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

Listened to the Lizzy Goodman WTF episode and it was pretty funny when she said the White Stripes weren't in the first wave with The Strokes/Interpol, which is sort of true since they had already broken out before any of those.

yeah their first album i heard about from a friend that was into more bands the makers and oblivions and stuff like that, like mid/late 90s garage stuff, estrus records etc

their major label debut came out the same month as Is This It & they both broke thru to the mainstream via MTV that same fall.

yeah i'm sure that was fun for u normies

I guess not everyone had a college roommate talking about the White Stripes a bunch before then maybe

De Stijl was already available across the country and there was a lot of 'indie' buzz a year before that. I was in Texas and had already heard about/owned albums by the White Stripes (and the Mooney Suzuki, Dirtbombs, other garage rock bands lost to my mind) way before the English press started promoting the Strokes.

Seems weird the White Stripes would be included in this cuz they could actually write a song.

fb is correct, white stripes were definitely poppin off in 2001

for us normies

I'm just kidding btw, the White Stripes totally can't write a song

They are the only group from this era with a decent drummer tho

I lived here all that time and was still going to a lot of shows til 2002 or so... While I was a sucker for the Moldy Peaches' whimsy and lo-finesse, otherwise the only *wow* moment I had was seeing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs open for someone at the Mercury Lounge and saying, "Well, that woman is a rock star."

I associate them most with said roommate, and the boyfriend of another friend from the mid-'00s complaining about his ex-bandmate selling a bunch of their gear to Jack White. I think he kept pointing at some picture in the Raconteurs album sleeve saying "that's my mixer!" all the time.

I apologize for clowning on these early 00s haricut bands, obv they did crucial work but don't take my word for it just listen to ...Gideon Yago

Gideon Yago, the Jimmy Fallon of MTV

Every generator gets the Kurt Loder they deserve

All those bands are like the inverse of the Eno quote: they may have had a lot of fans, but not a single person that listened to them was inspired to form a band.

Kurt Loder turning out to be a libertarian really bums me out

just look at his hitler haircut

warms my heart that Sway was the most successful survivor of that early 00s MTV News crew.

one of the only semi-listenable morning shows on radio is an accomplishment

he seems cool? I would be bummed out if it turned it he was not cool. Heather B is a hero

Sway rules

I meant that non-sarcastically! I usually hate listening to people talking on the way to work but Sway is one of the exceptions

hell yea

I thought y'all were talking about the Rae Smmemurd tune

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzYMOTVlpbQ

the Vic Mensa five fingers of death was so great

very readable (a la please kill me) but the historical framing is bunk. besides animal collective, there's no mention of oneida, jon spencer, girls against boys, yo la tengo, and many many others who'd explode her conceit that there was nothing going on in NYC besides the mooney suzuki until the strokes came along. the closest she approaches =acknowledging how big a deal NYC was in the *rock world* pre-strokes is tallying daniel kessler's various failed bids to get matador to release interpol's music -- without considering the implications of the biggest indie label in the country HQing in the city she's written off as a dead scene

were you going to list bands that were blowing up the scene and had a reach outside cmj and forgot or...

cntrl-F Ryan Adams for kinda lol mostly sad I bet

Jon Spencer is in it, though only in the context of touring with YYYs (suspicious he was more critical in the raw interview about YYYs asking to not play some nights because they didn't feel good) and commenting on the realization that these bands were not his peers but a solid generation younger.

I've slowed down the last couple of nights and read other stuff so I haven't gotten to Ryan Adams yet. Thought it was pretty weird that the 9/11 chapters didn't mention his "New York New York" video at all.

about YYYs asking to not play some nights because they didn't feel good

wut?

lol no one feels good you're in a rock band

Karen O came up to Spencer in his dressing room and asked if it would be okay if they didn't play that night, he said "uh, sure" and in my head his head exploded after she left the room

jon spencer isn't that much older than james murphy, and from the look of things, in much better shape

i wonder what james mcnew, scott mcloud, and johnny temple thought of stewart lupton

murray street 4ever

the best sy album, and rain on tin is the best thurston song, because he only sings for the first thirty seconds, and then just eight minutes of glorious guitar harmonies. thank god for jimo

