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Underground > Radio & Music >

The Strokes=Worst Band Ever???

  
  

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Spaniel
14:56 / 05.10.03
Well speaking for myself, I fucking love The Teaches of Peaches. The first time I heard Fuck The Pain Away I almost shat. Admittedly the album has lost some of its early vigour through overplay, but I'm more than happy it's in my collection.

I grew up loving electronic music: electro, house (back when it all came under that mighty umbrella), techno etc, bloody, etc... Therefore, the suggestion that I only like Peaches to be cool really pisses me off. To my mind it's just rather good in the dance-off.

As fot the Mars Volta, well, they really can fuck off - far too proggy for my liking.
 
 
No star here laces
15:17 / 05.10.03
Dummest music thread ever?

I really like that T. Raumschmiere record even though it came out months ago. So there.
 
 
No star here laces
15:19 / 05.10.03
Also, never heard Biffy Clyro, and it's an awful name for a band, but I'd personally like to shake all of their hands for plastering London with Milo Manara flyposters a few months back. Cheered me up no end, that.
 
 
Not Here Still
15:51 / 05.10.03
I really like the fact T Raumschierre is on Shitkatapult, the finest name for a record label ever.

But is he rich? That's how you judge validity...
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
16:03 / 05.10.03
Radiator: I'm not going to agree with Flux that you have the worst taste ever, because I'm sure there are people out there who don't even like Ladytron at all, and because I like what you're doing in the Slayer thread.

I suspect what people may find annoying is the extent to which you have over-invested in the idea that you are some kind of lone Jeremiah piercing the shroud of media hype, while anyone who likes bands you dislike is only doing it to be trendy. Casting aspersions as to the motives of people who like music you don't like (because you can't get your head round the concept of them actually liking that music) is only going to offend people in the first place, but in this case it's particularly irritating because a) "only doing it to be trendy" is such a cliche, and one associated with reactionary rhetoric to boot, b) it doesn't stand up to examination once pesky factual details are intoduced into the equation. Thus Muse, who were on the cover of the NME roughly a month ago, received 9/10 for their last album in that paper, and regularly appear on the cover of and receive favourable notices in similar publications, are plucky hard-working underdogs who never get the coverage or credit they deserve. Other inconsistencies might include the fact that surely if we were all the fickle fashionistas you take us for, we'd have loved The Strokes early on but would find them too well-known and 'last season' now, and would be leading the backlash? Or how about the fact that you chastise people for having talking about The Strokes rather than slightly less well-known bands, but then plead "you can't expect me to have heard of every band ever!" when it suits you.

There are probably specific opinions you have about songs or artists which can be debated in a worthwhile fashion, but I'd suggest you find the existing threads on said bands or start your own - I'd like to try and rescue this thread as a place to discuss The Strokes.

So, the point is that I had a listen to Is This It? for the first time in a while yesterday, and while its appeal has faded a little for me personally (the title track in particular doesn't seem so elegantly wasted, lazy and louche as I once thought, Casablancas' vocal limitations seem pretty obvious, and the production doesn't help), there are a few songs that still really stand up - 'Barely Legal'(which oddly was my favourite first time I heard the first EP, and is again today), 'Hard To Explain', 'NYC Cops' and 'Trying Your Luck' in particular. The new one's been described as sounding more "emotional" - if that means more songs like 'Trying Your Luck', I'll give it a chance.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
16:20 / 05.10.03
Um. Seems I'm even more out of date than I thought.

Look at this from my perspective here: when I used to flick through the NME, every issue would have an entirely pointless story about The Strokes, The Vines and whoever else they were plugging at the time (and as the circulation went down the drain they became even more guilty of this IMO). I think there was one frontpage one of "The Strokes Ride Buggies!" or something. All of which was backed up with an attitude which was less "hey, look, cool!" which I could roll with but more "Thou shalt be cool! Buy the jacket! Buy the lifestyle", which made me baulk. Mild disinterest thusly turned into a still-growing resentment of said bands. If The Strokes were unhyped, I'd just find them boring. Because they're so amazingly hyped and rammed down my throat by the media, I hate them. Hence my snot-nosed hype jibe, which I'll admit was wrong and take back.

Perhaps If I had avoided NME when I first started hating it rather than slogging on for a year, we could have avoided this Sorid mess.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
17:33 / 05.10.03
How to enjoy music:

1) Disinfect your mind by disavowing print media, especially publications like NME

2) Only read about music on blogs and message boards - ie, normal everyday people without an agenda.

