The Strokes With Amanda Dobbins and Chris Ryan

Chris Ryan and Amanda Dobbins join Yasi to revisit the Strokes and their influence on the guitar rock that followed in their wake. They discuss the band's meteoric rise, Julian Casablancas’s distinctive songwriting, the model-filled audiences that helped fuel the band’s early buzz, and how their debut album, 'Is This It,' somehow lived up to the overwhelming hype. Plus, the pressure following their early success, the band’s uneven output in the years that followed, and their resurgence in the TikTok age. Episode Playlist Listen to The Strokes Playlist here Subscribe on YouTube CREDITS: Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalek Guests: Amanda Dobbins @akdobbins, Chris Ryan @crashactivated Producer: Rob Sundermann Editor: Adrian Bridges Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:05Speaker 02

  What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like bandsplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandsplain, bandsplain, bandsplain. I really like this band. Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Bandsplain, bandsplain, bandsplain, bandsplain. Bandsplain.

• 1:45Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandsplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is about The Strokes. I heard you. My guests today, you guys, we all disagree. I think we should disagree. It's Chris Ryan and Amanda Dobbins. Welcome to the program, you guys.

• 2:04Speaker 04

  Disagree?

• 2:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's just a Strokes lyric, babe.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 2:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. We all disagree.

• 2:08Speaker 04

  I got that tattoo taken off a long time ago.

• 2:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so I do kind of think we all, in some places, will disagree.

• 2:15Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:16Yasi Salek?

  That's the spirit of lively podcasting.

• 2:18Speaker 05

  Can we pull back the curtain already? So I invited myself on to this podcast.

• 2:22Yasi Salek?

  And you are always welcome.

• 2:23Speaker 05

  Because what happened was, is that Chris Ryan and I were together in the loading docks of the Toronto International Film Festival.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:33Speaker 05

  And we were there to do a big picture event. And The Strokes, The Adults Are Talking, was playing on like the house mix at TIFF. And I said to Chris, this song is called The Adults Are Talking. And you said, who is this?

• 2:50Yasi Salek?

  Right. I didn't hear it until this week.

• 2:53Speaker 05

  And I said, it's by a band called The Strokes. And you said, tough beat for you in October, huh? And I was like, what? And so honestly, from backstage, as we were about to go do this event, I started angrily texting you. And I was like, Chris doesn't know any late period Strokes song. You're recording this without me.

• 3:11Yasi Salek?

  Correct.

• 3:12Speaker 05

  This is incredibly rude. And then I've just been hassling you. Then you went out, who did you say was better than The Strokes?

• 3:17Speaker 04

  Don't act like you don't know who I said.

• 3:19Speaker 05

  I don't actually know because I'm a subject matter expert.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  I said The Walkmen were better than The Strokes.

• 3:24Speaker 05

  No, they're not. And then, yeah, they're not.

• 3:27Yasi Salek?

  Litigate that.

• 3:28Speaker 05

  So like, I'm kind of like, why are you still here? But it's fine.

• 3:31Speaker 04

  I also like had minor surgery yesterday. Like, I'm here, I'm doing the work, you know? I'm prepared.

• 3:36Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna pull back the curtain even a little more on your golden, Chris Ryan over here, who absolutely has revisionist history, the fact that he heartily volunteered.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  You come to me on the day of my daughter's wedding often. And you're just like, who's gonna do this Bandsplain episode?

• 3:53Yasi Salek?

  The day of his daughter's wedding was, we were going to an Afghan Wigs concert and having a delicious burger and a beer with his beautiful wife, Phoebe. And I just brought up casually that I was going to do a Strokes episode.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 4:05Yasi Salek?

  And you had this look on your face, you're like, mhm.

• 4:09Yasi Salek?

  And then you go, I kind of want to, that's literally, I kind of want to do The Strokes. That's what you said.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:14Yasi Salek?

  I didn't even ask you. I didn't proposition you. Not that I would not amazingly want you here.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  I first campaigned for this in Venice, Italy, over a year ago with Yasi. We were roommates. We shared one bathroom.

• 4:26Speaker 04

  You should be yelling at her. I'm not the one who kept you off the show.

• 4:30Speaker 05

  Campaigned again publicly and privately.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's fine. That's fine.

• 4:35Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, it worked out beautifully because we're all here together. Two of us are really happy to be here and one of us is also here. And we're gonna make it work.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  I'm really happy to be here. I really like The Strokes. I'm excited to talk about this period in New York City.

• 4:48Yasi Salek?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:49Speaker 04

  And I'm really delighted to be reliving these moments with you guys.

• 4:52Yasi Salek?

  And in fairness, I was 30 minutes late and that didn't help the mood. But we're, now we're here and now we're partying, cooking with guests. Um, you guys, I just wanted to start this by mentioning that of Billboard's top selling acts of the 2000s, only one was a rock band. Can you guess what band that was?

• 5:11Speaker 04

  The Foo Fighters.

• 5:12Speaker 05

  The Strokes?

• 5:13Yasi Salek?

  Nickelback. This is how you remind me of what I really, I actually would, because you know, I like fuck with that first Nickelback. It's, I don't think it's the first one. I think it's like the third or fourth one. Really Heavy Silver Side Up.

• 5:26Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 5:27Yasi Salek?

  Where This Is How You Remind Me comes.

• 5:29Speaker 05

  I do remember, when I worked at Vulture, I did some sort of news, like a hundred word post about some sort of like Nickelback meme situation that became the most trafficked post on the New York Magazine website for like two weeks straight. And they kept coming to, like all the editors, you know, this was in the era of.

• 5:48Speaker 04

  Amanda, Amanda, how did you do that?

• 5:50Speaker 05

  No, no, no. It was like far enough along in like SEO chart beat wars where they were like, Nickelback. We need more Nickelback. And I was like, I am 28 and I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, they have a, yeah, they have an audience, is what I learned.

• 6:07Yasi Salek?

  The pudding, you guys. I've said this fact on here a million times because I'm obsessed with it and I'll say it again right now. This Is How You Remind Me is the most played song of that entire decade on the radio.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  Is that an actual fact or is it?

• 6:20Yasi Salek?

  It's an actual fact.

• 6:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:22Yasi Salek?

  No other song was played on terrestrial radio more in 10 years from 2000, 2010 than that right now. So.

• 6:28Speaker 05

  Is that United States only?

• 6:31Yasi Salek?

  Probably. I don't know if that was like hitting in France or whatever, but.

• 6:33Speaker 04

  Southern Italy.

• 6:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  Guys.

• 6:36Yasi Salek?

  But the best selling rock LP of the decade was Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory. Anyways, I only say all this to say that The Strokes are very important, but much like many other rock bands.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  There's a distortion field around it.

• 6:49Yasi Salek?

  There is a distortion field. Like, you know, they were not as big as we think maybe they were.

• 6:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:57Yasi Salek?

  But they were important. And let's get into it. We're gonna start right at the top with Julian Fernando Casablanca.

• 7:02Speaker 04

  How did I know that was his middle name?

• 7:04Yasi Salek?

  He's of Spaniard blood.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 7:07Yasi Salek?

  Born August 23rd, 1978. He's a Virgo in New York City, the son of a Spanish American or American Spanish businessman, however you want to put it, John Casablanca's.

• 7:19Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. Businessman.

• 7:20Yasi Salek?

  He was a businessman.

• 7:21Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 7:22Yasi Salek?

  He did, he did business. You know who else is a businessman? Jeffrey Epstein.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 7:29Yasi Salek?

  Um, John Casablanca is the founder of.

• 7:31Speaker 04

  You beat the over under on that one.

• 7:33Yasi Salek?

  Elite model management. And he married a model, a Danish model, who I believe was his first signing, Jeanette Christensen, Miss Denmark 1965. Um, he was pretty important to modeling, I will say it. Um, my friend did find me a John Casablanca's t-shirt. I think I showed it to you guys and I was like, should I buy this to wear for the podcast? And you were like, probably not.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  Probably not.

• 7:56Yasi Salek?

  And had it not been $150.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  Jeffrey Epstein within the first five minutes.

• 7:59Yasi Salek?

  Well, make your own conclusion. He invented the celebrity model. Like his first supermodel was Christie Brinkley. Uh, he repped Cindy, Polina Porzakova, Naomi, Linda. Like, he really made that into like, these were before, these models really didn't have power. And he did create that, so you know, good for you. Also, maybe kind of a piece of shit.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 8:20Yasi Salek?

  Mm hmm. Depends who you ask. Um, when Julian was six, he met his future bandmate, Nikolai Philippe. He's French. Frature.

• 8:30Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 8:30Yasi Salek?

  Uh, they attended the bilingual French school, Lycée Français in New York City.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 8:36Yasi Salek?

  Uh, Nikolai was born November 13th, 1978. He's a Scorpio to a French Russian mother and a French father.

• 8:43Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 8:44Yasi Salek?

  Yep.

• 8:44Speaker 04

  Scorpio got me.

• 8:45Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 8:45Speaker 04

  The Scorpio part got me.

• 8:46Yasi Salek?

  It's right there with you. Um, Nikolai, probably the least known stroke, right?

• 8:51Speaker 04

  The steadiest of hands.

• 8:52Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 8:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:54Yasi Salek?

  Uh, raised by, uh, with his older brother Pierre and younger sister Elizabeth in Yorkville, in the Upper East Side. Nikolai said of Julian, Julian was cool even before the band. He was cool in the first grade. I don't remember meeting him, but I remember when our friendship was solidified. We were six or seven, our school had a water main break. It was in the morning, so it was right after class started and everyone had to go home. My parents were working and they couldn't come to pick me up, so Julian told me to come home with him. The water main didn't get repaired for three days, so I just stayed over. Besties.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 9:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's kind of cool, right?

• 9:23Speaker 04

  Kind of.

• 9:24Yasi Salek?

  A dream child.

• 9:24Speaker 04

  Ten bombs vibes.

• 9:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Early 80s New York, yeah. Um, when Julian was about seven, his parents divorced, which was possibly related to the fact that Mr. Casablanca began dating Stephanie Seymour, who was perhaps 14 years old at the time.

• 9:41Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 9:43Yasi Salek?

  Perhaps, I'm not, I don't have the exact dates. Right around there.

• 9:46Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 9:46Yasi Salek?

  Um, Julian said, basically when my parents got divorced, I don't know, everything was, I'm not trying to say that's like why, it's just, they got divorced. My mom was fucking miserable and I just lived with her crying every day and that was my life. So I fucking didn't hate my dad. I don't want to say that now because I get along with him now fine, but I did. I did. This is in 2002.

• 10:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:08Yasi Salek?

  And this is in the face. And they were like, did you see your father much? And he's like, no, I would see him sometimes, but I didn't like the whole vibe of it because my mom was in hell. And you know, walk into the bathroom and your mom's fucking crying, you start crying, it just fucking sucks. Whatever. You really get a lot from those quotes.

• 10:23Speaker 05

  Um, listen, childhood divorce.

• 10:25Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 10:26Speaker 05

  Textbook 101, totally.

• 10:27Yasi Salek?

  We've all been there. Uh, I haven't actually.

• 10:29Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, I'm the representative.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  Separated but back together.

• 10:33Yasi Salek?

  Yes, yeah. My parents are Iranian, so, I mean, not that Iranians don't get divorced, but it's a bit rare. You're like, I'll fuck it out, you know? Um, the first time he got drunk, Julian, he was 11 years old. He swiped fruity alcohol residue off the table at his father's house with a friend.

• 10:49Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 10:50Yasi Salek?

  And then I guess he started getting really into it. He was like, hmm. This is fun. And he would ask his friends, like, to bring him alcohol from their parent, from his parent, their parents' liquor cabinets. And he would drink in the morning before school.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  No way.

• 11:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 11:05Speaker 05

  Is he still the Lysay at this point or has he had Dwight?

• 11:08Yasi Salek?

  I, no, I think he's in, at the Lysay still.

• 11:10Speaker 05

  Um, he hasn't made it to Swiss finishing school?

• 11:12Speaker 04

  No.

• 11:13Yasi Salek?

  Well, he's about to because, due to the drinking whiskey at 9:00 AM situation.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:18Yasi Salek?

  Um, so two days a week, he had to go to like a rehab thing. He's, he's literally like 12 years old.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  Can you imagine a little 12 year old guy smelling a whiskey?

• 11:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. What was the first time you drank alcohol?

• 11:28Speaker 04

  Uh, a lukewarm Bud Light of my father's when I was around this age. And then I think I was like, I'm good for seven years.

• 11:36Yasi Salek?

  What about you, Amanda?

• 11:37Speaker 05

  The night I graduated high school.

• 11:38Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 11:39Speaker 05

  Because my high school, um, I guess like the Dwight School, but possibly even more militant would expel people who were caught drinking. They would call up the colleges and rescind their recommendations. So kids lost scholarships. Like, I mean, my high school.

• 11:56Speaker 04

  Punitive now in retrospect.

• 11:58Speaker 05

  I, more than a little. It was insane. Uh, so.

• 12:01Yasi Salek?

  You like had your watch set. You were like.

• 12:03Speaker 05

  So quite literally, like June 13. There was like a giant, uh, party that night, you know, and like, and all of the like football players that I'd known since I was like five or six were like, here you go, Amanda.

• 12:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:15Yasi Salek?

  Okay, great.

• 12:16Speaker 04

  Rumspringa.

• 12:17Speaker 05

  It was great. Yeah.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  What about you, big dog?

• 12:20Yasi Salek?

  Oh, probably like 11 years old. We, Torrance didn't have those kinds of activities at our school. I do remember we would get like, we would stand out, classic stand outside the liquor store and get like a questionable, moraled, older person, or like maybe like a hobo or whatever, to buy us beers. And then we would go drink them like in the middle school, you know, until the cops came and chased us off.

• 12:44Speaker 05

  Right. So it was beer?

• 12:47Yasi Salek?

  You know, the first things I really remember were more like hypnotique and like Goldschlager and like, um, mad doc, like things like that, like colorful.

• 12:55Speaker 05

  Mol liquor.

• 12:56Yasi Salek?

  And also Boons Farm.

• 12:57Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. But I think the very first thing we got was probably beer because we didn't know any better. We didn't know what Boons Farm was.

• 13:02Speaker 04

  Just trying to imagine you coming home from like the second trilogy of Beatles movies in 2031 or 2032 and

• 13:09Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 13:10Speaker 04

  Your older son is like, gets caught with like a.

• 13:13Speaker 05

  The second quadrility. Well, yeah. The, um, Si, the younger one, definitely. He really likes seltzer and he really likes anything in a can. So that we've had some close calls.

• 13:23Yasi Salek?

  Showing early proclivities.

• 13:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, he just, he thinks, he also does yell, I want wine when I'm having wine, you know, and they're not allowed to have it. But yeah, a couple of years on, we're a couple of years from 12.

• 13:37Yasi Salek?

  Maybe by then kids will be drinking again.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  Oh, right.

• 13:41Yasi Salek?

  Cause it seems like, well, isn't that the whole thing? They don't drink as much as they used to?

• 13:44Speaker 04

  Right. Cause they just, uh.

• 13:45Yasi Salek?

  Oh, like the youth. Yeah. Well, I think they go to parties, but like they don't drink.

• 13:49Speaker 05

  They do drugs.

• 13:50Yasi Salek?

  They do, right? But not even like cool drugs, whatever. We didn't get into this. So yeah, so 12 year old Julian's going to, you know, two day a week Phoenix house.

• 13:58Speaker 05

  That's sad.

• 13:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, somewhere around this, the first song he learns on guitar is Polly by Nirvana. Truly one of the more emotionally devastating Nirvana songs, like a strange first one to learn. Um, and then he's 13 and I guess this wasn't improving. So his father ships him off to, uh, institute the Rosé boarding school in Switzerland.

• 14:18Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 14:19Yasi Salek?

  To improve his grades and probably curb his, um, adolescent drinking.

• 14:22Speaker 04

  Did he meet any other Strokes there?

• 14:24Yasi Salek?

  My God, thank you so much for asking. Wow. He met Albert Hammond Jr. But we will reintroduce him when he comes back into the story for good because there's not a lot to talk about there. I believe they just like played video games together.