Boss Hog still sounded great on their KEXP appearance last year, never got around to listening to the new album

love Murray Street

ended up reading this last week and I felt my bias toward the music I actually cared about

I was never really a Strokes or Interpol fan and this is very much a book about those two with other things woven in, to mixed results. the next two subjects, DFA Records and the yeah yeah yeahs, I did care about, and there is some good material although the interview snippets are juxtaposed in a way that makes for good reading but have huge tonal shifts from line-to-line when the quotes are from disparate transcriptions

there is an entirely different memoir that could be constructed from the blog/photo site/party material that gets shoved in the last part of the book. I understand why it’s presented as a tangential thing to the book’s main theme but it really blows apart the beginning where you have mtv journalists and media personalities bemoaning their near-irrelevance before covering new nyc bands only to have their quotes disappear, supplemented by remembrances of people who suddenly have blog-promoted parties frequented by Madonna entering the narrative

searching to see what some people from the scene are up to now (social media expert for a pet food company?) was entertaining

doesn't ryan adams brag about getting someone hooked on heroin in this book

a lot of the ryan adams-related material is excerpted here by Vulture: https://www.vulture.com/2017/05/the-strokes-an-oral-history.html

he, uh, does not come off well

that was my memory

i remember reading that excerpt and thinking it was a weird, bad parody, not knowing there was a whole book of it. I still listen to the YYYs a lot. There is a good selection of songs to work out to.

there's an adams/strokes member (albert hammond jr)/heroin thing that comes up several times

so you don't have to read the book and I recently did, how I remember it:

- everyone is doing lots of coke and drinking all the time
- it's unclear whether he introduces Strokes guy (to heroin or just is a strong enabler -- Adams, of course, claims it's neither. Hammond's candid about how he had this preconception that he was definitely going to be a heroin dude and paints it as inevitable
- there's a weird-ass intervention where Adams shows up to a bar thinking it's going to be a hangout, and it's the entire band there. they tell him to fuck off and that they won't be hanging with him anymore. it's implied Casablancas was the lead instigator for this. Adams' recollection is he tried to calm everyone down, orders a round of beers and then went to the restroom, and when he returned they were all gone. he brags about then drinking all of the beer round by himself (wow, cool story dude)
- prior to that, there's this weird dynamic in the book where he comes off like he definitely acts like he's just as successful as his peers (he's not) but he's also cooler than them. there's this vibe that Casablancas just got tired of him -- from Adams' side it's as if the band felt threatened by him being the top dog or something

the other couple parts of the book that I kind of breezed over because they felt tacked on in order to flesh things out all the way to 2011ish and fill in the timeline: lots of stuff about Vampire Weekend, who don't quite fit with the narrative geographically or with their vibe, but are painted as somehow quintessentially a late-00s "brooklyn band" and an extended sidebar about Kings of Leon who toured with the Strokes and seem like these young dudes (a couple were in their mid teens?!) who end up getting inducted into this coke/sex/touring whirlwind that just sounds like a soul-sucking nightmare

I'm still mildly disappointed that the book failed to address a notable carlos d blog phenomena, but that's my own fault for being online too much

Kings of Leon who toured with the Strokes and seem like these young dudes (a couple were in their mid teens?!) who end up getting inducted into this coke/sex/touring whirlwind that just sounds like a soul-sucking nightmare

KOL or the Strokes?

I found a review of a Vancouver show on that tour from March 10, 2001. Based on a usual tour schedule that would put the Chicago/Minneapolis shows maybe a week or so prior to that, so before the album was out. I remember thinking their shirts with the Strokes logo were cool but I didn't buy one.

