Meet Me In The Bathroom - Please Kill Me but if Iggy was Julian Casablancas

Really it made me long for the earlier days of Other Music, when they specialized in exotic sounds imported from exotic faraway locales such as Glasgow, Tokyo, Athens and Dayton.

xxpost The Walkmen came out of Jonathan Fire*eater, which I believe was a cohort of DC private and later Ivy League schools. I think Interpol guys were all international raised abroad kids, fwiw. But I think (Strokes aside) the "privilege" (as such) that became the norm is just coming from an upper middle class background that provided the stability and safety net to play music in an increasingly gentrified and high cost of living place. I don't think there's anything unique about that, but I suppose it helped cement NYC's transformation into a playground for similarly backgrounded peers who could afford to weather the shift from grungy to bobo.

the strokes still headline major festivals all over the world, so i think it would be hard to say that ppl outside new york don't give a shit about them. maybe that rise in popularity is a separate chapter from the meet me in the bathroom era but they're prob one of the bigger rock bands in the world & substantially more popular outside the US (tho that's true for pretty much all popular rock music these days). as far as influence goes... to me personally if harry styles "as it was" was mumble-sung by julian casablancas it could basically be on room on fire. clairo had a tik tok/chart hit a few years ago ("sofia") that is a blatant strokes homage. tracing rock band influence is kinda hard these days given how little rock music is in the popular consciousness... it comes thru far more in rap music & hyperpop which is pulling more from the emo/punk/pop punk end of things. paramore, fall out boy and blink 182 have inspired many more rappers (i.e. 24kgoldn "mood") than the strokes have, but i don't think the strokes are a cultural footnote or anything.

the rest of those bands probably are tho. YYYs, interpol feel fairly niche to me. LCD soundsystem got a bunch of headlining gigs at festivals around the world too but i don't think ppl really care about them like that. i think part of the allure of the meet me in the bathroom era for journalists and documentarians tho is that it was one of the last scenes (in rock music anyway) that was pre social media and thus very localized. i guess cobrasnake caught the tail end of some of that but you still had to know where to look to find those photos. the insularity of it might actually be the point.

I wonder, the people seeing the Strokes now, are they old people (like me), or are they young people attracted to the '90s nostalgia of them? I mean, it's been almost 25 years since that first EP, right? I have no idea what younger people think of the band, or if it's any different than how they think of watching "Friends" or "Seinfeld."

i think in general with rock music at the scale of crowds of hundreds of thousands, the nostalgia of it all is endemic to the experience. i think there’s still plenty of kids who seek a certain authenticity in rock music of the past except the rock music that is two decades old now is the strokes, the foo fighters, RHCP (who the strokes just toured with) etc and not led zeppelin or metallica or whatever. i mean when the strokes are headlining lollapalooza brazil or primavera, it definitely is not 30 and 40 year olds buying the majority of those tickets

Festivals outside the US are sort of a different thing, aren't they? Bigger, just kind of a broader experience, right? With Brazil being a particularly huge deal. Like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBCVsVKU4O4

You don't ever see crowds or enthusiasm like this in the US, imo.

I don't know anyone that saw the RHCP this past summer, but I guess they played stadiums? I assume anything that big draws a whole cross section of generations.

They played Stadium Arcadiums

Stadia Arcadia

Arcadia Ignea

Did any of these bands inspire people to form their own bands?

A fair number of bands I speak to cite the Strokes as a big influence, whether musically or just being their intro into this music.

I remember being backstage at a YYYs gig in Glasgow on one of their early tours, and some NYC disco-punk band that was being touted as the Next Big Thing by the NME coming in to say hi and being all deferential, and when they left Karen was like, "We've never heard of these guys before, they were not on the Brooklyn scene that we were on." But I'm guessing these things can be very hermetic and time-sensitive and based on who your friendship groups. Certainly, the "grunge" explosion pulled together a lot of groups who actually felt they didn't share a lot in common.

I remember interviewing the Blues Explosion around this time, and having to ask them what they thought about the Strokes et al, and Jon said something about thinking they didn't share much in common with the Strokes beyond the same dry cleaner.

There's an Arctic Monkeys song that literally starts with the line "I just wanted to be one of The Strokes".

do u think they meant it

When I interviewed Gilla Band recently, their guitarist Al said their earlier incarnation was indebted to Strokes, and that Arctic Monkeys had "a real fucking chokehold on our generation". Obvs they sound nothing like the Strokes or the Arctic Monkeys.

i have opinions abt the word influence btw

It's definitely debatable

I prefer the word exfluence.

Or effluence even.

Meet me in the bathroom indeed.