• 14:36Speaker 05

  Okay. We don't know anything about what happens at.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  At the Alps.

• 14:39Speaker 05

  At the, at this particular Swiss finishing school.

• 14:42Yasi Salek?

  Is that when his father went there, he had a fling with the school's maid and got expelled.

• 14:48Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 14:49Speaker 05

  So, oh, okay. So John Casablanca also went there.

• 14:53Yasi Salek?

  Attended the school.

• 14:54Speaker 05

  Got expelled from the Swiss expulsion school.

• 14:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 14:58Speaker 04

  He got Julian expelled?

• 14:59Yasi Salek?

  No, no.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  John.

• 15:00Yasi Salek?

  John got expelled.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  When he went there.

• 15:02Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 15:02Speaker 05

  But then Julian was still allowed.

• 15:04Speaker 04

  He was a legacy still.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 15:06Yasi Salek?

  I don't know. I don't know how the boarding school system and.

• 15:09Speaker 05

  Is how I think it works.

• 15:10Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if they're like, your father got expelled.

• 15:12Speaker 05

  It comes from a Swiss account, you know, so they can't trace it.

• 15:14Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 15:17Yasi Salek?

  Cooking with gas, babe. So his mother remarries, and this is a kind of important in Julian's, uh, arc. His stepdad is a painter called Sam Adacui.

• 15:28Yasi Salek?

  And he kind of fills in this role of like, you know, showing Julian, like, you can be an artist. Like he was really, you know, a serious artist and was into the idea of like, you can do this for a living. He said, as a kid, you know what people are telling you in school is kind of BS. He was the first person that I thought was not full of it. When I started playing guitar, he was like, you're going to be the next Jimi Hendrix. He also, I guess Nikolai played him a Pearl Jam song around this time, Yellow Lead Better.

• 15:59Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 15:59Yasi Salek?

  Another very depressing.

• 16:00Speaker 04

  That's the song that ends the Bill Simmons podcast.

• 16:05Speaker 04

  I think.

• 16:05Yasi Salek?

  Corduroy starts it.

• 16:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:08Yasi Salek?

  So we start with a bunch of energy.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  And then I think it goes out.

• 16:11Yasi Salek?

  Drove me mad.

• 16:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 16:14Yasi Salek?

  You're finally here and I'm a mess.

• 16:18Speaker 04

  So PJ is big. He listens to Polly by Nirvana.

• 16:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 16:20Speaker 04

  His dad thinks he, stepdad thinks he's going to be Jimi Hendrix.

• 16:23Yasi Salek?

  And he says of Pearl Jam, wow, that's pretty. And it makes me feel something special that I don't usually feel, that I like to feel. It made me feel stronger. His stepdad also.

• 16:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, Julian contains multitudes.

• 16:36Yasi Salek?

  When, when we really unpack the influences of Julian Casablanca's, you're like.

• 16:44Yasi Salek?

  His stepdad gave him a CD, The Best of the Doors. And this, he said, unlocked something for him. He was like, there was so much different shit, cool instrumental shit, cool lyrical shit. There was some cool singing stuff. I said, fuck, that's what I want to do. I think it's interesting because Julian Casablanca's is kind of a like.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  He's a lizard king.

• 17:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he's a savant though. Like he's like a mu, like the way he hears and, and processes music is actually quite complex. And, you know, he's not playing three chords and the truth or whatever, or like punk music. Like, he goes on after this, which we're not quite there yet, but he, after, I think he dropped out of high school actually, but he goes to music school and learns theory and like studies like Bach and stuff. We'll get into how that plays into the Strokes songs, but anyways, so he's angsty, he's loving Nirvana and Pearl Jam. He's love, the doors have unlocked something. And then his father remarries in 1993 to a 17 year old model at the age of 50, the winner of the elite modeling competition.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  This is like mid 90s?

• 17:54Yasi Salek?

  Ninety three. Yeah.

• 17:56Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 17:56Yasi Salek?

  Julian Casablanca's is back in New York with the stepdad, attending the Dwight School, as you mentioned.

• 18:03Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 18:04Yasi Salek?

  Which is where he meets Nicholas Balenci, born in January 16.

• 18:08Speaker 05

  Okay. So Dwight lets him in after Swiss finishing school.

• 18:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 18:11Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 18:12Speaker 04

  That's three school.

• 18:13Yasi Salek?

  This is three, if you could, yeah, at least a semi-normal. I went to three schools before high school, right?

• 18:21Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, you moved a lot.

• 18:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Nick Balenci was born to a Tunisian Jewish father and a French Jewish convert mother named Danielle. His father was born in Tunisia, like full Tunisian, moved to Paris, go to university. That's where he meets the mother. He was raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, two sisters, Celine and Alessandra. And I think they owned a French restaurant, actually, his parents. And he used to go to his grandfather's house in Bordeaux every summer.

• 18:53Yasi Salek?

  I'm only, well, I'm, I'm simply reporting the facts, but I do feel these come into play later when the Strokes get big mad when people say that they're rich.

• 19:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 05

  We're just laying out the research.

• 19:09Yasi Salek?

  We're just putting the facts on the table.

• 19:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. So are we three for three on Upper East Side at this point?

• 19:14Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 19:15Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 19:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, Yorkville.

• 19:18Speaker 04

  And Albert in Switzerland.

• 19:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and Albert, yeah. And I think, and grew up in LA though.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  All over, yeah. Probably because of his dad.

• 19:24Yasi Salek?

  Nick Balenci started learning guitar at five. Um, his dad had a guitar. He saw the Welcome to the Jungle video on MTV and really radicalized him, Guns N' Roses.

• 19:34Speaker 05

  Yeah. Very powerful in my house as well.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 19:36Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Especially like you're seeing Izzy and Slash, Izzy Stradlin, like so sick. Nick Balenci's father died when he was nine. So it's kind of traumatic for him. Started getting really into music, smoking weed. When he was 11, he also started getting into a lot of trouble, drugs and alcohol, got arrested when he was 11 because he tried to take another kid's money and the bus pass.

• 19:58Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 19:59Yasi Salek?

  Surprising thing that you wouldn't need to take from somebody. Um, and then.

• 20:04Speaker 05

  You gotta get around. You gotta get around.

• 20:05Yasi Salek?

  It's the city. City rules.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  And they weren't free back then, like Big Zoe made, made the buses.

• 20:10Yasi Salek?

  Sure, sure. If it had, had Mom Donnie been in power, perhaps Nick Valensi's trajectory would be so different. Nick says, I remember what Julian was wearing the day I met him in middle school. Blue jeans and a white button down shirt. The shirt had the name of his former school on it, which was funny to me. I was 13, he was 15. We were the only two people with long hair. He looked like someone I might be able to relate to. It's such a 50s thing, like nobody else had long hair.

• 20:35Speaker 04

  Greasers and so.

• 20:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly. Also at the school, Fabrizio Moretti. June 2nd, 1980.

• 20:44Speaker 04

  That's your guy?

• 20:45Yasi Salek?

  That's your, I mean, who doesn't love Fab?

• 20:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:47Yasi Salek?

  He did, he is kind of the most likable one.

• 20:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:50Yasi Salek?

  From afar, you know, I don't know any of them personally. He's a Gemini, born in Rio to an Italian nuclear engineer named Stefano and Anna Moretti, a Brazilian. So he's Italian Brazilian, started playing drums at age five in their family's midtown apartment. Okay, so now we have a midtown.

• 21:06Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 21:07Yasi Salek?

  He was also at Dwight. This is what Fab said, "We get labeled as these rich boys." And I'm like, fuck you, man. I didn't work every spare hour at the light, at Light the Lights. I don't know what Light the Lights is, "for my spending cash to be dogged as a fucking rich boy, man. That's fucking bullshit." "My parents strived, worked their asses off to send me to private school. I respect my parents for that and I love them. We were not all rich boys. We're privileged, but only that our parents loved and supported us." That was in 2002.

• 21:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:34Speaker 04

  This wasn't as hot a topic back then, if I remember correctly. Like, I mean, like, they got nailed for it, but I think among people, like, the concept of nepo babies was a little less, less nuclear.

• 21:49Yasi Salek?

  But wasn't the.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  Like, selling out was bad.

• 21:52Yasi Salek?

  Wasn't the class concept always kind of a thing in rock music, though? Like, oh, these are like upper class.

• 21:57Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 21:58Yasi Salek?

  Even going back to like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

• 22:01Speaker 04

  Pretending to be Cockneys and Blur was doing the same thing.

• 22:04Yasi Salek?

  You know, it's a tale as old as time. So, yeah, so whatever. They all meet in at Dwight.

• 22:09Speaker 04

  I just mean, it wasn't like a, like, these guys get ejected from the tape deck because they went to private school kind of thing.

• 22:14Yasi Salek?

  No, it was more that they were like harassed, is not the right word, but they were constantly asked about it in, in press.

• 22:20Speaker 04

  I think there's a very good reason for that.

• 22:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, they're partying, they're friends. Julian had started writing music around 15. He, he, um, he said, "I wanted to get to the bottom of what makes a song really blow you away or hit you hard emotionally." "I went through different stages where I'd listen to and figure out the songs. And once I thought I'd absorbed everything from that particular artist, I'd move on. Nirvana, The Wall, Bob Marley, Velvet Underground, Beach Boys, classical stuff, stuff on the radio.

• 22:50Yasi Salek?

  I'd practice anytime I wasn't at school or doing homework. Well, I never did homework."

• 22:54Speaker 05

  I was about to append that for him, so self-awareness is, so, I mean, it's just, it's band spleen early. Well, he's doing his own.

• 23:01Yasi Salek?

  He's doing his own band spleen, exactly.

• 23:02Speaker 04

  Okay. He probably would not have as successful as a podcast as you, if he was trying to do band spleen.

• 23:07Yasi Salek?

  Because why?

• 23:08Speaker 04

  He, I don't think he's the most articulate quote I've ever seen.

• 23:11Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 23:12Speaker 04

  He's just like, "This is fucking cool, man. This is fucking whatever." My favorite part of the early research on Julian is the idea that he would sometimes try to fix or rewrite songs that he would hear.

• 23:24Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 23:24Speaker 04

  Because I think that's, uh, very, like, a skeleton key to his songwriting. Cause there's like songs where you're like, "Why does this sound familiar?" But then you're like, "But it also might be better than all of the other versions of this."

• 23:38Yasi Salek?

  Right, totally. Especially kind of later, Strokes stuff has that like really explicitly. Yeah, I think that's so true. And also he's such a perfectionist. Like, that's his, you know, the Virgo jumping out. He also said, "I wanted to sing. I recorded myself singing a Pearl Jam song or something. I was singing along and I thought, man, look at me go. I'm ripping this song up."

• 23:59Yasi Salek?

  And then I listened back and I was just so devastated and hurt at how bad my voice was, how out of tune and bad it sounded. And I thought, okay, well, that's the end of that. That I can relate to.

• 24:09Speaker 04

  Oh, I mean, I saw that quote too, I think, and I was like, can you imagine if at the end of karaoke, they handed you a recording of what you sounded like that night? The karaoke business would, would be flatlined the next day. Nobody would ever go back if they actually heard what they sound like.

• 24:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 05

  Well, no, I think that there is a subset of people who are like, who are going, hoping that it will be recorded.

• 24:30Yasi Salek?

  To stunt on people.

• 24:31Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 24:32Speaker 05

  But, you know.

• 24:32Speaker 04

  I would argue that any of them are not as good as they think they are.

• 24:35Yasi Salek?

  That is very true. So Nick and Fab were the first two to actually start playing music together. Fab finds out that Nick plays guitar and he's like, "I have drums, like, let's play." And Nick was like, "Oh, wow, a New York City kid having drums, like, a big deal, takes up all his space." And he's like, "So I got to Fab's house and he did have a drum kit set up in his bedroom. It was awesome, but he did not know how to play. He just did not know how to play."

• 25:02Yasi Salek?

  And that's actually also a funny thing about the Strokes, like, all, every single one of them is kind of really a gifted musician, except for Fab. He's not a bad drummer.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Very drumming up.

• 25:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I mean, he became a good one, but like, in the beginning, it's like, they're all like, "I've been playing guitar since I was five and I'm like sick and ripping this shit up."

• 25:19Speaker 05

  Right.

• 25:20Yasi Salek?

  And he's like.

• 25:25Yasi Salek?

  So they got this guy Danny to join them and they had this like quasi-heavy metal band for a while. And Julian would just tag along and like watch them at the studio. He said they played Nirvana and Bob Marley songs and some Metallica sounding originals. And finally, Nick Valensi was like, "I don't want to play with this Danny guy anymore. He can't sing." He can't be, this guy can't sing, this guy can't play drums, I need something. So he's like, "Okay, well, why don't, Julian, why don't you come play with us?" And Fab said, "I don't believe in God. I don't believe in an order of things, but I'll be damned if I didn't know that there was something there with these guys that I needed to be there for."

• 26:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's beautiful. You know, he's just, he's the glue guy. Yeah, he's cheerful and then he goes off with Drew Barrymore.

• 26:08Yasi Salek?

  He sure does.

• 26:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 26:09Yasi Salek?

  What a great time.

• 26:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 26:10Yasi Salek?

  In, in culture. Fab said, "Our music was doery but trying to be classical." This is when Julian's involved. "We all took music classes and tried writing songs and we put them together. They were this crazy amalgam of insane ideas that we thought were really cool." They're also drinking. They're practicing music and they're drinking. Nikolai said, "For a while it was Ballantines, but before that with Julian, it was Old English. We went straight for the malt liquor, just like in the Dr. Dre videos."

• 26:37Yasi Salek?

  Nick Valensi said, "Julian's drinking was always a problem, or it was certainly an issue to be dealt with starting in high school. We were just going heavy with the drinking man all through high school. I went really heavy through high school and so did Julian, Fab and Nikolai, and maybe, maybe the tamer ones. But when Julian would drink, he was scary, mean, very aggressive." I think this is from me being in the bathroom.

• 26:57Yasi Salek?

  I, I, you know, drinking OE because of the Dr. Dre videos. Hell yeah, brothers.

• 27:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:03Yasi Salek?

  We already know that vibe. Um, okay. Do you guys remember the Mooney Suzuki?

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 05

  No.

• 27:08Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Chris, what do you remember about the Mooney Suzuki?

• 27:11Speaker 04

  That they were, uh, like, kind of a mod rock band that were based in New York.

• 27:17Yasi Salek?

  They're definitely from New Jersey, so probably based in New York.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  Played up and down the East Coast and in the late, later 90s, like mid to late 90s was the sort of burgeoning mod scene. So from where I was in Boston, everybody was like into punk and emo and hardcore and indie rock. But then all of a sudden, there started to be this mod night down in, in, I can't remember what club it was in in Boston. But that's like, they would play the jam and Motown and like, you know, and everybody wore like tailored suits and.

• 27:47Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  Girls had haircuts. I mean, they always had haircuts.

• 27:49Yasi Salek?

  But I don't.

• 27:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 04

  And they were, Mooney Suzuki were one of like the modern, were they kind of mod garage?

• 27:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, mod garage, totally. They kind of occupied this space that is like the dead zone of New York music that everyone makes hay out of that like is what the Strokes burst out of. They're like, "Thank God, there's something here."

• 28:12Speaker 04

  CBGB's garage punk.

• 28:15Yasi Salek?

  But there was something kind of happening with the Mooney Suzuki and Jonathan Fireeater.

• 28:19Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 28:19Yasi Salek?

  I don't, not saying that they were friends or in a scene, I don't know if they were or not, but that was still kind of going on at this time.

• 28:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:26Yasi Salek?

  Nick Valensi was obsessed with the Mooney Suzuki. He was like, "I was their number one fan. I went to the Luna Lounge. I would see them play. I thought they were so tight, so together." And he brought all the guys to see them. Um, and Nikolai said, they had this thing. I remember seeing them once at CBGB's. I think it was Julian Abra and me. We're kind of blown away. Sam was jumping on the bass drum. It was a total spectacle. John, who was the bassist at the time, he had some guy who was tugging on his chord. He walked off the stage and punched the guy in the face. It was like, holy shit, this is what we want to do. And Julian said the same thing. He's like, we were eight, that's what we were aiming for. Like, we wanted, our first thing we were aiming for is to be the Mooney Suzuki.