3) Learn to stop resisting fun. Learn to shut off the parts of your brain that tell you not to like something when you already do.
 
 
Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!
20:49 / 05.10.03
"Remember life before The Strokes? Guitar music sounded like something you'd rather convalesce to than go out and rock to. Its stars looked like binmen and talked like librarians. In fact, the whole foggy, soggy mess looked like it was about to be blasted into obsolescence by the hip-hop, nu-metal and R&B which had outgunned it in the style, outrage and tune stakes.

But just when all seemed lost the cavalry arrived. Five young, sexy New Yorkers, The Strokes provided everything that had been lacking from modern rock'n'roll. Neither boorishly arrogant in the Oasis mode or sappily polite a la Travis, The Strokes were simply drop dead cool - "dirty puppies" who looked like they'd be handy in a streetfight. Their grimy, sleaze-soaked music provided a breath of stale air after the breezy, deodorised dadrock we'd suffered at the hands of the New Acoustic Movement. Oh, and did we mention how good they looked? Skinny ties/suit jackets/Converse/"heroin mullet" (© Courtney Love) now ubiquitous in indie discos nationwide are entirely down to them."

From the NME review of the new album, which contains practically everything I dislike about the Strokes in one handy, easy to carry package. I read it online here: http://www.thewonderwall.com/the_strokes/press01.php (someone clever can make a link if they like).

I just downloaded the new album, and yeah, it sounds pretty good. If unremarkable. But pleasant enough, we'll see how long it lasts.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
21:12 / 05.10.03
It's kind of ridiculous that so many people seem to insist on rock bands being innovative and hypermodern. It seems to miss a lot of the point, not to mention a lot of the history - we're talking about an artform built on the work of thieves, copycats, and ephemeral one-hit wonders. The obsession with novelty is an invention of the media and the commercial end of the business, and one way or another, you're getting suckered if you're hung up on it. Just accept rock bands for what they are. If they have great songs, that's really enough. If they only have a couple of good songs, that's cool. Not everyone needs to be a genius.

Before the album format became the primary idiom of rock music, this was a singles medium, and at heart, it still is.
 
 
Murray Hamhandler
22:44 / 05.10.03
Right on, Flux. I've said for years that novelty is overrated, that many potentially good ideas in the fields of art/enertainment are never given proper reconsideration and reconfiguration due to an unending search for some new, original, as-yet-unattained something that's rarely as original or worth the effort as the progenitor seems to think it is.

On a side note: I live in a relative mass-media vacuum, especially w/r/t entertainment. No TV, no pop music magazines, no radio for me. Almost all of my current knowledge of music and other forms of entertainment comes directly from the sources cited by Flux above (various blogs and messageboards) and from people I know who have musical tastes similar to mine (of which there are few). The extent of Strokes-related hype I've been exposed to was seeing approximately half of one of their videos in Target. So I feel safe in saying that my appreciation of their music is based entirely upon their sound pairing unmediatedly w/my own personal taste. They ain't no revolutionaries, those boys, but they've got a nice sound that makes my hips swivel.

And...have you actually heard the Stooges?
 
 
kaonashi
00:33 / 06.10.03
Situation:

New board poster has opinions.
Espouses opinions, loudly.
Is told to rethink opinions.
Flux and Flyboy entertain each other.
New board poster gets bored.
Vacillates.
And leaves.

Flux and Flyboy stay and entertain each other.

How many times has this happened?
 
 
bio k9
02:01 / 06.10.03
Never. Lets try it on you.
 
 
A
03:59 / 06.10.03
I'm not sure how it happened, but the Stooges seem to have become this bogeyman-like figure that people always bring up in an attempt to stop kids having fun. Kid says "Gosh, I like (insert name of reasonably fashionable present-day rock group here) an awful lot. What fun!". Grown-up rocker says "Dude. They're so lame, derivative and inauthentic. Haven't you heard the Stooges? Fucking know-nothing kids today mumble grumble..."

