The Strokes - Classic or Duds?

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.

also a highly respected british broadcaster xp

They seem like smart dudes who have their shit together.

also alex kapranos was 53 when ff started having hits, so they were better prepared for it

and I don't think you can compare the media storm/hype the strokes got with FF's.
actually has there been another new rock band with such a hype/success since the strokes ?

actually, I suppose the White Stripes, were much bigger, right after...

The rock press isn't set up anymore, financially or otherwise, to create such hype. Besides, clickbait rules demand celebrity journalism.

actually has there been another new rock band with such a hype/success since the strokes

maroon 5 iirc

are there a rock band anymore or are they Adam & the Levines?

they're hard as fuck and as real as they come, 100% bad-boy rock and roll attitude 4eva

https://www.doyouyoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/adam-levine-yoga.jpg

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

His timeline is off; I was a fan of Longwave and their first album predated the Strokes' by a year or so. I saw them a bunch around then and liked the album quite a bit but I never associated them with the scene around the Strokes -- I haven't listened to the album in years but I remember the influences being more like shoegaze/dreampop/mid-late '80s UK guitar bands. They did get picked up by RCA after the Strokes but I didn't care for much they put out after. Regardless they're a weird example as even among my show-going friends I did't know anyone who listened to them, and if anything their sound on the RCA albums (in hazy memory) was even further from what the Strokes and others were doing.

re: making brooklyn 'the hipster capital of cool' like Tracer Hand says I associated most of those bands with (and saw them primarily in) Manhattan. Generally speaking though I don't think it's a stretch to say that various music scenes played a large part in Brooklyn's developing reputation.

ahah. I don't think I know any maroon5 song except "this love"...
I have no idea how they are so famous !

talent will always win through

obviously I don't know them enough but doesn't Adam Levine have a Sting thing going ? He seems to follow the same kind of career path...

actually has there been another new rock band with such a hype/success since the strokes ?

― AlXTC from Paris, Tuesday, May 16, 2017 2:42 PM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Arcade Fire's first album? Bright Eyes? The Shins?

that whole era of fashion spread version of junkie '70s rock is pretty dull.

This is otm and the reason the idea of an oral history of the scene also seems so boring. "Please Kill Me" is partly great because so much of the actual music that came out of that scene was actually great, but also because for better and worse a lot of the behavior in it is really spectacular in its decadence and depravity. Lots and lots of people died! Lots of people were legit crazy. "Ryan Adams got me into heroin for a while" is not interesting or even particularly sad.

pretty funny tho

first time as tragedy, second time as comedy iirc

True enough. I just don't think I need a whole book of it.

I've heard a rumour that one of FF is apparently a massive alky, for what it's worth

i met bob from ff in a pub once just ahead of the release of the sparks collab so i can only assume it must be him

The Strokes and that TV show Vinyl are essentially the same thing in the end. Reference 70s NYC rock scene stuff stiltedly, wonder why nobody gave a shit after initial hype, pretend they were too pure for this world.

it was ridiculous to ever pin the entire hopes of a genre of music on a band that was so stylistically reductive, but that make Is This It any less of a masterpiece of songwriting, production, and dynamics. what they did sounded easy but clearly it's not or more albums of that ilk would be that good.

I would say the thing that makes Is This It less than a masterpiece of songwriting, production, and dynamics is how incredibly boring it is.

The Strokes and that TV show Vinyl are essentially the same thing in the end. Reference 70s NYC rock scene stuff stiltedly, wonder why nobody gave a shit after initial hype, pretend they were too pure for this world.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, May 16, 2017 11:52 AM (forty-one minutes ago)

yeah but the spirit of rock 'n' roll!

I think they had really good songs on the first and second album and i dug their kinda robotic take on garage rock, nice guitar lines, overall that real cars-type efficient new wave thing

i think the records stand up pretty well now that the hype is gone

yeah, I get the "reference 70s NYC rock scene stuff stiltedly" complaint, but the stiltedness is what made them great!

honestly, what NYC rock scene stuff do ppl feel they sound a lot like? early Blondie maybe musically a bit? The Ramones I guess in a way but they are so influential it's almost like saying a rock band is influenced by Chuck Berry.... Like they def don't remind me of Television, Dead Boys, Patti Smith, Heartbreakers, Dictators, NY Dolls, Voidoids, Talking Heads

or is this just they dressed like it?

the stiltedness is what made them great

Oh, you're one of those "it's so bad it's good!" people. I didn't know there were any of you left!

Like they def don't remind me of Television, Dead Boys, Patti Smith, Heartbreakers, Dictators, NY Dolls, Voidoids, Talking Heads

No, no they don't.

'the stiltedness is what made them great'

Agreed. With Hard to Explain as the finest example.

they probably don't use deodorant and stink of BO

People arguing for stiltedness as a positive are reminding me that at the time (hell, probably back then on this thread) I said they'd be much better off with a drum machine. I wish to revise my judgment: they would have been better off replacing all the bandmembers with presets.

In hindsight, the new wave inspiration was obvious. It always sounded mechanic, computerized, even when it was done in gritty seventies style and before they learned how to make the guitars sounds as keyboards.

And yeah, at their best they sounded like human presets.

to that point, they def sounded modern, there's a way a lot of bands now approach drumming and mixing and drum sounds that betrays they grew up in a post-dance/hip hop drum machine era, they had this weird mid-range-y snap to the production that didn't sound like a 70s record at all to me. and also not 90s lo-fi like guided by voices either, it had a lo-fi feel but was also very polished and "pro"

i think the bassist is really good actually, he had nice little melodic touches

They are the first rock band my 17 year old seems to deeply love. She's listened to the first two records a ton in the last year, has started playing guitar, and is now analyzing all sorts of pop trying to figure out what makes it work. But it was the two-guitar interplay of the Strokes that made it all gel for her.

Was showing her Ramones youtubes, and she was fascinated by the realization that the whole skinnyjeans-converse-leatherjacket-buzzyguitars thing actually had a starting point. It was fun to see someone get the "1-2-3-4" gag with completely fresh ears!