• 29:00Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 29:01Yasi Salek?

  The next thing they're aiming for is to be guided by voices, but we'll get into that. So Julian drops out of high school, like I said, gets his GED, goes to a vocational music school called Five Towns. He said, people don't understand how hard I worked, really hard. He studied classical composition, because he said, I always felt that you needed to learn the rules before you could break them. It wasn't like it helped me in rock and roll, but it made me realize what was cheesy, what was typical, what typical chords and scales were. It gave me a foundation where my original thoughts could actually be original. The one thing that made us good now is that I realized my whole life I sucked, always. Everything I did, it sucked. That was the motto of, motto of everything. I suck, I gotta do better, I gotta work harder. That was the motto of music. Another real

• 29:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:43Yasi Salek?

  Window into the mind and the heart of Julian Casablanca.

• 29:46Speaker 04

  Yes, portrait of an artist as a man.

• 29:48Yasi Salek?

  Again, who can relate?

• 29:50Speaker 05

  Many young people.

• 29:53Yasi Salek?

  A, a driving force to be, I'm the worst.

• 29:57Speaker 04

  The Suzuki thing is really interesting to think about now because, gosh, I couldn't hum one of their songs, but they had a look. And at that time, there were just not a lot of bands with looks, or their look was like Negative Space, like they were dressed like I am now. You know, and, and so you would just be like, pavement.

• 30:13Speaker 05

  We're coming out of the like trenches of slacker, right? We're coming out of the trenches of grunge that led into indie and all of that is schlappy, you know? It was like, even when you get to Weezer and whatever, alternative rock, everyone was wearing thrift store clothes.

• 30:27Yasi Salek?

  Like, what, what year are we right now? Like ninety?

• 30:29Speaker 05

  This is ninety seven.

• 30:30Yasi Salek?

  Ninety seven, yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 04

  So like Britpop is kind of happening and there's an awareness of that and like

• 30:34Speaker 05

  But even they weren't dressed smazzy, you know, they were wearing parkas and like, yeah, it was like a little nicer, but they weren't wearing suits.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 30:41Speaker 05

  And it's also not, so I'm in ninety seven, I'm still, I think I'm in middle school. So I'm

• 30:50Yasi Salek?

  Bumping the Mooney Suzuki.

• 30:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, as you know.

• 30:52Yasi Salek?

  Someone burned for you.

• 30:52Speaker 05

  So I'm not like, I'm not cool. And also, like, you know, not at the club. But, and so what makes it to a middle schooler, like Nirvana and grunge?

• 31:02Speaker 04

  Hundred percent.

• 31:02Speaker 05

  Through MTV and magazines and like that aesthetic, that look.

• 31:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Speaker 05

  Makes it wide, you know, my so-called life is like, is, is on network TV around that time. And Britpop doesn't really filter down to, and ninety seven, ninety eight is also Britney Spears era. And so we're like, the, the mainstream aesthetic is teeny bopper for a bit.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 31:26Speaker 05

  And

• 31:26Speaker 04

  And metal.

• 31:27Yasi Salek?

  And new metal and biscuit.

• 31:28Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly.

• 31:29Yasi Salek?

  Quite there yet, but ninety eight, ninety nine.

• 31:32Speaker 05

  But like, that's kind of, that is what's germinating and then, but also leaving a space open for you know who.

• 31:39Speaker 04

  I'll also just give a little bit of insight into music media in the mid nineties.

• 31:44Yasi Salek?

  You were a working man at the time.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  Not quite yet. I was still in college, but like when you're reading it, it is the, it is the union of like, all the people working in music media have for the longest time had this super engine powering their magazines. That is alternative rock, specifically Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but then even Soundgarden and all these other bands.

• 32:07Yasi Salek?

  Pumpkins.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  Smashing Pumpkins, that they can continue to kind of just be like rock, rock, rock, but also rock that like you can analyze the lyrics. And they have interesting stories behind them and all this other stuff. Then as that kind of fades away, mid to late nineties and they, you know, like hanging on with like Beck and you're like, what's next? What's next? Is it Electronica? Is it, you know, the Dust Brothers? Then

• 32:27Yasi Salek?

  Spoiler alert, it was not the Dust Brothers.

• 32:29Speaker 04

  Pop and new metal comes along and I think everybody in the music media who were kind of like, fuck, we have to do this. And they did have to do it to keep the lights on, but there was like a real like, uh, longing for that early nineties vibe to come back in some capacity, not necessarily in the same shape and form.

• 32:50Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 32:50Speaker 04

  But like, we want bands back.

• 32:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 32:53Speaker 04

  And we want bands that like rise out of nothing, rather than like a band that's like, we want to play a stadium immediately.

• 32:59Speaker 05

  Right. And also the thing that was alternative or from the margins became like the center definition of cool.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  Yep, exactly.

• 33:07Speaker 05

  And then, you know, was subsumed. So we need, we need like a new outside definition of cool again.

• 33:13Yasi Salek?

  And what about, but what about hip hop, Chris? Cause like, at what point, we just talked about Dr. Dre and, I mean, that was in my world, very big in the early nineties, but like, when did it kind of break through into like Jay-Z? That's later.

• 33:27Speaker 04

  Early aughts.

• 33:28Yasi Salek?

  Early aughts.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  Jay is late nineties into early two thousands. Fifty Cent comes along in the early two thousands. Eminem comes along in the early two thousands.

• 33:36Yasi Salek?

  So we, we also have

• 33:37Speaker 04

  And those are kind of like very Star Wars type events where you're like, holy shit, you sold twenty million records or whatever. So that's happening.

• 33:46Speaker 04

  But back then felt independent of rock, like

• 33:49Yasi Salek?

  It was a stra, it was a very strange time. I remember as like an alternative rock loving kid being like, just clinging on to like, like whatever was left, the dredges of like Smashing Pumpkins or whatever.

• 34:03Speaker 05

  Right.

• 34:03Yasi Salek?

  But, and I, and I loved Korn. Fucking Sumi Korn is a good band. But then all the other stuff that was happening with the new metal, you were like, I don't know about this.

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• 35:47Yasi Salek?

  Julian's studying four-part harmony.

• 35:50Speaker 05

  You, you say that, like, show, show the man some respect. He's learning the essentials, you know?

• 35:55Yasi Salek?

  He, this is, really comes into play when he starts writing music and I'll, I'll unpack it. But Fab goes to SUNY New Pulse for a little bit. Nikolai and Nick go to Hunter College. And then in nineteen ninety eight, Albert Hammond Jr. Moves to New York City.

• 36:09Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 36:10Yasi Salek?

  Born April ninth, nineteen eighty in Aries in Los Angeles.

• 36:13Speaker 04

  Younger.

• 36:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, him and Fab and Nick Valenci are all, I think around the same.

• 36:18Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 36:19Yasi Salek?

  They're all young.

• 36:19Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 36:20Yasi Salek?

  And then it goes up from there. He is the son famously of British Gibraltarian? Is that how you say that? Singer songwriter Albert Hammer.

• 36:30Speaker 05

  Didn't know, I didn't know that Gibraltar was in the mix there.

• 36:34Yasi Salek?

  Well, you know, he has a

• 36:36Speaker 04

  It's a disputed piece of territory.

• 36:38Speaker 05

  Sure, yeah.

• 36:39Yasi Salek?

  Um, a prolific songwriter, best known for his nineteen seventy-two hit single, It Never Rains in Southern California. Um, and Argentine Claudia Fernandez, a former model and beauty pageant winner.

• 36:52Speaker 04

  These guys really

• 36:53Yasi Salek?

  A lot of DNA.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  They scout foreign wife for wives.

• 36:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 05

  But also

• 36:59Speaker 04

  I always kept it on the east coast. I always kept it in the northeast corridor.

• 37:02Speaker 05

  You know, I mean, I think they just, wherever they go, they say, find me the models.

• 37:05Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 37:06Speaker 05

  You know?

• 37:07Yasi Salek?

  It's really crazy when you start getting into like the upper echelon worlds and you're like, why is everyone so good looking? And you're like, because they actively farmed hot wives. And bred hot children, you know, like, and you're like, yeah, cool.

• 37:25Speaker 05

  Well, unless you're the

• 37:26Yasi Salek?

  The British Royal Family, but anyway, different.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  I just got Russian steps in Southern Ireland.

• 37:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  That's what made me this.

• 37:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. My, my grandparents were first cousins, so we're doing great over here. The Middle East was a different place. Um, okay. So Albert Hammond Jr. said he hated music growing up, probably like.

• 37:49Speaker 04

  Rejecting his dad.

• 37:51Yasi Salek?

  Sure, yeah. And he said, I used to sit around his studio and be really bored. Now I look back and wish I paid attention because I could be a master of the studio by now. I could have learned everything. He said, I just played video games.

• 38:00Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 38:01Yasi Salek?

  He apparently did start playing the guitar at age nine, so it's not like he was sitting around for that long. Um, his dad told the Irish Times, dad out here giving interviews. When Albert Junior was around eight years old, it took him to see the Buddy Holly story, the Broadway musical. He fell in love with the whole thing. When he got home, he asked me to teach him three chords. So I taught him A, D, and E. This sounds a lot like my six-year-old daughter came to me and said, Mom, why didn't Joe Biden not appoint Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Why didn't Ruth Bader Ginsburg retire from the bench when she had the chance, Mom? Doesn't it sound like one of those tweets that people say about their child? Um, anyways, whether that.

• 38:38Speaker 04

  With tears in her eyes.

• 38:40Yasi Salek?

  My six-year-old daughter listened to me. Um, so after boarding school where he met Julian, Albert went back to LA, finished high school there, kind of played music with a friend. And then he was like.

• 38:51Speaker 04

  Do you know where he went out here?

• 38:52Yasi Salek?

  I have no idea, actually. It didn't come up. Yeah, I don't probably, if I had to guess, a private school, Harvard Westlake. Crossroads. Crossroads. He's not giving Harvard Westlake. I'm gonna, I'm gonna look into it right now. Keep going. Report Buckley's. Um, Billy say, who knows? I want to go to. Buckley School. Oh, Buckley.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  Dang.

• 39:09Yasi Salek?

  There we go. I was close. Said, I want to leave LA and I want to go to New York, but I don't want to go to college. So his mom finds him an eight-week film program at the New York Film Academy. Do you know what my parents would have said if I was like, I want to go to New York, but I don't want to go to. I wanted to go to New York to go to college. And they were like, no, you will stay in California. I was like, but I got into NYU. They were like, we do not care. You will stay in California. So he goes to this New York Film Academy eight-week program and he said, I created this total fantasy. This is perfect. I'll reinvent myself in New York. I'll discover myself at this film course. Got an apartment on 22nd and Lex, right across the street from the Elite Modeling Agency.

• 39:48Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. Okay. 20th and Lex in 19, 22nd and Lex in 1998. Okay. I'm just thinking it through.

• 39:59Yasi Salek?

  I think pretty nice.

• 40:00Speaker 04

  Well, like that was Murray Hill.

• 40:01Yasi Salek?

  But it's lower Murray Hill.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  And like Spin was at 23rd and Lex for, at one point, and then it was on like 30 something and Lex at another point. But I don't think he was there to see people working at Spin. I think he was there for the models.

• 40:13Yasi Salek?

  Well, maybe just.

• 40:14Speaker 04

  Well, it's just happenstance. The universe brought them together.

• 40:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because he saw the name Casablanca's on the door. And he said, my mom was like, didn't you go to boarding school with a friend named Casablanca's? So he went right into Elite and he said, hey, I went to school with Julian. Can I leave him my number? And the rest is history. Julian was like, called him up and he said, once I hung out with him in New York, I felt like it was kind of a no-brainer. So Albert meets Julian and Nikolai. They bring them together before they even tried out for the band. He said, we went to Ryan's daughter and had margaritas. I was never a big drinker. I was more of a stoner in LA, so I was pretty wasted already. And then they were like, let's get 40s. And I was like, you guys want a beer after this? So we get 40s and we're hanging out on the East Park drunk. It was a fun little bonding experience. Then I went home and threw up everywhere.

• 41:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Julian said, it would be more interesting if I told a magical version, version. But I do remember that the band was not that sure and Albert was really nervous. He showed up to the rehearsal in a suit.

• 41:11Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 41:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, they actually, fun fact, rehearsed in the music building, which was the same place that Madonna famously lived and rehearsed back in the early eighties, late seventies. Fab said, we were all probably wearing something that was like a hodgepodge of grunge and Metallica outfits. And he walks in with his pants way too high. But Julian was like, he had cool taste. If anything, he influenced the style of the band. Albert said, I just felt like it was the closest thing I could do to dress like my idols. When you start dressing like that, you stop being a kid.

• 41:40Speaker 04

  So he's dressing like Buddy Holly or?

• 41:42Yasi Salek?

  He was wearing, I mean, you've seen what Albert's suits look like, right?

• 41:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:45Yasi Salek?

  It's like, it's not Interpol, right? It's not like finely tailored Gothic, you know, pointy.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  Yes. American Psycho.

• 41:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, right. It's like a rumpled seventies version of a suit. So it's like, but it's still not grunge, you know, it's still like more put together. It's still a kind of a new thing. So he tries out, he thinks it's a disaster, but they were like, you were already in the band. But it's like, it's fine. Um, and then him and Julian move in together.

• 42:14Speaker 04

  Do we know the neighborhood?

• 42:16Yasi Salek?

  I don't know, actually. We could probably find it out.

• 42:18Speaker 04

  Okay. They lived together for quite a long time, right?

• 42:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, really, like through like several albums. I assume it's downtown.

• 42:24Speaker 04

  I, I imagine it is out Lower East Side.

• 42:27Yasi Salek?

  Then they're like, we got to come up with a band name, you guys. And they came up with all these bad names. The De Niro's.

• 42:32Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 42:33Yasi Salek?

  The Rubber Bands, The Motels, which I believe was taken.

• 42:36Speaker 04

  Very much so.

• 42:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They were like.

• 42:39Speaker 04

  The Beatles.

• 42:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Flat Top Freddy and the Purple Canoes.

• 42:45Speaker 04

  That would have been one night at the Continental before they broke up.

• 42:48Yasi Salek?

  I guess then Julian just one day blurted out The Strokes and everyone was like, okay, Strokes.

• 42:55Yasi Salek?

  And then they played their first year show one year later in 1999. Steven Hyden wrote a great book about The Strokes called, Is This It? And he points out, one of his like central thesis is that like, what the, one of the great parts about The Strokes that people related to and like admired and kind of to your point about we want rock music back is that they were a classic five guy were a gang band.

• 43:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:21Yasi Salek?

  You know, like we're actually friends. We run, we tear shit up together. We run around this town, you know, slamming beers and destroying shit.

• 43:29Speaker 04

  We're outside.

• 43:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we, we're outside in these streets. Um, Nick said, we felt like a gang. And Nikolai was like, we thought that's what a band was. Kind of is, right?

• 43:38Speaker 04

  True.

• 43:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, I like when, I like when a band is that.

• 43:43Speaker 04

  This is also like for bands, this is like a very special time because as they do, if you experience success, it usually pulls you apart.

• 43:51Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 43:51Speaker 04

  And you wind up, oh, we have enough money. I'll get my own place. I have my girlfriend or my wife or whatever. But this is the point where it's just like, we practice together, we party together, we live together.

• 44:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 44:01Speaker 04

  We should play shows together. It's like a six, seven day week.

• 44:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we're just best of friends. Right. He said, people would like see them walking down the street and like yell The Beatles at them. Like they would really had this, that's what Albert said. They had this look. Mom?

• 44:16Speaker 04

  People who have recently compared themselves to The Beatles, Albert and Tom Cruise.

• 44:21Yasi Salek?

  Someone in Meet Me in the Bathroom also points out that they were like a boy band, you know, like in the most classic sense.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  Because they really, there was like the front man, like the, you know, Fab is the cute one with the drums, like, yeah.