It almost makes me want to hate the Stooges on the principle of the matter. We should not forget that rock'n'roll is largely about kids having some fucking fun. It's not an academic exercise in historical preservation. Blah, I could go on and on here, but I shall restrain myself.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
07:39 / 06.10.03
As the flipside to dericgeneric and Flux's points about the advantages of disavowing print media etc, I think that after a long enough period of immersion in the music press, the same effect can be achieved as long as you keep your eyes open: you eventually realise that bands who are quite good will often be called the greatest thing in the whole world in 20 years, and so on, and that while this is annoying, you have to learn to ignore it unless you want to be arbitrarily put off half a dozen good acts a year...
 
 
rizla mission
09:54 / 06.10.03
The way I see things is actually something like the reverse of Count Adam's view, in that my problem is that bands like the Strokes get compared to the Stooges .. despite not being anything like the Stooges, which is strange and misleading. It's just that Stooges and MC5 have become the dominant "lazy journalist" comparisons to throw around in relation to .. pretty much any rock band. Which, on the negative side, distracts from their power as makers of fucking amazing music, but on the plus side it also hopefully inspires "kids" such as myself to check out their records.

I currently consider the Stooges to be contenders for title of "best rock n' roll band EVER", and if new groups really do sound like them, I say "GREAT! Let's dance!"
 
 
Tryphena Absent
10:18 / 06.10.03
Right, hang on a second, my world is collapsing. Someone doesn't like Maps. I thought everyone loved that song regardless of the YYY's enthusiasm or not?

Clearly the band that destroyed music was the 1980's German group Falco. An entire electro song about Mozart that made no sense at all? Anyone remember that? A song that references a classical composer? It were Falco what done it (Rock me Amadeus).
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
10:43 / 06.10.03
So, Flux, I should stop listening to the music press and, um, start listening to... you?

Not liking the same bands as you does not mean I "resist fun" (especialy since the last album I listened to was The Very Best of Prince, a mere half hour ago) It simply means that - gasp - I don't like the same music as you!
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
10:53 / 06.10.03
"Maps" is a great song, but it has Karen O on it. She's a bad vocalist. This makes me like it a little less. I do not hate "Maps".

I haven't heard much of the Stooges, but I've heard a fair bit of Iggy. The Strokes sound a lot like Iggy at half the speed because they can barely play (not that that makes a band bad, mind) and minus all the balls, panache and fun.

If the current trend for Retro goes on, music is screwed. The wheel has to keep turning, someday everything that's born must die otherwise it all gets bland, and boring, and stale, and senile. This is as true for art as it is for people.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
11:03 / 06.10.03
And you were doing so well at the top of this page, too.

The "trend for Retro" is far from current. An obsession with recycling popular music of the past has been present in enormous chunks of the the popular music of 'right now' not only for as long as I've been listening to music, but stretching back through punk's debt to Fifties garage rock, the Stones' homages to old bluesmen, and parodies of music hall on Sgt Pepper. It isn't going to stop in rock'n'roll any time soon - if you're interested in almost entirely shiny new ways, you'd do better to limit your listening to Kylie.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
15:16 / 06.10.03
Let's not even go in to the influences on Muse. I mean, can you in all honesty say that they're not retro in the sense of mid-90's post-britpop rock. Radiohead obviously had a huge effect on them and who can really be arsed to say more beyond that. There's so much of The Bends in there that no one can bloody miss it.

All art is at least partly cyclical but that's missing the point entirely. All art references other art. To assume otherwise is foolish and frankly it's naive. If it doesn't reference other art than you're basically missing the reference. Kylie is not shiny and new either, you can pick apart the reference in her sound as much as any other (although I suspect the main influence may be Erasure and that scares me to the behind of hell). Why are we even having this conversation?
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
17:29 / 06.10.03
There's a world between Radiohead and Muse these days, Anna. Muse are too fucking fired up to be even considered to "OK Computer" or whatever.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
19:19 / 06.10.03
No. They aren't. Granted Radiohead are currently toss (in my opinion) but Muse have hardly surpassed OK Computer. Their music isn't original enough and there isn't enough variety between the tracks on their albums. They may seem fired up but that doesn't make them ground breaking and, let's make no mistake, at the time of OK Computer's release Radiohead deserved that title. The problem with Muse is surely the same problem that you perceive on hearing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The singer has a monotonous voice that is prone to erratic changes of pitch. While I rather like that kind of thing I understand that some people don't. However how you can distinguish between the two except to say that one is in a higher register than the other is quite beyond me?

Muse have this kind of galumphing noise. Everything's overdramatic and big and it's fun but even their quieter songs have trouble with the drama. They can't help but use a classic bassline and that hummery noise that Jonny Greenwood always specialised in and then you get those gothicy lyrics coming in and that's what screws it because it's the thing that is too repetitive and same old.

