around 2006 at a *Heineken Sponsored Event* in NYC hosted by Paul Shaffer. All around great time, not sad or weird at all.

So that means you like The Strokes, Mr.Sinkah? :)
― Omar, Wednesday, 25 July 2001 01:00 (fifteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nevah heard a note, Omah!! Doubtless they are toss.
― mark s, Wednesday, 25 July 2001 01:00 (fifteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So wise, wonder if he ever heard them.

that whole era of fashion spread version of junkie '70s rock is pretty dull. i liked the strokes' debut well enough, but in the same way i liked Poison's debut in '86. in other words, they're no Def Leppard.

It's a pretty good excerpt, mostly for the way everyone involved seems to know that things didn't go the way they were supposed to. You could do the same thing about Franz Ferdinand I bet - and people would be talking about how Pete Doherty was much better at being a real rock star - just this band that all of a sudden got amazingly big, and then nobody really knew what to do, and then they disappeared. The idea of either Strokes or Franz Ferdinand doing a 'London Calling'... Or even just a '13' or an 'In Utero'. Or, you know, a 'Be Here Now', a big crazy god awful boondoggle. Somehow it seems a completely ridiculous idea.

I think bands like the Strokes and the Cars who don't really 'evolve' and basically kept making the same album over and over again are fine, idk why anyone would particularly want them to make a 13 or In Utero

For all the speculating that article does, the most obvious answer to "why didn't the Strokes stay popular" is that thier other albums didn't have any hits

Like, it wouldn't have mattered if this or that follow-up album was too similar to or too different from the previous albums, if any of those albums had had a solid hit on them

i loved the first Strokes album so much. still dig it out from time to time.

nothing else from that scene really caught my ear. i liked The Rapture (early 20s in punk clubs dancing to "House of Jealous Lovers") and some DFA stuff but that's about it. LCD bores me to tears and i imagine they will take up the most page space in this book.

I think bands like the Strokes and the Cars who don't really 'evolve' and basically kept making the same album over and over again are fine, idk why anyone would particularly want them to make a 13 or In Utero

The Cars changed a lot between albums 2 and 3. (And Franz Ferdinand's third album, Tonight, was a big shift, too, and their best work IMO.)

did the strokes ever do a big ballad kinda thing? it'd probably be terrible, but i can see them having a hit with a slow jam.

The whole neo-garage thing got squeezed down into a compartment big enough for one star, and that was Jack White...someone whose celebrity outweighed the chart success the White Stripes ever had.

So much of this smacked of, you know, you get the press behind these bands, and there's major label muscle too, but you see there's this new thing called conglomerate radio that finally taken hold, and all that other stuff doesn't amount to a hill of beans because none of these bands sell adspace like, I dunno, Godsmack or somebody.

Panorama doesn't really sound all that different from the first two albums imo

did the strokes ever do a big ballad kinda thing? it'd probably be terrible, but i can see them having a hit with a slow jam.

yeah there was one on the second record that i think i liked. i feel like they may have done a couple of slow numbers here and there but were def not single material

Casablancas made the big weird mess of an album the others in the band didn't want to make with Tyranny a few years ago.

So much of this smacked of,

interesting word choice

I like how everyone except maybe Greenwald bemoans how the Strokes destroyed their own chances of being great when anyone who heard those two albums heard nothing but minor band with the dregs of major label money behind it. They were like Lone Justice or something.

and as usual the Vulture headliners still believe in last-great-rock-band cliches.

I started falling asleep before the end of that excerpt, not sure what kind of torture an entire book would be.

I've never even heard of the band they describe as following the Strokes - Longwave?

Goodman follows the meteoric rise of the artists that revolutionised the cultural landscape and made Brooklyn the hipster capital of cool—including The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, and Vampire Weekend.

full disclosure: i'm not a new yorker, never been to brooklyn

but something about crediting these folks with making brooklyn 'the hipster capital of cool' seems... off to me? am i wrong?

Ryan Adams: That’s so sad, because Albert and I were friends. If anything, I really felt like I had an eye on him in a way that they never did. I was around and we actually spent time together. He would show me his songs. It was like, “No one ever listens to my music, but do you want to hear it?” I would be like, “Fuck yeah!” I loved him so deeply. I would never ever have given him a bag of heroin. I remember being incredibly worried about him, even after I continued to do speedballs.

boy ryan adams does not come across well in this article does he

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2017/05/10/strokes/8-2.nocrop.w1024.h2147483647.jpg

nice canadian tuxedo ryan

something about crediting these folks with making brooklyn 'the hipster capital of cool' seems... off to me? am i wrong?

i am pretty sure they all lived in manhattan. at least that's mostly where they hung out, did gigs etc

that oral history is a delightful hate-read - thank you itnernet!

and lol at not a single word about the actual music

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2017/05/10/strokes/8-2.nocrop.w1024.h2147483647.jpg

nice canadian tuxedo ryan

what's this, the the Blue Jean Committee?

ugh why didn't the Strokes discredit Heineken forever

is that jack white, beck, a guy from the strokes and ryan adams (+ 2 women, one of which seems to be beck's gf/wife) ?

one of those women is amanda de cadenet, who i'd totally forgotten was peripherally involved in this scene

hum. ok, I didn't who she was but after checking, it is her. she was like 10y older than he strokes guy (which she married apparently).

You could do the same thing about Franz Ferdinand I bet

Don't think FF belong in the same discussion at all. They seem like smart dudes who have their shit together. And they've put out some of their finest music in just the last year or 3.