• 44:31Yasi Salek?

  They were like a cool girls' boy band, right? Like it's like the new kids on the block for girls that like are into alternative rock music.

• 44:38Speaker 04

  I always think about bands around this time period because you would go see them. And like usually there would be like one dude, they would be like, did you find this dude with a flyer? You know, not in a bad way.

• 44:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 44:49Speaker 04

  Sometimes.

• 44:49Yasi Salek?

  It's always, it's almost always the drummer too.

• 44:52Speaker 04

  Or the bass player.

• 44:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the bass player. Isn't that in, in that thing you do when Ethan Embry joins the military?

• 44:58Speaker 04

  The other guy and breaks his arm or whatever?

• 45:02Speaker 04

  It wasn't, you weren't able to like filter out results the way you are now, I think, with like, and curate your, your friendships like that. It was just sort of like, oh, this guy plays drums. So they got lucky in that they were all bred from supermodels.

• 45:16Yasi Salek?

  I was saying, they got lucky from the start with the genetic, genetic composition that they were gifted. So they started making tons of flyers, passing them around town, paid for by one Albert Hammond Senior, because Albert Hammond Jr. had his credit card and would go ahead and swipe that at the Kinko's. He also bought them all their strings, cables, drumsticks, et cetera. They had a car. They had a 1984 Gran Torino they would cruise around in.

• 45:41Speaker 04

  Okay, like all together?

• 45:42Yasi Salek?

  I guess so.

• 45:43Speaker 04

  Like hanging, like handing things out?

• 45:45Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if that was to, one thing, but.

• 45:48Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 45:48Yasi Salek?

  They were definitely.

• 45:49Speaker 04

  But they could just be seen around the Lower East Side being like, oh, there are The Strokes.

• 45:53Yasi Salek?

  There are The Strokes.

• 45:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:54Yasi Salek?

  Um, I wasn't there, so I don't know. This is 1999.

• 45:56Speaker 04

  Did you ever see them? I didn't get there until oh, one. So by that point.

• 46:00Yasi Salek?

  Everyone knew who The Strokes were, yeah. They were meeting friends, Adam Green, Moby, getting wasted. Nick is working at a restaurant. Fab's working in a smoothie shop. Nikolai worked at a video store. Albert worked at Kim's Video.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 46:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Much like Chris Ryan and Brad Truax, I just learned, who is now in Interpol. Many people, Alex Ross Perry. Yeah. Um, okay. So their first.

• 46:21Speaker 04

  It's kind of its own supermodel bleeding ground.

• 46:23Yasi Salek?

  Sure, yeah. Fully.

• 46:29Yasi Salek?

  In September of 99, September 14th, they play their very first show at a place called The Spiral. And then they just like keep rehearsing and playing whatever shows they can get. They play the Charleston, Under Acme, The Orange Bear, Voodoo Lounge in Queens, Brownies, CBGB. They're playing a bunch of songs that don't end up on the first album, and then some that do. And Meet Me in the Bathroom, JP Bowersock, who we'll talk about soon, he's their guru, says that Julian would invite models from Casa, from Elite to the shows. So then they build this reputation. There's hot girls at the Strokes shows. Literally the hottest girls, like professional models. And so people are like, I want to go to the Strokes show.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  I can't emphasize enough how, how big of an impact that made.

• 47:13Yasi Salek?

  The fact that there was hot girls.

• 47:15Speaker 04

  That it wasn't like a bunch of dudes.

• 47:17Yasi Salek?

  That it was hot girls at the, yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 04

  Like, most of the shows. When I first, so I got to New York in 2000. I, I, I can't claim to have been super aware of them in 2000, like gigging before Modern Age, but like, in just your experience of going to indie rock shows, it would just be like, um, 80%, 90% male to female ratio. And the first time I saw them, I was like, this is quite striking.

• 47:41Yasi Salek?

  You're just like, this, some of these things do not belong. I wonder what the models made of it.

• 47:47Speaker 04

  I'm sure they had a great time.

• 47:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, right. But were they like, I love, you know, is this it?

• 47:53Speaker 04

  Because this is part of the continuum of the Talking Heads.

• 47:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They were like, wow, love would, I love these sound melodies.

• 48:01Speaker 05

  Let me tell you something. You know, women can be smart.

• 48:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they can have brains.

• 48:05Speaker 04

  And they can have incredibly complex interior lives.

• 48:07Speaker 05

  Yeah. And they can also have fun at a party or show.

• 48:11Speaker 04

  I often wondered that about Elle McPherson. You know, what does she think about? What does she want to do with herself? You know?

• 48:16Yasi Salek?

  Make greens powder. That's what she does. Um, JP Bowersock was a guitar teacher. He was referred to Albert and Julian from a guy called Richie at Richie's Guitar Shop on 11th and A.

• 48:30Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 48:31Yasi Salek?

  To teach them guitar. And he just became their guru. Um, he said, what Julian was mostly leaning on me for was that he wanted every note planned out, nothing left to chance. They were one of the first bands I knew that practiced in their rehearsals to a click track, not only once a week, but four or five nights a week. They were deadly serious about being super tight. So every note had to be worked out. Julian wanted to work out every note of the guitar solos too. This is something we're getting into. Julian wrote everything.

• 48:57Speaker 05

  Yeah. I, I know. Yeah. We love a control freak. And you can tell also, like, it's not, it is, you can tell when someone else is meddling versus, yeah.

• 49:08Speaker 04

  It's the only, it's the tension of that early part of the band, which is that they are at once like totally prefab the creative, you know, expression of one person, but also like a total sum of their parts.

• 49:23Yasi Salek?

  Aesthetically?

• 49:24Speaker 04

  No, but like.

• 49:25Yasi Salek?

  Musically?

• 49:26Speaker 04

  I don't know about musically, but like when you would go see them.

• 49:29Yasi Salek?

  Experientially.

• 49:29Speaker 04

  You'd be like, each one of these guys is giving off a completely like unique vibe to.

• 49:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think it was like energetic and aesthetic was one thing, but the actual music was very tightly controlled by Julian. So it's almost like he was like Stephen Sondheim or something. I'm like, hired these people, but that's not how it worked. I mean, they were a band, but like, it is an interesting, you don't hear that very often when we talk about, it kind of never comes up when I talk about bands on BandSprint. There's, you know, it's never like this one guy did everything.

• 49:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:59Yasi Salek?

  The Modern Age was one of the first album songs that they wrote. And they said that that really clicked for them. Nick said, suddenly it was like, we need more songs like this one. We should get rid of the other ones. The others were trying to be more musically complex, like Dorsey with some Baroque elements in there. The Modern Age was like, whoa, this feels like a Velvet Underground song. It's cool and simple. And actually Nikolai's brother had given Julian a Best of the Velvet Underground compilation one Christmas, and perhaps that fed into this. Julian said, I was a big Velvet Underground Lou Reed fan. People thought we sounded like television because television is a New York band influenced by the Velvet Underground. That's why we sounded like them. That's not what we were listening to. I was listening to Lou Reed. I did not think the Strokes sounded like television.

• 50:43Speaker 04

  I still don't. Yeah. I think it's because they have two guitar players who sometimes like interplay with each other.

• 50:48Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 50:49Speaker 04

  But I think it was more just like, name five more bands that looked great.

• 50:54Yasi Salek?

  And came from New York. And, yeah. And are kind of like, what's his name? Tom?

• 50:59Speaker 04

  Tom Verlaine.

• 51:00Yasi Salek?

  Tom Verlaine was like such a guitar hero, you know? And last night kind of closely followed this, that song. And then I brought this up earlier, but Julian said, the dream for me was to be in a band like Guided by Voices or Built to Spill. Just be big enough to have a fan base and be able to do it for a living. That was the goal, and it wasn't anything beyond that. The Guided by Voices influence, I can actually quite hear. Like, that's very clear to me.

• 51:24Speaker 04

  Especially on the early stuff.

• 51:25Yasi Salek?

  Especially on the early.

• 51:26Speaker 04

  The idea that this is like a mixtape that you can't tell if it's from 1971, 1984, or the future.

• 51:35Yasi Salek?

  Although like, I have to assume the working situation was quite different.

• 51:39Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, I was gonna, but that quote is just as much about the success and the vibe and the place and the culture as that, the actual music, right? Which is so integral to the way that the, the Strokes are successful for what is like around the actual album as the album itself. It's part and parcel.

• 51:58Yasi Salek?

  Totally. The summer of 2000, they're featured in V Magazine. I couldn't hunt this down. It's not anywhere, but it's very interesting because they haven't put out one note of music. Justine D, my queen, she, do you remember Justine D?

• 52:09Speaker 04

  I do.

• 52:10Yasi Salek?

  She was like a very, she didn't do Miss Shapes. She precedes Miss Shapes, but she was like a really cool DJ in New York who did a lot of the parties that, you know, are in this indie space, you know, with Larry T. And anyways, she said, a few of us thought, what a strange band that they're already in a notable high fashion magazine and no one really knows who they are. But they created such a buzz around themselves. Back then, if you outright self-promoted, it was frowned upon. And then in May or August, they play the Luna Lounge. Apparently there was like 40 people there. They played Modern Age in last night for the first time. And this is where a one man named Gordon Raphael first saw them. Chris, I guess. Gordon Raphael, just a brief sidebar on him. He came out

• 52:53Yasi Salek?

  of the Seattle music scene. He's like a lifer, late 70s, 80s, 90s, played keyboard in bands, prog rock groups, industrial music, also engineered the second Green River album, Dry as Bone, and was in a band called Sky Cries Mary.

• 53:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:11Yasi Salek?

  Do you know that band?

• 53:12Speaker 04

  I, I've heard of that band. I can't, can't say I'm familiar with their work.

• 53:16Yasi Salek?

  Familiar with their oeuvre. That's what, sing right now. Sing a song. So name three songs. That's what caused him to move to New York though, Gordon. And he was like, I was curious and I, I kind of liked something about them, but I wasn't that convinced. They looked like they were very proud of themselves and very stylish, but they didn't have the musical aspects yet. He said, I'm sorry to say, I just wasn't that impressed. But when they finished, I saw the two guitarists step onto the stage to collect their pedals. I went straight up to them and said, hi, I have a great studio close by and I can make great sounding demos for cheap. Because he needed money to go back to Seattle. His studio was called the Transpor, Transportarium. It's a bit of a hippie stone, okay. Then they have the first ever Strokes show at the Mercury Lounge. This is important. It was booked

• 53:56Yasi Salek?

  by Ryan Gentles. He had also been in a band and he was Jim Merliss's intern at Gethin.

• 54:02Speaker 04

  And Jim Merliss is a?

• 54:03Yasi Salek?

  Legendary publicist. He was Nirvana's publicist. Everyone called Ryan Gentles Weezer because it apparently looked like Rivers Cuomo. And he was like 21 years old and booking the Mercury Lounge. And Nick was like, getting a gig at the Mercury Lounge was the goal. There was no higher echelon than the Mercury Lounge. They would have national touring bands that came through. Real bands, bands who weren't from New York. And there was a tour bus outside. There were no, no tour buses outside the Luna Lounge. So then they start asking Ryan, please manage us. Julian said, he was the man everyone wanted. He booked Mercury. He had power. So he was probably used to people kind of posturing in front of him, but he was playing it cool, acting unimpressed. Ryan said, I wasn't managing anybody at that point. I was a booker at a club. I told the Strokes

• 54:46Yasi Salek?

  no two or three times. I made 28 grand a year. I'm on easy street over here. I'm rich. The, the notion of making 28 grand a year and living in New York City.

• 54:57Speaker 04

  I did that.

• 54:59Yasi Salek?

  I did that too. I was, I was five or six years later. So.

• 55:03Speaker 05

  I think I was 35 and I was like struggling.

• 55:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's tough.

• 55:09Yasi Salek?

  He's on easy. My life is good. I'm this grand.

• 55:12Speaker 04

  This is still late 90s, early 2000s.

• 55:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So they take Gordon up on his offer. They're like, let's go make our demo, which is actually what becomes the Modern Age EP. Bring on, bring JP Bowersock. And Gordon said, I asked them, okay, what are we going for here? And Fab said, you know what everyone else is doing these days? Well, that's what we don't want to do.

• 55:31Speaker 05

  That's right. There you go, Fab.

• 55:32Yasi Salek?

  And then Julian said, this is a start of a beautiful thing where Julian describes what he wants out of music in increasingly bizarre and incomprehensible language that only Gordon understands. He says, imagine you're in a spaceship and you travel to the future where you discover a great band from the past that you really love.

• 55:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:53Yasi Salek?

  Gordon's like, gotcha. He also noticed that they're meticulous perfectionists, but also whenever someone made a mistake or had a disagreement, they spoke directly and honestly to each other and never discouraged each other with put downs.

• 56:06Speaker 05

  That seems like diplomatic revisionist history, but.

• 56:09Yasi Salek?

  You know, Gordon, what, what does he have in it for him to lie, you know? I did read his book, the entire thing.

• 56:16Speaker 04

  How much of it is about the Strokes?

• 56:18Yasi Salek?

  Like a third.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  Okay. How much about Sky Cries Mary?

• 56:21Yasi Salek?

  It's a lot about Sky Cries Mary, a lot of other stuff going on in there. So I, the modern AGP is really interesting because of what Gordon did with the vocals, which kind of becomes a hallmark of the earliest Strokes albums. So I mentioned this, Gordon was, had worked in industrial music. He really loved industrial music, like Skinny Puppy, Chris and Cozy, stuff like that. And from throbbing gristle, Chris and Cozy. And he loved the distortion on, you know, industrial music has heavily distorted vocals. So he was like, I'll just, you know, they don't want to sound like everyone else. I'm gonna put industrial distortion on Julian's vocals. So you're like, you know, cranked the input gain up to a 10. And then he's like, what do you think, Julian? And Julian hated it.

• 57:06Yasi Salek?

  But then Julian was like kombucha meme, you know, he was like, yeah. Right. And he was like, you know, this is what he said, quote, hey, you know how your favorite jeans, they're not brand new, but they don't have holes in them either. Gordon was like, yeah, I got you, buddy.

• 57:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:23Yasi Salek?

  So he turns it down to a five.

• 57:24Speaker 05

  Let me, you know what? That, that is true about my jeans.

• 57:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 57:29Speaker 04

  But do you, do you think you could hang with somebody who talked like that? In, in expressing what was going on inside of them, they would always speak in analogies like that?

• 57:38Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, some of this, what I'm hearing is that he doesn't have the technical language.

• 57:43Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 57:43Speaker 05

  So he's trying to create a feeling.

• 57:45Yasi Salek?

  He went to music school.

• 57:46Speaker 05

  Well, I don't know, but if he went to engineering school.

• 57:48Yasi Salek?

  That's true.

• 57:49Speaker 05

  So, you know, he did, so then he's trying to communicate a feeling. And frankly, someone communicating the feeling in terms of jeans.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  Is helpful.

• 57:58Speaker 05

  It actually does speak to me and it is true that I want my jeans new, but not new, but without holes in them, much like the jeans I'm wearing now.

• 58:06Speaker 04

  Congrats, congrats.

• 58:07Speaker 05

  Thank you so much.

• 58:07Speaker 04

  This is your, is this it of jeans?

• 58:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, they are, yeah.

• 58:11Yasi Salek?

  I like jeans with holes in them personally.

• 58:13Speaker 05

  I, I trip in the holes.

• 58:15Yasi Salek?

  On your knee?

• 58:16Speaker 04

  Putting them on?

• 58:16Speaker 05

  Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they make a bigger hole and then, but it's, you know, again, it's a different aesthetic.

• 58:22Yasi Salek?

  I think it's a generational thing.

• 58:24Speaker 05

  I know what my aesthetic is and we do have different aesthetics.

• 58:27Yasi Salek?

  And so does Julian Costello.

• 58:28Speaker 05

  And so does Julian, that is one of his great strengths. So, you know, that's, so I gotta hand it to him.

• 58:33Yasi Salek?

  Well, it was a match made in heaven.

• 58:35Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 58:35Yasi Salek?

  Because Gordon Raphael was like, fully get it. I speak your language, brother.