LCD soundsystem got a bunch of headlining gigs at festivals around the world too but i don't think ppl really care about them like that.

Strictly anecdotal, but LCD is the only band out of this scene with any currency at all among my son and his friends. Not sure they’ve even heard of, like, Interpol, and if they know the Strokes it’s only as a vague bit of history.

And coincidence or not, LCD *did* kind of anchor a scene, or sub-scene. At least that what DFA felt like to me. You could have "DFA night" (or whatever) at a club, or do a DFA tour. Most of the other acts around there then were just typical major label beneficiaries. We know about them and they got successful because they were highly, highly promoted and publicized, something that for obvious reasons just doesn't happen as much anymore.

Am I the only one who even hates the title of this?

In a way I think the title is apt, because it suggests the superficiality and self-conscious scenesterism of people very impressed with themselves for doing cocaine, the dumbest drug.

and Cheap Sex.

Yeah. Like, in Please Kill Me, the sex and the drugs feel actually wild and apocalyptic. Not so much here.

Plus, the music was more innovative.

xxxp I thought that line referred to meeting to hook up. It’s kind of a love song, yeah?

Even as a song lyric I hear it as both, but as a scene-encompassing summary I feel like drugs are very much implied.

I never actually listened to that song until just now. Made me want to put on "Sequestered in Memphis" instead for some reason.

I didn't even know there was a song with that title, or those lyrics (never got into the Strokes). I always assumed it was a drug reference.

Yeah. Like, in Please Kill Me, the sex and the drugs feel actually wild and apocalyptic. Not so much here.

I heard there was some artist interference in the edit of the movie, which is kind of hilarious when you think about how low stakes it all is really. Like if an already wafer-thin scene gets sanitized even more in the re-telling of it, you're not going to end up with much there.

Button-cute
Rapier-keen
Wafer-thin
And pauper-poor

most indie rock bands have horrible, thin, clicky hyper compressed drum sounds now, the lasting influence of the strokes

Meet me in the control booth.

some nerd shit about how they got their sound

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/gordon-raphael-producing-strokes

Does anyone remember a recent novel about a WASP family and a babysitter and someone who used to hang out in Grand Central and Tompkins Square Park and had a loft apartment and there was some kind of heist involving a van?

Is that for this thread? Lol in any case.

Was it written by an ILX0r?

Anyway, I’m starting to feel a bit like Johnny Mercer hating on The Beatles or something so maybe I should should just unbookmark this thread.

I know it sounds like a horrible premise for meeting in the bathroom, but it is killing me that I can't remember the title (the cost of age or reading carelessly) especially because I think you might consider it worthy of passing interest.

xps i think the moldy peaches were really more of the "anti-folk" thing which was basically the artists who hung around the sidewalk cafe all day and watched each others' sets. they may have had a social connection to the strokes but they didn't play the same kinds of gigs afaik.

i think the influence of this stuff on local nyc artists was immediate and centralizing, i mean there were certain enclaves like the sidewalk and the tonic in the late 90's but mainly it was disparate, lots of individual artists pursuing their own thing. and then after the strokes in particular became huge, all these people started playing shows on ludlow street and many of them oriented their sound more in that direction. i remember several bands and artists who were unsigned/unrecorded and doing really exciting stuff turning more revisionist and eventually putting out kinda boring, disappointing records.

I always thought of Tonic as much more avant and experimental.

yeah it was the enclave for that "scene" iow.

they may have had a social connection to the strokes but they didn't play the same kinds of gigs afaik.

Notwithstanding that the Moldy Peaches later opened for them on tour, right? (i.e., I assume you're talking about the early daze)

The only notable thing about the strokes imo is that they named an album after the best Stevie nicks song

Adam Green opened for the Strokes at the Mercury Lounge in 2000. I WAS THERE

^You rock!

xp i know they opened for the strokes, but i mean, i think they were still hanging out at the sidewalk cafe a good amount post-fame. that was almost like a songwriters' workshop feel, mostly solo acoustic artists who knew each others' material really well testing new songs in varying stages of completion and sticking around for hours afterward.

there was this one folk singer from the sidewalk cafe whose email list i was on, i think he played with adam green a lot- and around this time he formed a full band and sent out a joke email blast saying they were opening for the strokes at madison square garden.

The groups I enjoyed most from that time aren’t covered in the book. Such acts as Moisturizer; Electro Putas; Crème Blush. Perhaps these groups were oriented more toward the Tonic scene, but they played various places.

Isn't that almost always the way with scenes?

Yeah. But it also points out the kaleidoscopic nature of scenes. Scenes are defined a certain way based on the perspective you’re coming to them from. My scene was much different from Lizzie Goodman’s scene.