Issue No.
13376
AS THE decade wound down to a close and the new one started taking its first baby steps and dribbling its fruit paste all the way down its bleach-white dib, you couldn’t move for all the “most influential this” or “most influential that“ spreads. People feel the need to have poster boys (and girls) it seems as the desired waypoint in order to move on to a new page in cultural history. Which is understandable as a matter of easy reference, but rarely as interesting as people would have you believe.
Interesting or otherwise, however, the one name that seemed to crop up everywhere in the aforementioned spreads were NYC rats The Strokes in all their frazzled coolness. In a time of music where if you’re not Radiohead or U2 (or the better-sounding alternative El Bongo and the Tax Evaders), you rarely get the unmitigated acceptance of the press and your peers, that’s pretty darn impressive.
Even more impressive is the fact that the Strokes’ obscenely sharp debut Is This It (photo L) managed to create a buzz around NYC the likes of which had last been felt around the time when CBGBs hadn’t been transformed into the temple of Satan that is now the John Varvatos thousand-bucks-to-try-a-shirt-on travesty. To put it simply, the Strokes were to the 00s what the Ramones were to the late 70s and 80s.
Bristling with natural “street” looks and backed by well-to-do families with connections to fashion, publishing and, well, money, Julian Casablancas, Nick Valensi, Albert Hammond Jr and Nikolai Fraiture hit the pavements of the sharp end of New York running. Sensing a massive gap in the culture shelf and with the US and the UK caught in a post-90s wooze, the rich kids reached in to the Bowery past, pulled out some punk threads and flashed some guitar blades at the press and public. The response was more electric than Electro taking on the Shocker at a power plant. Reminiscent of the reaction to Joey Ramone’s gang, Julian Casablancas’ bunch of fashion-savvy punks got people away from bulging, self-indulgent post-grunge guitar gibberish and lager spewing, brit-stuffed mewling and pointed them back in the direction of pure rock’n’roll grit.
Much like the Ramones’ simple ethos, the Strokes similarly used the instantly recognisable but stupidly forgotten skinny jeans and Converse All Stars one-two to sting some tender fashionista skin and backed it up with short, sole-tapping numbers. And while sole-tapping numbers weren’t a new concept, the fact that they made you want to tap-tap-tap it on a street corner was. Ultimately, this was This Is It’s coup de resistance: It succeeded in once again dumping guitar music on its butt on the street, where it belonged. Not in a room or in a pub, but in the street, to harden its demeanour by rubbing shoulders with bossy-looking cops, girls of the night, drunks and all manner of “fragrant” characters.
The results are there to be seen, less than ten years later. The Strokes redefined guitar music, sparking the New Rock’n’Roll Revolution across the pond, just like the Ramones started the punk movement all those years ago. And while, predictably, that too was short-lived, their presence wasn’t and isn’t. While we arrive at yet another crossroads, looking for the next bunch of upstarts to take us forward on yet another genre wave, the Strokes exist in every sabre-like lance of guitar noise, in every sneering pose, in every leg-hugging jean and in every gravel-drawl coming out of a speaker. Was that it? You know what? It just may have been.
ATHENS NEWS 30/08/2010, page: 31