• 58:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:40Speaker 04

  To my knowledge, with all due respect to Sky Cries Mary.

• 58:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 58:46Speaker 04

  This guy comes more or less out of nowhere, records two Strokes records and never does another record of that level.

• 58:53Yasi Salek?

  Correct.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  That's fucking crazy.

• 58:55Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 58:55Speaker 04

  Like, that's like, usually like a guy like that would be like, I have a signature sound or like, I, you know, I can take the Strokes sound and apply it to all these other bands now. And he's just this like, meets these guys, here's Julian reading fortune cookies and is like, okay, I know what you want. I'm gonna turn the fuzz up a little bit.

• 59:13Yasi Salek?

  From what I read in his book, it sounds like he's both just like a great, a great shepherder of what a musician wants. And also like quite a sort of like weird guy who's just like a stoner and his own, not particularly ambitious.

• 59:29Speaker 05

  Right, like he's just trying to get back to Seattle at the end of the nineties, which I know many people like living there, but you know, like things are a little bit over.

• 59:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:37Speaker 05

  So some of that.

• 59:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but yeah, it is, it is interesting. It's also, I mean, we'll get into, he almost didn't produce any Strokes album, let alone two.

• 59:47Speaker 04

  It was also kind of awesome at this period of time in the Lower East Side.

• 59:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 59:52Speaker 04

  There were characters like this who I was just, I would, they would either be like always at the bar when you got there.

• 59:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 59:59Speaker 05

  Which bar?

• 1:00:00Speaker 04

  Hi Fi, which used to be Brownies, you know, library, a bunch of Max's pianos when it popped off. But like, these guys would just be like pretty, pretty big social staples. And you'd be like, what do they do for work? And it would be like, he works at a guitar store or he has a studio where he does demos.

• 1:00:16Yasi Salek?

  He's an outsider artist.

• 1:00:17Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:00:17Yasi Salek?

  He's Clayton Patterson.

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  Right. And you'd just be like, you know, those, they probably had had an apartment that had been rent control passed down through roommates.

• 1:00:25Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:00:25Speaker 04

  Over 15 years and it cost like $800 or whatever. And they were just making it work.

• 1:00:31Yasi Salek?

  They were like holdovers from the Lower East Side was like quite horrible and dangerous.

• 1:00:34Speaker 04

  Sonic Youth there.

• 1:00:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Gordo, what an interesting man. But thank God, because he was like, yeah.

• 1:00:43Yasi Salek?

  Input gain down to a five. There you go. And they were like, perfect. And then they also asked him to turn the drums down because they were too loud. And he was like, that is never what a band wants. They always want the drums turned up to be big. And then the last thing he said was, Julian said to Gordon was, can you take the bass out of the bass?

• 1:01:03Yasi Salek?

  And Gordon was like, what in the what? And then he just did it. And he said, it did sound better. And then they fine tuned it to death, like literally like Julian was like, can you turn the vocals up one tenth of a decibel? And Gordon was like, that is not going to be perceptible to the human ear.

• 1:01:20Speaker 05

  I, but then he did it.

• 1:01:21Yasi Salek?

  This is why he's my guy.

• 1:01:23Speaker 05

  And then he did it.

• 1:01:23Yasi Salek?

  This is why he's my guy, because some of us can hear the one tenth of a decibel.

• 1:01:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Yasi Salek?

  Some of us can hear the tiny little pauses between podcast edits, you know?

• 1:01:32Speaker 05

  I do wonder for the lack of the pause. Oh yeah, I can tell when something's been chopped up in the rhythm and the, yeah, yeah. But that's just me. That's because I am a podcast savant and Julian is a Strokes savant. Okay.

• 1:01:45Yasi Salek?

  You don't relate to, you don't relate.

• 1:01:47Speaker 05

  You have your own, you have your own method of management. You have your own level of control.

• 1:01:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:51Speaker 05

  About certain things.

• 1:01:53Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:01:53Speaker 05

  You gotta do it the way you do it.

• 1:01:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, as you can see, we're here for five hours.

• 1:01:58Speaker 04

  We're already at modern age. This is going well.

• 1:02:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's the first EP.

• 1:02:01Speaker 05

  I know.

• 1:02:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Yasi Salek?

  So they have the modern age. They start, again, this is not a release thing, it's just a demo. They start sending, it's 50 copies and they start sending, Ryan starts sending it around. Even though he's not really officially their manager, he's just like helping them. And he said, the phone started ringing. Who is this band you sent me? I knew I liked them, but I had no idea anyone else would give a fuck. So there was a guy that I think also worked at the Mercury Lounge named Matt Hickey, who had a relationship with Rough Trade. He was like, sort of like a unofficial AMR.

• 1:02:31Speaker 04

  He also wrote a little bit.

• 1:02:32Yasi Salek?

  Did he?

• 1:02:32Speaker 04

  I'm not sure, but I think he did.

• 1:02:34Yasi Salek?

  Okay, I didn't come across anything.

• 1:02:37Yasi Salek?

  So Jeff Travis hears this, Jeff Travis, fucking absolute legend. He said, Matt phoned up about.

• 1:02:43Speaker 04

  He likes signing the Smiths and stuff.

• 1:02:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I mean, we're, we're gonna do a quick Rough Trade sidebar, don't worry. Matt phoned up about seven o'clock in the morning and played me 10 seconds of the EP over the phone and that was it. That was the moment. Albert said, I remember when we heard about Jeff Travis, I was so excited. Everyone else was like, who is Jeff Travis? I don't know if I trust him.

• 1:03:02Yasi Salek?

  Jeff Travis and Rough Trade, obviously legendary. So formed in 1976, put out the debut EP by Cabaret Voltaire and also the second Stiff Little Fingers single. They put out singles by the Monochrome Set, Subway Sex, Wall Maps, Kleenex. They put out the pop group Delta Five, Young Marble Giants, The Fall, The Raincoats. And in 83, they signed the Smiths. That's kind of like their big claim to fame, but they put out so many cool bands. And then the late eighties, they start to have kind of significant financial problems. And throughout the nineties, weren't really as much of a label, just more stores. And they managed bands, Pulp and Mazy Star particularly.

• 1:03:44Yasi Salek?

  Jeff Travis had partnered with the god, Jeanette Lee, one of the coolest women alive, who was in Public Image Limited and just an incrementally cool woman. They resurrect the label, but they're like, in fairness, on kind of shaky ground culturally by the year 2000. Like, it is a little shocking to me that the rest of the Strokes did not know who Jeff Travis was, but I guess, you know, it started and ended with Pearl Jam for them. So Jeff Travis is like, yes, let's put out this EP, let's bring them over to England to do a show. Like, I'm all in.

• 1:04:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:15Yasi Salek?

  Jeanette Lee said, I remember the first day we heard their CD, we were calling out the names of the band members. Like, is this a real name? These are rock star names, they can't be true. Could it be possible they actually look like this? As well, really blown away.

• 1:04:28Speaker 04

  The British also dying for bands.

• 1:04:30Yasi Salek?

  Literally dying for bands. Also, this is my favorite thing, we were talking about a bit on the draft episode where it's like, as an Anglophile, I feel like I can say this because it works both ways. They too are just so easily mesmerized by like five messy, hot American guys.

• 1:04:51Speaker 05

  Well, sure.

• 1:04:52Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:04:52Speaker 04

  But they also had the apparatus, which is different, although not dissimilar to what like Pitchfork or Stereogram have to do now.

• 1:05:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Speaker 04

  Was they had to fill pages of NME and Melody Maker every week.

• 1:05:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05Speaker 04

  And to do that, they needed to manufacture mythologies around bands and scenes.

• 1:05:09Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:05:10Speaker 04

  And new sounds, so.

• 1:05:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and they were very good at it.

• 1:05:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:14Yasi Salek?

  This is when Ryan Gentles was like, okay, I'll manage you. So he starts booking them some shows out of town, Connecticut, DC, Philly, whatever. Cause he's like, okay, you can't play that many New York shows. And then in December, he books them their legendary residency at the Mercury Lounge. They play every Wednesday in December at the Mercury Lounge.

• 1:05:31Speaker 04

  This is 2000?

• 1:05:33Yasi Salek?

  This is, yeah, the December of 2000.

• 1:05:36Speaker 05

  Did you go?

• 1:05:36Speaker 04

  I didn't. I was in New York at this time.

• 1:05:38Yasi Salek?

  But you did go. Okay. Yeah. Every show was sold out. The Moldy Peaches opened for all these shows. Adam Green said, you're familiar with the Moldy Peaches?

• 1:05:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:47Yasi Salek?

  Most bizarre pairing to me are these two bands.

• 1:05:51Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:52Yasi Salek?

  I guess that they were friends, but also it's like musically, sonically, it makes no sense. Adam Green said, those shows had an element of hysteria to them, which was cool, cause I hadn't seen that yet. So all these journalists were there because that Modern Age EP had been passed around. Jenny Ellisque, Rob Sheffield, Mark Spitz, Gideon Yago. And Jim Merlis came to the first show and he was like, yes, I will be your publicist. I will do it for free. I'm in. It's all happening.

• 1:06:21Speaker 04

  I think by this point, it's, it's like really heating up for them. Like I don't remember if there was like a Modern Age promo floating around by then.

• 1:06:33Yasi Salek?

  It doesn't get technically real. I mean, people are hassling around copies.

• 1:06:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Yasi Salek?

  Right. And also don't forget in 2000, you can burn CDs now.

• 1:06:41Speaker 05

  Right. So that's what I was gonna ask. It's an actual CD.

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. Cause they became in a, when it first got released, not to jump ahead to May. But when it got released, it was just like in a cardboard slip. It just had like a little like circle design and said, the Strokes, Modern Age. And like, so really not descript, but I do remember even, even when I started working at Kim's in the fall, it was still hard to keep Modern Age in the store. Like people were so into it.

• 1:07:06Yasi Salek?

  Everything lined up really beautifully for them. Like at one of these, these dates at the Mercury Lounge, a woman named Leslie Lyons took a photo of them and sent it to Jeff Travis. And Jeff Travis sent it to the enemy. And that's it. Like it runs in the enemy and then once England gets a whip of them.

• 1:07:28Speaker 05

  Well, sure. It's like reverse Beatlemania.

• 1:07:30Yasi Salek?

  And they look really cool. It's like, I think they are. They're sitting at a bar all together with like a bunch of empty beer bottles in front of them. They did a set on WFMU on December 21st and they have all their songs, right? They play Alone Together, they play New York City Cops, Soma, Barely Legal, The Modern Age, Last Night, Take It or Leave It, and Someday.

• 1:07:48Speaker 04

  That's most of the record. Wow.

• 1:07:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I know. And then there's a little bit where like Julian says they're gonna go to England in January and someone off mic is like, oh, they're going to kill Oasis. And Julian says, it's revenge, the American invasion, which is actually quite true. What happened? They did go. I mean, Oasis kind of committed suicide in 1998, but they wanted to go ahead and throw some dirt on the grave. January is when the EP comes out officially in the UK of 2001. It has, I don't know if we mentioned this, only three songs, The Modern Age, Last Night, and Barely Legal. Yeah. Bye.

• 1:08:24Speaker 04

  Pretty good.

• 1:08:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Good job.

• 1:08:26Speaker 04

  Goodbye.

• 1:08:30Yasi Salek?

  So they go to the UK, they bring Moldy Peaches to open for them. The people at Rough Trade were like, they smelled really bad. It's just like they never washed their clothes.

• 1:08:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:42Yasi Salek?

  But it was funny, cause they were also very sophisticated. They made fun of all the English food. They said there was no good sushi.

• 1:08:50Speaker 04

  Not beating the allegations.

• 1:08:51Yasi Salek?

  Not needing the fucking allegations. They're like, can, can we not get some tuna?

• 1:08:58Yasi Salek?

  Hamachi crudo?

• 1:08:59Speaker 04

  Early 2000s, England, too, there's like one Wag Mama and then there's like.

• 1:09:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. You have to go to like, have the worst nachos you've ever had in your life. They have like baked beans and barbecue sauce on them.

• 1:09:11Yasi Salek?

  A tough beat for English food at that time. Jeanette Lee said, Julian has always seemed to be struggling with himself. And Jeff Travis said, Julian's not comfortable.

• 1:09:22Yasi Salek?

  So they played a bunch of sold out shows in London. They played the Camden Monarch. Life Without Buildings opened the show, which I think is

• 1:09:28Speaker 05

  Shout out.

• 1:09:28Yasi Salek?

  cool and interesting pairing. Yeah. Great, great.

• 1:09:31Speaker 04

  They played Brighton too.

• 1:09:33Yasi Salek?

  Played Brighton. Just rapturous reviews. Like, imagine the Ramones playing the Blondie songbook with Richard Hell on vocals and you'd be halfway to pinning them down.

• 1:09:43Yasi Salek?

  Just, this is the best, the second coming of Christ.

• 1:09:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:09:46Yasi Salek?

  Lou Reed was on the corner waiting for his man. Iggy had something of a healthy appetite for life and the five members of The Strokes were nearby taking notes from their respective mother's wombs.

• 1:09:55Speaker 04

  The crazy thing here is that like, so Geese just went through this whole like psy-op controversy of like whether or not like they had been like basically inserted into our feeds by their.

• 1:10:07Yasi Salek?

  Our overlords.

• 1:10:08Speaker 04

  Their overlords. And the thing is that they had put out like two albums and had been a band for like five or six years.

• 1:10:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. This was the first three songs they made demo, a demo of was all of them.

• 1:10:18Speaker 04

  This band is, does not exist. Like they hang out on the Lower East Side. They've made three songs that are commercially available.

• 1:10:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26Speaker 04

  And people are just like, no, it's, it's a fucking rap for the century. Like these guys are, are the next, they're the who.

• 1:10:34Yasi Salek?

  But don't you think it speaks to exactly what you were talking about before? It was just the thirst. There was a desperate, like hunger for rock bands. And make no mistake, The Strokes are good. So it's not like some like mediocre crap came along.

• 1:10:47Speaker 04

  Cause most of the people who were working at the magazines either were participants in Nirvana stuff in the early 90s. Or decided they wanted to be music journalists because of their Nirvana stuff in the early 90s.

• 1:10:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Speaker 04

  So by the time like, say like Mark Spitz and all these people are like working at Spin, they're like, I'm, one day it'll come along again. You know what I mean? Like, like these kinds of bands that are cool and relatable, but also rock will happen again.

• 1:11:13Speaker 05

  And also we wanna, I wanna be the person who claims it.

• 1:11:17Speaker 04

  And I will be.

• 1:11:17Speaker 05

  And I wanna be the person who discovered and like planted the flag and was like, no.

• 1:11:21Speaker 04

  Charles Foster Kane.

• 1:11:21Speaker 05

  This is it. You know? Yeah.

• 1:11:24Yasi Salek?

  Totally. It is interesting, cause we didn't mention them on this episode yet because The Strokes, I think, didn't care much about them. But Jonathan Fireeater, to your, the Walkman or better, point, did obviously predate The Strokes and were really cool and did have a look.

• 1:11:40Speaker 04

  And a sound.

• 1:11:41Yasi Salek?

  And just kind of maybe.

• 1:11:42Speaker 04

  And were confrontational.

• 1:11:44Yasi Salek?

  A beat too early?

• 1:11:45Speaker 04

  They were too weird. They were like more like Nick Cave.

• 1:11:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:48Speaker 04

  Like they were like birthday partyish.

• 1:11:49Yasi Salek?

  They weren't making exactly like, people were like Lou Reed plus this, plus this equals this. Like it was so legible to people that love it. And also so easily placeable in the like pantheon of great New York rock. Okay. The enemy also included a free CD with the song, The Modern Age. So they're really just free press all around. They're instantly famous in the UK. They're 21, 20, I think maybe the younger ones are 19. The journalist, April Long, remembers in Meet Me in the Bathroom that Fab had a phone number pinned to the inside of his jacket in case he got lost. She said it was his mother's, but I think it was the tour manager's. But either way, it's really funny.