Back in 2019, I saw the Meet Me In The Bathroom art exhibit that was running at the Hole gallery in the EV. It was surprisingly above-average for this kind of "let's mythologize all the band shit in my closet" show - prob because you didn't have to look at any of The Strokes-related stuff if you didn't want to. This doc felt very much like something that would have played on a screen there - the old films are great, but somewhere out there a really outstanding YYYs doc could be possible.

how interesting can be a book about uooer middle class new yorker acts?

how interesting can a poster about racoon tanukis?

i finally watched this - as mentioned many times itt, most of the voiceovers are so useless!

like, i understand the idea of wanting to recreate the oral history vibe of the book but if you do not have oral history level material, then you end up with this glorified high school yearbook
“we were like a family”
“touring is hard”
and the fucking Sinatra “Very Good Year” montage the absolute facepalmistry

and then James Murphy and all of his liveblog awkardness to fill what feels like an hour. I understand his involvement and i knew he’d be in it but ugh TOO MUCH my interest in them and HIM especially is like, negative 1,000

and omggggggvv fuck that stupid Rapture song again forever i hate it

give me a Strokes documentary - 100% would watch; give me a Yeah Yeah Yeahs documentary - 100% would watch ; flush the rest of this honestly

There was an hour-long Fever To Tell doc out a few years ago. They even toured it in-person with live set afterwards.

Ok, 30 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm-lBh0yC10

The whole scene was a charisma free zone as far as I can tell. Even the ones who are good on stage (Karen, maybe Carlos D, er, that’s it I think) look embarrassed to be there in interviews.

OOooh I am going to watch that YYY's thing. Thank you!

I still haven't read or watched MMitB. I will at some point.

give me a Strokes documentary - 100% would watch; give me a Yeah Yeah Yeahs documentary - 100% would watch ; flush the rest of this honestly

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, July 29, 2023 8:44 PM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

I am seeing them both tomorrow night! I will make u a doc. Hang tight.

I am so unbelievably excited for this festival. Them the Walkmen, Angel Olsen, Be Your Own Pet and I am definitely forgetting others.

Icaught a download last month and watched it. It was quite good, not sure why I didn't get through the book other than the book disappearing into a pile and me finding something else. May still get through it.
Enjoyed the doc and handy that what was filmed at the time did get filmed

Just realized that the first time I saw the YYYs was 20 years ago! 2003 at the Kentish Town Forum. At one point we sat down and realized that Daniel and Carlos D from Interpol were sitting behind us.

Lol I have an extremely similar story. The only Interpol member I recognize at all is the vocalist from the band as I’m not a big fan of them. In the early 2010’s they came to a festival in Mexico and I was working for one of the sponsors so I got invited to the “vip” hospitality section. Anyhow, me and a friend got photographed and years later we found out that the Interpol guys we’re hanging out right behind us and you can see them in the photo - Daniel (had to look up again his name right now) is even smiling and photobombing in the background. A flabbergasted friend who is a fan saw the picture and started freaking out… I was sorry to disappoint him and tell him we never interacted at all with them.

Carlos D from Interpol had an article about how he used to dress up as a nazi published in Tablet magazine(?)

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/a-farewell-to-armbands-interpol-carlos-dengler

(twitter user @Aelkus just posted some extracts from this, did it not get mentioned on ilm at the time? I couldn't see anything, but there are about a dozen Interpol threads)

Let’s start with the most notorious item I ever wore, the piece that captivated music and fashion lovers during my aughts-era limelight: the army-style holster. I was visiting my tailor one day when I first saw it draped over a black shirt on a mannequin. I noted its clean lines and militaristic sheen. A rush of dopamine, like I’d had my first shot of whiskey or snort of coke, rushed through my synapses, and I felt the palpable euphoria of artistic inspiration.

What a fucking dork

the whole article is written like that

that article gave me herpes :(

I thought he just wanted to dress like Kraftwerk

reminds me of one of the glaring omissions in the MMITB documentary footage -- there are some vague gestures at "where are they now" but it's mostly limited to Karen O. there's a "Carlos shows off his holster" scene where he does the "I think it looks cool, it doesn't mean anything" song and dance but it's up to the viewer to bring their own interpretation. mine was "this guy definitely has thoughts about it, and I don't want to hear any of them" which is really borne out by that tablet article

great, you thought it looked edgy in a cool in ways you had not at all examined, and now you think it was kind of edgy and not cool? there are things you absolutely don't need to mythologize after the fact

the whole thing cribs pretty heavily off of the lester bangs "white noise supremacists" article but mentioning that would give away the game in that 1. the article came out in 1979 2. people were citing that article in the early 00s directly related to some of the contemporary attitudes on display