Now I do happen to like Muse but that's not going to stop me suggesting that you're wrong Radiator. It just feels like you've listened to them a million times before.
 
 
rizla mission
20:17 / 06.10.03
I haven't heard much of the Stooges,

get their records
get their records
get their records
get their records

Tehy are the blinding light of rock n' roll illumination.
 
 
houdini
21:51 / 08.10.03

So last year I was downtown in Manhattan for the first time in a couple years and ended up wandering around on 5th Avenue. It got time to head back to Port Authority to catch the Greyhound home and I realized that I was turned around so I approached one of New York's Finest to ask for directions.

She had to call it in to the station to get directions to Manhattan's premier commuter arrival point, which was about 20 minutes away.

And all the while she was on her radio thingie this little voice in the back of my head was singing "New York City Cops, New York City Cops...."

The Strokes are alright.
 
 
De Selby
01:52 / 09.10.03
If a song is good (even if its derivative), and it catches you at just the right moment, then it is magic. Every time you hear that song you will remember that moment and enjoy it.

For me (and a lot of other people I would hazard a guess) The Strokes managed to catch me at just the right time. I would say this has a lot to do with their style of writing and their attitude rather than their particular musicality, but now whenever I listen to Is This It, it reminds me of a better time in my life, and I'm so much happier for it.

I don't think you can ask much more than that from music.

oh and I think you should ALL stop reading NME. Especially Radiator.
 
 
The Strobe
09:31 / 09.10.03
Real guitars. Real drums. Real music.

Woah. Back the fuck up there, Flux... did you just say that? Is that a whole 'nother argument you want to get into? If not, it's a nasty, sloppy, loose generalisation that seriously riles me. Nothing, almost nothing, riles me more than the suggestion that the only possibly way one can have 'real music' is with 'real guitars and real drums'. That's just an untruth, sorry.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
09:40 / 09.10.03
Already did a year ago, mate.

Never fucking agreed with em when I did, either/
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
10:51 / 09.10.03
Paleface, I was being sarcastic.
 
 
Not Here Still
19:11 / 09.10.03
Couple of points to this thread: Can someone explain what stops rich people from playing good music - or was the suggestion the Strokes are 'spoilt little rich boys' just thrown in to alter people's perception? Obviously, lightly taking the piss out of an idea either didn't register or was ignored, so I'm asking outright; should I burn my Nick Drake albums because he was, by all accounts, a bit posh?

Number 2; there's a new Stooges record out at the moment, kind of, if people give a damn; Skull Ring, Iggy's latest, sees him team up with the Stooges once more, as well as with the Trolls (his onstage touring band, Peaches, Feedom, and (ahem) Sum 41.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
19:16 / 09.10.03
It's OK to be posh if you're good. You've earned it.

Being posh and very bad at what you do but still popular because dad paid all the right people is the objection that most people have against The Strokes. They've earned nothing. They suck.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
19:27 / 09.10.03
Not Me Again: I think the idea that "they're rich kids!" is a valid criticism of the band has mostly been given the due consideration it deserves, if you catch my drift.

Radiator: rich parents can buy you a lot of things. Good PR people, instruments, nice outfits, record company attention, maybe even good press (although I'd love to see some, y'know, EVIDENCE that The Strokes' media coverage has been bought by Casablancas Snr or whoever). The one thing they can never, ever guarantee you is popularity. Don't try to pretend that popularity always follows hype: the landfills of pop and rock'n'roll are littered with the remains of bands who were plugged to death by the press, but never made it with the public - something about being able to take a horse to water, but I forget the rest.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
19:30 / 09.10.03
No. The Strokes are a very, very bad band. Slow and graceless. They suck. MOST people seem to like them because they want to buy into the lifestyle. That's the impression I get from most "overt" strokes fans I've met of my own age, anyway, fashion driven and vapid. There is nothing redeming about the strokes. Nothing.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
19:51 / 09.10.03
I think The Srokes suck too but I so totally don't want to agree with you! Plus you know, of course they didn't need daddy's money, they're completely conservative thus the mainstream loves them with hearts as big as a whale's.
 
 
De Selby
03:05 / 10.10.03
Never fucking agreed with em when I did, either

But isn't the problem that you spend too much time orienting your opinion around what you read or what other people say, rather than viewing the music on its own merits? Whether or not you agreed with NME (when you did read it), the fact that you valued their opinion enough to disagree with them says a lot.

meh... this is getting boring anyway. You're too stubborn.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
11:17 / 10.10.03
There is NOTHING to The Strokes?

What about their one, good old fashioned will-be-played-and-remembered-for-years-to-come hit single, "Last Nite?"
 
  

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