• 1:12:31Speaker 05

  Yeah. And like, fits in with the, yes, like the, also just the Fab, like helpless. I'm just kind of.

• 1:12:37Yasi Salek?

  Paddington Bear. Like, please take care of this for every video. Yes. Hello. Hello. I'd like to pick that boy up.

• 1:12:45Yasi Salek?

  And then Doves asked them to open when they got back to America. Great band, Doves.

• 1:12:49Speaker 04

  Very good.

• 1:12:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So they open for Doves. Jeff Travis gives them $15,000 of tour support, which is really awesome. On the condition that they pay the label back when they get signed in America, which is so obviously gonna happen. Because they're already in negotiations with multiple major labels.

• 1:13:05Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:13:07Yasi Salek?

  They end up signing with RCA, which is kind of an interesting choice. I feel like Sean Finacy when I get into the, the business of it. But I think the RCA thing is kind of interesting, cause like.

• 1:13:20Speaker 04

  That would not be the obvious choice.

• 1:13:21Yasi Salek?

  There was, RCA was not cool, right? And they had like, kind of entered the 90s, actually kind of a dead business. But then they like revived their business with Christina Aguilera, The Verve Pipe. They were only freshmen.

• 1:13:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Yasi Salek?

  And my beloved David Matthews Band. Really pumped money into that label.

• 1:13:41Yasi Salek?

  They were being winded and dined by Interscope, Epic, both cooler labels, you know? But RCA was the only one that allowed them to own Is This It?

• 1:13:50Speaker 05

  Very smart. Yeah. It's almost like their parents had been very successful at building businesses of their own.

• 1:13:57Yasi Salek?

  Gentles. Let's take credit away from 22 year old Ryan Gentles.

• 1:14:00Speaker 04

  A guy making 28 grand a year. It was like, what's important is that you get the masters.

• 1:14:04Yasi Salek?

  Negotiate this.

• 1:14:05Speaker 05

  But can we talk about the cool thing?

• 1:14:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:07Speaker 05

  For a second, because.

• 1:14:09Yasi Salek?

  The idea of cool.

• 1:14:10Speaker 05

  Well, the idea of cool and how The Strokes were both like very obviously inherently cool, but also skipped straight from being nobody to, to being very main. Like very major label, but also like mainstream. They were like sellable in an uncool way.

• 1:14:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:32Speaker 05

  Like, you know, like again, cause I was still in high school at this point.

• 1:14:35Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:14:36Speaker 05

  And like at some point, they, they jump the line from.

• 1:14:41Speaker 05

  Doing all like the cool scene stuff to like being like the Beatles in the UK. And being known to everybody. And it's just interesting to me, like, what is manufactured? Like manufactured cool?

• 1:14:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:58Speaker 05

  Which they kind of have, but then it immediately, it just like, everybody is accepts it.

• 1:15:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:05Speaker 05

  And why that is.

• 1:15:06Speaker 04

  This is your point when you brought up, and this is a really good point.

• 1:15:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Speaker 04

  You brought up what was the most popular rock band, or what's the most played rock song? And like, what's the most successful rock band? And it's not The Strokes.

• 1:15:17Speaker 05

  No, yeah.

• 1:15:18Speaker 04

  Like, this kind of like, perception versus reality with them is so fascinating. And like, it's also like, the power of New York and London as media centers of the Western world to be like, if we take the right picture and show the right women at the show and shoot them in the right bar. And the songs are the songs, like the songs stand up to.

• 1:15:41Speaker 05

  And they wear the right thing.

• 1:15:42Yasi Salek?

  Nickelback was not on the cover of that, I mean.

• 1:15:45Speaker 04

  But we're fucking like 800 times bigger.

• 1:15:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think to your point, and this is just like another business thing. It's like, we are still post Nirvana, which means that major labels are still gonna sign rock bands. Because it became a thousand times easier after that, right? Like, you Candlebox came out the gate and signed to a major, you know, like, it was just like, so it's not that unusual, I think.

• 1:16:11Speaker 04

  But they know there is a trajectory of like Modest Mouse and Built to Spill and these other bands that are like, we'll make three albums for indie labels.

• 1:16:19Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:16:20Speaker 04

  And then we'll go sign Warner Brothers or Interscope or whatever and make one, try to make a song that the radio will like.

• 1:16:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:16:27Speaker 04

  And The Strokes were like, we've solved both sides of this equation. Like, we neither tried to make a radio hit, nor did we have to play Mesa, Arizona to 45 people, you know, like, they just.

• 1:16:39Yasi Salek?

  Well, they don't come out of a scene.

• 1:16:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:41Yasi Salek?

  And they didn't tour. They're not, they don't, they didn't do any of the typical things of the bands that we're talking about, you know? They, they sort of were birthed from Poseidon's head. And that's like fully into one car, driving around the Lower East Side at the right moment. And then.

• 1:16:57Speaker 05

  True of all three of the big three early bands of this era. The same is, can be said for Interpol and the same can be said for the YAS.

• 1:17:08Speaker 04

  I would.

• 1:17:08Speaker 05

  Interpol went to Matador, so they didn't, they didn't go to a major, but they also like.

• 1:17:13Speaker 04

  The Strokes were different, though.

• 1:17:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, they were, they're a bit faster, but Interpol, I just, I just did the thing yesterday. They literally formed in college, started playing shows, got signed to Matador.

• 1:17:22Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:17:23Speaker 05

  Within like, yeah, a year and a half.

• 1:17:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:24Speaker 05

  You know, like, and were huge, huge in this world, you know? The YAS, like, started playing within a year, were signed to a major. So it's like, and they weren't in a scene, really. They weren't friends. They didn't play shows together. They didn't tour together.

• 1:17:37Speaker 04

  I think that the YAS and TV on the radio at that time.

• 1:17:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:41Speaker 04

  Reflected more of like a Brooklyn sensibility.

• 1:17:45Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:17:45Speaker 04

  That was happening and that The Strokes and Interpol, to me, reflected more of a Manhattan.

• 1:17:52Yasi Salek?

  Also, weren't YAS and TV on the radio a bit later?

• 1:17:55Speaker 05

  No, no, they weren't.

• 1:17:56Yasi Salek?

  Like, TV on the radio was.

• 1:17:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:58Yasi Salek?

  YAS was not that much later.

• 1:17:59Speaker 04

  No, but TV on the, but the YAS EP came out, the one with the chain.

• 1:18:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:05Speaker 04

  Comes out when?

• 1:18:06Yasi Salek?

  2001.

• 1:18:08Speaker 04

  So yeah, this is contemporaneous.

• 1:18:09Speaker 05

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:18:09Yasi Salek?

  The Strokes were very much first first.

• 1:18:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:13Yasi Salek?

  But like, also like, for example, Interpol.

• 1:18:15Speaker 05

  And biggest.

• 1:18:16Yasi Salek?

  Goes to the UK for their very first shows, three months after This Modern Age comes out in the UK. And because of that, they, there is like a network effect.

• 1:18:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:18:29Yasi Salek?

  That benefits the YAS and Interpol. So maybe that's part of the reason they had such a snappy ascension too. But they all did kind of like boom, boom, boom, you know? TV on the radio, not so much, a little different trajectory. Yeah, I get what you're saying, just like aesthetically more.

• 1:18:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's just also like, there was like, there were shows in Williamsburg at Lofts.

• 1:18:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:49Speaker 04

  You'd go see.

• 1:18:50Yasi Salek?

  The Strokes were not.

• 1:18:50Speaker 04

  Black Dice or something like that. And it didn't seem like YAS were that different than some of the more experimental stuff in Brooklyn.

• 1:18:59Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:18:59Speaker 04

  Until they weren't, until they were like.

• 1:19:02Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:19:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

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• 1:21:07Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so they sign their contract with RCA. Yay. Their contract includes, as a part of the contract, JP Bowersock. He is their teacher, arrangement consultant and production consultant.

• 1:21:18Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:21:18Yasi Salek?

  Then they get offered their dream tour. They open for Guided by Voices. What a big deal.

• 1:21:24Speaker 04

  Some beers to drink.

• 1:21:24Yasi Salek?

  Very beautiful.

• 1:21:25Speaker 05

  Some beers to drink.

• 1:21:26Yasi Salek?

  Probably a very odd thing. I'm sure as the tour went on, a lot of Strokes fans started showing up, you know?

• 1:21:33Speaker 05

  Yes, right.

• 1:21:36Yasi Salek?

  But anyways, they do all that and then they go home to record Is This It? Before Is This It comes out, they're on the cover of The Enemy. The headline says, why New York's finest will change your life forever.

• 1:21:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:21:49Yasi Salek?

  They are the most exciting young rock band on earth. That's not hyperbole, that's fact.

• 1:21:57Yasi Salek?

  And calls Is This It the best album since Definitely Maybe.

• 1:21:59Speaker 05

  I mean, listen, sometimes you just have to get that display in, you know? And it's like, especially on a weekly.

• 1:22:06Yasi Salek?

  Well, I think if you go back.

• 1:22:07Speaker 05

  And you're the Brits.

• 1:22:08Yasi Salek?

  If you go back to many Enemies. I'm sure there's like, there's copies of The Enemy that are like, Ash.

• 1:22:15Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:22:15Yasi Salek?

  The best band of the century.

• 1:22:17Speaker 04

  The Buzzcocks are resurrected.

• 1:22:19Yasi Salek?

  They roll the dice and they don't make it. So you just have to try. This one, they, they made it.

• 1:22:24Speaker 04

  And we talked about this with Blur and stuff, like, if you sell 21,000 copies of a record in England, you're like platinum.

• 1:22:30Yasi Salek?

  You're Adele.

• 1:22:33Speaker 04

  At that time period.

• 1:22:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they went back to England, they do John Peel, they do Top of the Pops, they play Last Night, very cool. Libertines opened for them on all these UK dates. Very, a couple of interesting things. Janelle Lee said, Julian really did not take to Peter. Peter Doery. His first response was, who's this guy? I asked Pete once, what was the first band you ever heard or you ever saw that made you want to be a band? And he said, The Strokes. They're about the same age, so it's kind of interesting. And he's, Jeanette said, I nearly fell off my chair because The Strokes seemed about six weeks old to me. Most people would say something from the 60s, but he said The Strokes. Not the first band that The Strokes.

• 1:23:10Speaker 04

  In first.

• 1:23:11Yasi Salek?

  They were really, they launched a thousand, a thousand ships. You know, funny, I always thought The Hives were one, but actually The Hives predate The Strokes.

• 1:23:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, because they were like garage rock guys.

• 1:23:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:20Speaker 04

  Same with, you know, Stripes, White Stripes.

• 1:23:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but yeah, the White Stripes are a contender, but like The Vines, The Arctic Monkeys famously were very much formed around, you know, this, there's a lot of great stuff. They play in Australia, they're like, all of this before the album comes out. And then it's time to make this album and Gordon says, Julian asked him to go to dinner. And he's like, look, Rough Trade wants us to work with Gil Norton. Gil Norton produced Pixies. He said, but we really like working with you and we really think you captured our sound. But we have this one shot and we need to do what's best for the band. So can you tell me right now that you're a better producer than Gil Norton and we'll work with you? And Gordon was like, am I a better producer than the man who produced Ocean Rain by Echo and The Bunnymen? And Do Little by The Pixies? No, I am not.

• 1:24:06Yasi Salek?

  Good for him, right? He was on it.

• 1:24:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Yasi Salek?

  And Julian was like, man, fuck you. Now we have to work with Gil Norton. However. And they did, they started to work with Gil Norton. And the band did not like Gil Norton. They didn't like the results. They thought it was too clean, too pretentious. There was three songs recorded, they scrapped them. And then Julian was like, we want Gordon back.

• 1:24:26Speaker 05

  When we say the band didn't like them, do, is that just standing in for Julian?

• 1:24:29Yasi Salek?

  Well, I mean, the band did seem to have a lot of input on the recordings. Like, they would come and all of them were kind of very picky about the sounds, so I'll say maybe everyone. They record Back of the Transport Terrarium. It's a basement that is like, no cozy wood, no baffles, it's like brick and concrete.

• 1:24:52Yasi Salek?

  I wonder if that added to the sound of the record, you know?

• 1:24:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:24:56Yasi Salek?

  Gordon says that they brought in a couple of songs to be like, here's like the vibe we want. One was A Salty Salute by Guided by Voices. One was Watching the Wheels by John Lennon for drum ideas. And then a few Bob Marley songs.

• 1:25:11Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:25:11Yasi Salek?

  But Bob Marley of it all is absolutely fascinating to me.

• 1:25:13Speaker 04

  I think that there's some like, dunna, dunna, dunna, dunna.

• 1:25:18Yasi Salek?

  There's also a couple of songs where you're like, this is where you, this is where you gave birth to Vampire Weekend, you know?

• 1:25:23Speaker 04

  Sometimes.

• 1:25:24Yasi Salek?

  I think from the reggae.

• 1:25:25Speaker 04

  Despite how like, objectively like, cool they looked, they talk about music like a college freshman who has seven CDs, you know?

• 1:25:35Yasi Salek?

  One book.

• 1:25:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:37Speaker 04

  I have this.

• 1:25:40Yasi Salek?

  Best of Velvet Underground.

• 1:25:42Speaker 05

  I mean, part of their instant success is how accessible they are, right? And that it like, it does skip through a lot of the like, this is for like, the, you know, the real heads, this is the deep cuts. And it is, it is good enough and precise enough that it speaks to those people, but also immediately is recognizable to idiots in high school and college as like, oh, I think that is what cool sounds like.

• 1:26:06Yasi Salek?

  Man, thank God Nikolai's brother gave him the fucking Velvet Underground best of.

• 1:26:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:09Yasi Salek?

  We would be in a world of straight.

• 1:26:11Speaker 04

  Bob Marley meets the world.

• 1:26:14Yasi Salek?

  Meets Yellow Led better. Okay, Julian said about Gordon, Gordon just had the right ingredients for us. We tried to do some songs to other people and they sounded totally stale. Gordon's the king of understanding abstract information. You'd get further by saying, could you make it sound more yellow than you could by saying, take out the bottom end or something? Here are a couple of things that Julian said.

• 1:26:35Speaker 05

  Okay, but it sounds like Julian is communicating in Gordon's language.

• 1:26:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:26:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, I mean, chicken or the egg here, honestly, but so Julian would say, I need the hi hat to sound like a rich guy who hangs out at the party and doesn't talk to girls, waits for them to come and talk to him. And Gordon would say.

• 1:26:51Speaker 04

  This guy's name is Julian.

• 1:26:53Yasi Salek?

  No, it's very funny because the other, the other, the other example, these are given by Ryan, it's too much like the way a sleeping bum smells on a Friday night when he's had too much booze. I don't want it to smell like that. Gussy it up and shave him. That's the snare drum sound I want. I just find that's very interesting that both analogies are like very classy.

• 1:27:10Speaker 05

  Yes, of course. And once again, the call is coming from inside the house.

• 1:27:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:14Speaker 05

  He's like.

• 1:27:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I want this bassline to sound like trickle down economics.

• 1:27:21Yasi Salek?

  Do you know what a 401K feels like when it's flush? I want that.

• 1:27:27Yasi Salek?

  So at some point Julian pulls Gordon aside and is like, I want to use a drum machine, but I don't want Fab to feel left out, which makes sense. He's such a perfectionist, like he's like, wants, you know, metronomic drums. And then he goes, can we make his drums sound like a drum machine? And Gordon's like, yes, okay. He had worked with tons of drum machines and he like basically.

• 1:27:49Speaker 04

  Does he loop Fab's drums?

• 1:27:50Yasi Salek?

  No, so he, he said that the big difference, one of the biggest differences is that drum machines have no bleed, right? Obviously, because they're not, nothing's being played at the same time. So he moved the hi hat as far as he could from the snare so that Fab had to kind of like, you know, lean as far as he could, mic'd everything really separately and then did all these like kind of fancy tricks like plugins and EQs that are like technical and none of us will understand to just make it sound like that.

• 1:28:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:28:19Yasi Salek?

  And he played to click, obviously. So, so I think that was, that was the thing. Cause the drums, I mean, they do kind of sound drum machiny, you know?

• 1:28:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:28:26Yasi Salek?

  They're very, we did.

• 1:28:28Speaker 04

  And then by the time like Room on Fire comes around, I feel like Fab's drumming has like a completely fleshed out personality.

• 1:28:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I mean, and he was put through the fucking wringer. He was in bootcamp. He had to lean over and he couldn't.

• 1:28:43Speaker 05

  How was his neck and shoulders? How are they doing these days?

• 1:28:46Speaker 04

  I feel like drummers look amazing. Until they have like debilitating spine problems.

• 1:28:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:52Speaker 04

  Like they look like, like the way swimmers always just have like, goddamn dog, you really got your body dialed. And then it's like, fuck, you know, my, I have carpal tunnel and.

• 1:29:01Yasi Salek?

  Don't you think like the really high performing ones are doing something about that though actively?

• 1:29:05Speaker 04

  But like, look at Matt Cameron. He had to be like, I can't tour with the bros anymore.

• 1:29:08Yasi Salek?

  He was hitting too hard. That, he didn't, he didn't come up in the age of biohacking though.

• 1:29:13Speaker 04

  You think if Matt Cameron had Huberman telling him?

• 1:29:16Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely. And also if he had a sensory deprivation tank, if he was doing a, you know.

• 1:29:21Speaker 04

  I don't think it happens. He's hitting the snare like so hard, thousands of times a year.

• 1:29:26Yasi Salek?

  He had some peptides, honey. He's injecting BPC 157 right into, right into his spinal column.

• 1:29:34Yasi Salek?

  I don't even know what that would be an ad for.

• 1:29:36Speaker 04

  That peptide.

• 1:29:37Yasi Salek?

  It's not a company.

• 1:29:39Speaker 04

  Oh, it's just like a compound?

• 1:29:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's like, you know, aspirin. I don't, I don't know.

• 1:29:44Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:29:45Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:29:45Yasi Salek?

  Why would I know?

• 1:29:46Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:29:47Yasi Salek?

  Simply speculating here. Okay, so they continue the distortion, distortion from the EP. I want to talk about that. Do you like that? Do you like Julian's vocals?

• 1:29:59Speaker 04

  I have a different question for her. But the same, when you heard it, were you like, this is really different than everything else I had listened to before? Or did it just sound like a fuzzier version of Tom Petty?

• 1:30:11Speaker 05

  So it's hard for me to remember. I will say that I, in prep for this, was playing this, all these albums in order in the car for my sons. And when my older son, an aspiring drummer in his own right, we're gonna worry about those ergonomics later, heard this, he said, is this a robot? And I mean, he's very interested in robots for a lot of reasons that I don't want to get into.

• 1:30:35Yasi Salek?

  That's not the newest Strokes album that he heard, it's the first one.

• 1:30:37Speaker 05

  No, it's the first one. And it was all the distortion. And so he, I mean, he who listens to a lot of, he actually listens to a lot of rock music, was immediately like, what's going on here? This is different. He does really like Daft Punk, so I think that was like his reference point, but you know, so it did sound different to him. I think to me, at the time, I think that I got both the Strokes and everything that they were referencing, like handed to me all at once, the minute I went to college. Well, really, really by one side, like.

• 1:31:13Yasi Salek?

  See, you didn't, you didn't hear the Strokes until college. So this is like, two albums have come out, three albums.

• 1:31:19Speaker 05

  You know, I think I heard.

• 1:31:20Speaker 04

  I saw it last night on MTV or whatever.

• 1:31:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think so. But like, I graduated from high school in 2002 and like started college. So like, so I was in high school for nine 11. I was in, so I don't know that it all makes it to me until, we're skipping ahead, but like there's some delays and when it's released here in the US and, and how much. So last night, probably I heard, and I don't, and I would have known Tom Petty by then.

• 1:31:50Speaker 04

  But it would have been like the fall of 02 when you're going to college.

• 1:31:53Speaker 05

  And so it's like, so I'm learning about like Velvet Underground and the Strokes at the same time. And so I think I am drawing the line of like, this sounds like this, rather, this sounds like more like the Velvet Underground, rather than, you know, Limp Bizkit.

• 1:32:10Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:32:13Speaker 05

  And certainly different from, like I had Pearl Jam, I had Nirvana, I had all of those things in high school. So yeah, it does sound different. It instantly sounded nostalgic to me.

• 1:32:23Speaker 04

  That's what he was going for when he was like, make it smell like a homeless man.

• 1:32:27Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:32:31Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:32:32Speaker 04

  Make it more unhoused, you know?

• 1:32:34Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, so the quote about you're on a spaceship and you're going into the future and something from the past.

• 1:32:39Speaker 04

  He's fucking genius.

• 1:32:40Speaker 05

  That is, he is describing nostalgia. So, but yeah, I think that I did notice that it was other than.

• 1:32:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:49Speaker 05

  What I had previously been listening to, but again.

• 1:32:52Yasi Salek?

  Did you like it, Chris, when you heard those vocal?

• 1:32:54Speaker 04

  I think I had some, what are you guys talking about? Like.

• 1:32:58Yasi Salek?

  Lyrically?

• 1:32:59Speaker 04

  No, it was like, I think that the sheer passion and like, um, volume of the press around them, I was just like.

• 1:33:09Yasi Salek?

  What are you all on about?

• 1:33:09Speaker 04

  But we have, there are bands, like what do you guys, I wasn't making a distinction.

• 1:33:13Yasi Salek?

  You said, we have the Strokes at home.

• 1:33:15Speaker 04

  Well, I was making a distinction between them and Modest Mouse. Or them and, um, uh, like Built to Spill or something like that, or Neutral Milk Hotel, or whatever was happening in the late 90s and early 2000s. I wasn't, I was like, there have been bands, like, you know, like, well, I like bands, you know, like, I don't understand what makes this band so different and special. But I think that I remember, especially when we were, when I was working at Ken's in the fall of 01, we would every once in a while play the album.

• 1:33:49Speaker 04

  And you would, you would just be like, you would just watch everybody's shoulders kind of relax and you would see everybody in the store, even though people were in that store to buy like snuff movies and experimental jazz, you'd just start hearing, seeing people being like, they just nod along to it. And it was like, there's something so hooky about not just the melodies, but this, the way this sounds where you're like, dude, I could have this on all day.

• 1:34:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. This is gonna sound pejorative and I don't mean it to, but it's like McDonald's. It's like the way when you eat McDonald's, you're like, this is delicious. It's good, you know?

• 1:34:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:26Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if this is real bread.

• 1:34:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:30Yasi Salek?

  Unclear, this is not artisanal sourdough. There's, there's not a lot of like, I don't snag on anything, you know?

• 1:34:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:38Yasi Salek?

  I remember hearing it and, cause I was, this is, I was in college. I'm not sure if I was quite yet working at the record store. Somewhere around then. And I remember being like, it's like a little bloodless because of the vocals to me, you know, like especially you just named all those bands and I was also so into those bands. Like the like thing I loved and I was raised on was like this like naked display of like vocal emotion, you know?

• 1:35:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:35:08Yasi Salek?

  And then hearing this was sort of like purposely like he sounded like he was like 10 rooms away or like underwater.

• 1:35:14Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. Certainly. And he's and he's not at any point gonna share any vulnerability with you, which I think I responded to in a great way because I famously hate it when people sing live and also hate vulnerability.

• 1:35:28Yasi Salek?

  You don't like a live concert.

• 1:35:30Speaker 05

  I just get really, I get really nervous unless, I mean, professionals, yes, but like, especially in movies, I mean, which is kind of you're in a different league, but like when someone is singing live to you, like, it could go really wrong, you know? And for most people it does. Like even Adele, it often goes wrong, you know? So think, I mean, think about all of the live incidents you've seen. She had to cancel some of her residency, the Oscars when she had to start over singing Skyfall, you know?

• 1:35:57Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:35:58Speaker 05

  So this is what I'm saying. I'm just like, oh.

• 1:36:00Yasi Salek?

  You like a carefully controlled environment.

• 1:36:02Speaker 05

  Much like Julian Casablanca. So I, I, I do think I recognized something in the perfectionism and the distance and the like aloof affected quality that spoke to me also again, like what I was 18.

• 1:36:15Speaker 04

  I'm getting the impression that she did not appreciate my My Chemical Romance Helena karaoke that I did for her once.

• 1:36:21Speaker 05

  I thought it was, I thought it was beautiful.

• 1:36:23Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 1:36:24Speaker 05

  Um, though I did, you know,

• 1:36:27Yasi Salek?

  Wish there was video of that.

• 1:36:28Speaker 05

  The Mr. Brightside is, is, was the highlight of that night.

• 1:36:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, that always goes over great.

• 1:36:33Speaker 05

  Well, sure.

• 1:36:33Yasi Salek?

  But it's really Journey, Don't Stop Believin' for a new generation.

• 1:36:36Speaker 05

  But the thing that it, I mean, it truly is. The thing that you were saying about, you know, Modest Mouse and Built to Spell and all of these things, which like we did have, and I, I'm sure that I was.

• 1:36:47Yasi Salek?

  We had Modest Mouse at home.

• 1:36:48Speaker 05

  I'm, yeah, we had Modest Mouse at home. I'm sure that I knew about them. But the other thing that I rec, I think that I immediately recognized in The Strokes, and it's certainly in the like culture around them or like in their, in their aura, which was a very big part of what made them so famous. But also you can hear in the music, like, they were an 18 year old, 18 year old's idea of like, cool and aspirational. And they did sound like a little hungover and or drunk always. And there was like, I don't really, I don't hear that in Modest Mouse, you know, like those guys are like, they're sharing their feelings. And this was.

• 1:37:23Yasi Salek?

  Isaac Brock was drunk all the time.

• 1:37:24Speaker 05

  But like, you could hear in The Strokes music, like, a, a vision of like a New York bar and people making bad decisions.

• 1:37:34Yasi Salek?

  What you're hearing is disaffectation.

• 1:37:35Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:37:36Yasi Salek?

  And that is like classically cool.

• 1:37:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:37:38Yasi Salek?

  That's a classic, cool thing in rock. But like, I was listening to Jimmy, World Bleed America at that time. And I was like, if you're listening, whoa.

• 1:37:49Speaker 05

  I get it.

• 1:37:50Yasi Salek?

  It's very different, you know?

• 1:37:51Speaker 05

  And many people were. I was not.

• 1:37:53Yasi Salek?

  I liked it.

• 1:37:53Speaker 05

  I mean, but I was listening to Christina Aguilera. So, you know.

• 1:37:56Speaker 04

  Well, she's gonna come up.

• 1:37:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:37:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, what a belter.

• 1:37:59Speaker 04

  So I think that their genius in a lot of ways is like, I like you was listening to the, the discography this week. And most of the songs I know, not from a lyric or a song title, but from, oh, this is bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum.

• 1:38:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:15Speaker 04

  Or.

• 1:38:16Yasi Salek?

  The lyrics are honestly blurry.

• 1:38:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:19Speaker 04

  Every once in a while I'll say something and I'm like, are you fucking Arthur Rimbaud?

• 1:38:23Speaker 05

  Sure. Yeah, no, I interact with it the way that I interact with poetry, which is like, I, you know, I know a line here or there that like breaks through. And I'm like, well, this is perfect. And this like, and that is, I couldn't tell you what most of the songs are about.

• 1:38:36Speaker 04

  People, they just don't understand.

• 1:38:37Yasi Salek?

  Nobody.

• 1:38:38Speaker 05

  Yeah. Me, I ain't ever gonna stand, ever gonna understand. Yeah.

• 1:38:42Yasi Salek?

  Let's talk about the cover art.

• 1:38:44Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:38:45Yasi Salek?

  So famously, yes, this is the American cover art that's back here. Um, but the international cover art, arguably much cooler.

• 1:38:56Speaker 04

  Very much so.

• 1:38:56Yasi Salek?

  The black and white.

• 1:38:57Speaker 05

  It's always the way.

• 1:38:59Yasi Salek?

  The latex glove on the ass.

• 1:39:01Speaker 04

  On the butt.

• 1:39:02Yasi Salek?

  Um, it was shot by Colin Lane and that was his girlfriend. Good for him.

• 1:39:06Speaker 04

  And good for her because she married, she was with somebody in the arts.

• 1:39:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Which is really fun. I can tell, I can report to that all any woman dreams of is being with someone in the arts. I thought it was interesting because they actually, they chose to have it be separate.

• 1:39:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:24Yasi Salek?

  But I don't know if they'd have thought the America couldn't handle a smoke. You know, I don't know.

• 1:39:28Speaker 04

  So this was not nine 11?

• 1:39:29Yasi Salek?

  No, it had nothing to do with nine 11.

• 1:39:30Speaker 04

  Nine 11 was just New York City cops got taken off. Okay.

• 1:39:33Yasi Salek?

  So they just, they wanted this to have this like psychedelic photograph of the subatomic particles, um, which was on an album from 1988, a new age album called The Nature of Things by Bruce Beckbar. Um, but also appears on Graffiti Bridge, on the cover of Graffiti Bridge. It's like a portion of the image on Princess Graffiti Bridge. That was interesting. Um, I don't know why they did that. They didn't say, but it was their choice. Um, what happened with New York City cops? Well, Chris, do you want to talk about it?

• 1:40:06Speaker 04

  Well, they had a song called New York City Cops.

• 1:40:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that was meant to be on, and it is on the international version.

• 1:40:11Speaker 04

  And then the role of first responders became quite prevalent.

• 1:40:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:15Speaker 04

  After nine 11.

• 1:40:16Yasi Salek?

  Because the, the album actually comes out in Australia first in July of 2001, then in Japan on August 22nd, United Kingdom, August 27th. So all pre nine 11. And then it was scheduled for September 25th in America. They actually didn't cap the vinyl. So if you have a first pressing vinyl, that one, it does have New York City Cops on it.

• 1:40:39Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:40:40Speaker 05

  How much is that worth now?

• 1:40:41Yasi Salek?

  I have no idea. Yeah. I had to, I would have to the discogs to, to see. Um, but yeah, then they had to take it off because it was not a, a great, very interesting is a completely different version of what happened to Interpol, which Interpol wrote all these songs that were about New York.

• 1:40:56Speaker 04

  And then turns out it's like their perfect New York post nine 11 anthems.

• 1:41:01Yasi Salek?

  It wasn't meant to be, you know, like, and then they had this one that was like shitting on cops and they were like, we, not right now. Not, not cool right now. Although really good song, honestly. Yeah.

• 1:41:10Speaker 04

  Uh, New York City Cops, they ain't too smart?

• 1:41:12Yasi Salek?

  Yes. Not, I'm not. I mean, I'm always down for an, I'm always down for an A cab, but like, yeah, I think just a fun, fun song.

• 1:41:30Yasi Salek?

  Um, all right, let's go through, let's go through some of these songs. Is This It? That's the title, title track. Can't You See I'm Trying? I don't even like it. I just lied to get up to your apartment. But this is also one where I can, you know, I can hear the intro.

• 1:41:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:41:48Yasi Salek?

  I just lied to get up to your apartment.

• 1:41:49Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:50Yasi Salek?

  Horrible stuff.

• 1:41:51Speaker 04

  Kind of a great.

• 1:41:51Yasi Salek?

  But, you know.

• 1:41:52Speaker 04

  Uh, intro to each band member? Cause each like element of this song is kind of so distinctive. Like the bassline even is like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

• 1:42:12Yasi Salek?

  I think Is This It is also kind of a real genius song title and album title.

• 1:42:19Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:42:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:20Speaker 05

  To go along. Certainly communicates.

• 1:42:22Yasi Salek?

  With the sound.

• 1:42:22Speaker 05

  What is, with the sound and the affect and the, and, or the lack of, lack of, yeah, that thereof. The Modern Age is actually my least favorite song on this album.

• 1:42:34Speaker 04

  This is the one about tripping on the hill, right?

• 1:42:36Yasi Salek?

  Oh yeah. Up on a Hill is where we begin.

• 1:42:38Speaker 04

  Very velvet.

• 1:42:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, very velvet. Some was a fucking banger I gotta say. Yes, of course. You just can't, you can't deny it. The unfortunate part is you can't deny it. I believe it's referencing the drug in the Aldo Huxley.

• 1:42:51Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:42:52Yasi Salek?

  The Brave New World?

• 1:42:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:42:55Yasi Salek?

  Don't they?

• 1:42:55Speaker 05

  I think so. Yes. Yeah.

• 1:43:05Yasi Salek?

  Fun fact about me, um, I got detention in the fourth grade because I was reading Brave New World under the table in math class.

• 1:43:12Speaker 04

  Wow. Not like the other girls.

• 1:43:13Yasi Salek?

  Fully not like the other girls. And also, do you not feel they should have celebrated me? Should they not have given me an award?

• 1:43:19Speaker 05

  Yeah. What happened instead?

• 1:43:20Yasi Salek?

  Detention. Wow.

• 1:43:21Speaker 04

  Torrance? They were just like, no?

• 1:43:23Yasi Salek?

  Not Brave New World. I'm nine. They should have been like, we're moving into a gifted and talented.

• 1:43:30Speaker 05

  Sure. Yeah.

• 1:43:31Yasi Salek?

  They were like, no, you will report after school.

• 1:43:33Speaker 05

  What did you have to do in detention? Just keep reading?

• 1:43:35Yasi Salek?

  Sit there. Yeah.

• 1:43:36Speaker 04

  Did you meet a cool wrestler?

• 1:43:38Yasi Salek?

  A wrestler?

• 1:43:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was trying to do the Breakfast Club.

• 1:43:40Yasi Salek?

  Oh, right. Sure. Yeah. I was nine.

• 1:43:44Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Barely Legal. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

• 1:43:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:43:50Speaker 04

  Could be a character piece, you know?

• 1:43:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, maybe he's, he's writing of, of a, yeah, a figure in his life.

• 1:43:58Speaker 04

  It's about a woman who has reached the age of consent.

• 1:44:00Yasi Salek?

  I wanna steal your innocence is a lyric here. I wanna steal your innocence.

• 1:44:05Speaker 05

  He is, he is 21, 22 at this point.

• 1:44:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:09Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean.

• 1:44:10Yasi Salek?

  Why won't you wear your new trench coat?

• 1:44:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:23Yasi Salek?

  The thing about these songs, though, like-

• 1:44:24Speaker 05

  I just want to misbehave, right? Isn't that it?

• 1:44:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. We're laughing, but there is such a heavy- I almost understand why there's like a thousand layers of distance on top, because there's such a palpable melancholy. Like, it will drown you. Like, this man is so sad.

• 1:44:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:44Speaker 04

  Julian.

• 1:44:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, I don't know, whoever wrote the songs. Whoever's emoting and writing the songs, you know?

• 1:44:49Speaker 04

  I don't, so did you-

• 1:44:51Yasi Salek?

  You don't feel that when you-

• 1:44:52Speaker 04

  I do, I mean, yes. Like, I think that-

• 1:44:54Yasi Salek?

  Your heart drops out.

• 1:44:55Speaker 04

  I think his heart, he's heartsick.

• 1:44:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:57Speaker 04

  The first few records especially, definitely. Um, I like the lyrics to the extent that they sound like snatches of bar conversation.

• 1:45:04Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:45:05Speaker 04

  Like, they sound like little, like-

• 1:45:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:07Speaker 04

  overheard to a couple talking in the corner kind of things. And they're all like, very-

• 1:45:12Yasi Salek?

  They're novelistic. There are always like specific details that like, that always ground you back from, you know, whatever sadness he's mumbling or-

• 1:45:22Speaker 04

  And intentionally or not, or like-

• 1:45:23Yasi Salek?

  Or nihilism that he's just trying to shrug through.

• 1:45:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:45:27Yasi Salek?

  But I think it honestly is kind of genius and perfect, because that undergirding of like, abject pain is what makes this not throwaway music. Because if you, if you're just like, hey, I heard the Velvet Underground, you know, packaged up a bunch of distortion on my vocals and perfected drumming to a click track, here you go. And there was none of that underneath, you'd be like, I don't care about this. We wouldn't be talking about it right now.

• 1:45:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the same. He went, he learned all the music theory.

• 1:45:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:00Speaker 05

  You know? And then he lived a life without, uh, much emotional connection to his father.

• 1:46:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:06Speaker 05

  And- And changed school several times.

• 1:46:10Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:46:11Speaker 05

  And, you know, has it all and has nothing. And then is 21. That's the other thing. These songs, these songs are so, they sound like young to me. And they are, they are young the way that I was young.

• 1:46:24Yasi Salek?

  Are written by 21-year-olds. I will die on that hill.

• 1:46:27Speaker 05

  Like, who don't know better. Yeah. Before, before you can like, have perspective, you know? Or-

• 1:46:32Yasi Salek?

  Perspective does nothing for rock music.

• 1:46:34Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:46:34Yasi Salek?

  You need hysteria.

• 1:46:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that's what this, this band also had, like, a present tenseness to it.

• 1:46:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Someday is an absolute fucking banger. In many ways, they'll miss the good old diss, is the opening line.

• 1:46:46Speaker 05

  Someday.

• 1:46:48Yasi Salek?

  Alone we stand, together we fall apart. And the way it's delivered is one of those, like, glimmers of poetic greatness to me.

• 1:47:06Yasi Salek?

  Also, one of the greatest videos of all time, in my opinion. Okay, it's directed by Roman Coppola, I was gonna say.

• 1:47:11Speaker 04

  Is this the TV performance?

• 1:47:12Yasi Salek?

  It's, no, no, no. It's Family Feud, and it's The Strokes vs Guided by Voices.

• 1:47:16Speaker 04

  Oh, right.

• 1:47:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's kind of amazing. And then they're in a bar, and Slash and Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum are there. They really were obviously pretty fucking cool at this point. They could pull the, I mean, Guided by Voices was not busy, I'm assuming, but getting the, the members of Guns N' Roses. Alone, Common, Together is the next song. Um, I don't remember this song.

• 1:47:36Speaker 04

  I think this might be, track seven and track eight here are about as good as a two-song, like, a back-to-back section of any album ever made.

• 1:47:48Yasi Salek?

  I mean, it's crazy.

• 1:47:50Speaker 04

  Last Night and Hard to Explain.

• 1:47:51Yasi Salek?

  Last Night, obviously, I've fatigued of it, like any person, but it's still, it doesn't mean it's not a fucking banger.

• 1:47:58Speaker 04

  It just comes back after 75 plays.

• 1:47:59Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent. Yeah, you just, if you can like, thug it out, you'll get right back into it. You'll be like-

• 1:48:04Speaker 05

  It's like, it's the song that makes me just like, wanna rip my shirt off and like, run around. You know, like the, who's the, who scored the goal? It wasn't me, a ham? Who's the, you know, the woman who takes off the shirt? Brady Chastain, like, one of those moves?

• 1:48:19Yasi Salek?

  Your mind is a man.

• 1:48:20Speaker 05

  Uh, that's, that's how I feel.

• 1:48:22Yasi Salek?

  When you hear Last Night.

• 1:48:22Speaker 05

  Last Night, what it means to me.

• 1:48:24Speaker 04

  It's sports broad time when that happens.

• 1:48:26Yasi Salek?

  Honey, it's sports broad time. When I hear the guitar riff from American Girl. It is true. By Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

• 1:48:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:48:33Speaker 04

  But this is open-heart surgery. This is this guy was like, I am gonna take one of the best guitar riffs ever.

• 1:48:39Yasi Salek?

  But I don't think he did a good job with it, so I'm gonna improve upon it.

• 1:48:41Speaker 04

  Then I'm gonna fucking give it even a better chorus. Yeah. And then I'm gonna put Hard to Explain after it.

• 1:48:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. In 2006, they interviewed Tom Petty about this, and he said that he read an interview where they actually admitted to doing it. And he said, "That made me laugh out loud." I was like, "Okay, good for you. It doesn't bother me."

• 1:48:57Speaker 04

  He also ripped off The Byrds so much, like, it would be impossible to be like-

• 1:49:00Yasi Salek?

  Rock music is one continuum of people ripping other people off.

• 1:49:11Yasi Salek?

  This Last Night, again, I know we, there's not any point in talking about what these songs are about, but this song is like, very much to me like, the anthem of a non-committal man who cannot stay because nobody understands him.

• 1:49:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:49:23Yasi Salek?

  Because simply because nobody understands him.

• 1:49:25Speaker 05

  But like, we need, you know?

• 1:49:27Yasi Salek?

  We need those.

• 1:49:27Speaker 05

  Those play an important role in our twenties. Again, this is just like, you're in your twenties music, right? And we need those men, because we need to learn from them. We also need, you know, we need to aspire to that ourselves, as women, right?

• 1:49:42Yasi Salek?

  Because nobody understands them.

• 1:49:43Speaker 05

  Yeah. And me, I ain't ever gonna understand, you know? Like, you need to, you need to have that mirrored back to you so you can understand the other people in your life. You need to be able to scream that at the top of your lungs.

• 1:49:53Yasi Salek?

  You need to like, project divine onto it, and then mirror it back to yourself.

• 1:50:07Yasi Salek?

  Hard to Explain is absolutely the peak of the record for me. That, this is my favorite song on the record.

• 1:50:12Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, also, I'm looking at the original tracklist here, where it's Last Night, Hard to Explain, into New York City Cops.

• 1:50:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that would've been a three-way.

• 1:50:19Speaker 05

  It's just really, um-

• 1:50:21Yasi Salek?

  Three-way banger. But, I mean, this is where I think, what, this is what I texted you, Chris, that I was like, I say the right thing but act the wrong way.

• 1:50:29Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:38Yasi Salek?

  Really good. I missed the last verse, right?

• 1:50:39Speaker 04

  Can we mention Stroke of Genius here? The freelance Hellraiser mashup of Christina Aguilera with this?

• 1:50:47Yasi Salek?

  I don't know about this.

• 1:50:49Speaker 04

  What?

• 1:51:00Speaker 04

  The streets died when that came out.

• 1:51:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I don't remember it at all.

• 1:51:03Speaker 04

  Because this is also like, right when Pop-ism was starting to get written about a lot. And it was like, this is it. This is like, this, this explains the entire universe.

• 1:51:11Yasi Salek?

  The one that did it for me was In the Club.

• 1:51:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:51:14Yasi Salek?

  With Taylor Swift's Love Story. Not In the Club, it's, uh, it was Usher's Love in the Club.

• 1:51:20Speaker 04

  With Love Story?

• 1:51:21Yasi Salek?

  With Love Story.

• 1:51:22Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:51:23Yasi Salek?

  Pretend to be nice so I can be mean, sorry. I do think this one has all the best lyrics in it. I just, I'm a, I'm a hard to explain for sure.

• 1:51:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:51:29Yasi Salek?

  The thing, this is a great-

• 1:51:30Speaker 05

  It's always been like, it's the critics' choice.

• 1:51:32Yasi Salek?

  It's a great song. And then instead of going into New York City Cops, they're like, hey, this is a song about how we love, okay? It's called When It Started. And this, to me, is the birth of Vampire Weekend. I don't keep saying it, but like, I could, I'm not like, super versed on Vampire Weekend, A Secret About Me, but that's what I think Vampire Weekend sounds like.

• 1:51:50Speaker 04

  Is reggae?

• 1:51:50Yasi Salek?

  Is When It Started by The Strokes.

• 1:51:52Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:51:53Yasi Salek?

  Do they not?

• 1:51:54Speaker 05

  Uh, sure. I'm sure, I'm sure it's in the stew.

• 1:51:57Speaker 04

  I think it's in the stew.

• 1:51:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:51:59Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 1:52:09Speaker 05

  Vampire Weekend, very big in my house.

• 1:52:11Yasi Salek?

  Because it's children's music.

• 1:52:13Speaker 05

  I, I guess it's children-friendly.

• 1:52:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:52:16Yasi Salek?

  I don't know why, I don't really know much about Vampire Weekend.

• 1:52:18Speaker 05

  And I think the, the arrangement involves like, a lot of instrument, you know? Knox likes the earlier stuff with this, the strings and the-

• 1:52:25Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:52:25Speaker 05

  Yeah. You know?

• 1:52:26Yasi Salek?

  You know, do you remember like, the early days of iTunes? Not even iTunes, like, when, when you had song MP3s on your phone?

• 1:52:34Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:52:34Yasi Salek?

  And you would plug it into your car and it would always autoplay the first song?

• 1:52:38Speaker 04

  Was it Oxford comma for yours?

• 1:52:39Yasi Salek?

  No, it was off, it was often A punk. Because of A. But then when I deleted that, it started playing something even worse, which was, it was a song by Uncle that was like, so harrowing.

• 1:52:48Speaker 04

  Uncle, like you and Kaylee.

• 1:52:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:51Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:52:51Speaker 04

  Rabbit in your headlights.

• 1:52:53Yasi Salek?

  I don't remember what song it was, but I started to get like, full PTSD when I heard it. Yeah, great stuff. Great first album. Good job. Good job. I, again, if I'm gonna keep it a hundred with you guys, was not like blown away or like became like the world's greatest Strokes fan when it came out. I heard it and I was like, they're cool. It, for me, it just-

• 1:53:11Speaker 04

  But there are no dilated peoples.

• 1:53:13Yasi Salek?

  I did really love dilated peoples.

• 1:53:16Yasi Salek?

  No, I just like, I, this was, this all kind of mushes with me into a stew of like hipsterdom. Which is what I think Megan Garvey made a really good point, and we mentioned this on the Indie Sleaze draft, but like, that the term Indie Sleaze really just took the place of what we used to call hipster. It's a subculture. It's not really a genre of music, but that's what we called it. Would you not agree? Like-

• 1:53:41Speaker 04

  I don't think I really referred to anything as that until way after the fact.

• 1:53:46Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I, really?

• 1:53:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:47Yasi Salek?

  That was like Vice Magazine, American Apparel, like, all of this was-

• 1:53:51Speaker 05

  But that's like a little bit later.

• 1:53:52Yasi Salek?

  Isn't that like, I think that's like when I get to New York. I get to New York in 2006.

• 1:53:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, mid aughts, 2006. I move immediately to Brooklyn. And it's, and like Hipster runoff is in the mix at that point, which is a blog that, you know, kinda-

• 1:54:07Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:54:08Speaker 05

  Documented it for the others.

• 1:54:10Speaker 04

  Cobra Snake.

• 1:54:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:11Speaker 05

  Uh, sure.

• 1:54:11Yasi Salek?

  Formerly known as the Polaroid scene.

• 1:54:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:54:13Yasi Salek?

  Um, yeah, this was all a little earlier for me. Like, I mean, maybe not this early.

• 1:54:18Speaker 05

  Well, you've always been-

• 1:54:19Yasi Salek?

  2001. Well, I don't, I mean, I just like, maybe my timeline's messed up, but like, I just like, I remember dressing in, we were dressed in this style. I guess maybe, maybe it's a little more like 2004. So maybe you're right.

• 1:54:34Speaker 05

  I guess we probably did have American Apparel in college. And, but I think that more I was shopping there. There was an American Apparel that opened up like next to Lenox Mall, but not in Lenox Mall proper.

• 1:54:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:49Speaker 05

  And, but maybe that was like on trips home after college.

• 1:54:53Yasi Salek?

  No, I think you're right. I mean, I guess, I mean, Vice started in 99, but I definitely didn't, I wasn't looking at it in 1999. You know, like, that was like certainly later. So maybe you're right.

• 1:55:01Speaker 04

  I think there are two different experiences of this moment too, whereas there's one with like relatively mainstream press that would make you think that there is only like these three or four bands.

• 1:55:10Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:55:12Speaker 04

  And that they are the epicenter of everything that's happening culturally in the country.

• 1:55:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:18Speaker 04

  And then there is like, well, demonstrably, like, that's when like mixtape rap starts popping off. And then that's when like, um, you know, Animal Collective and all, all the weirdo stuff starts happening. And like, it's just like, there's so many different things happening and the Strokes themselves, as we'll kind of find out, have a four-year, three, three, like some, something like, like their peak is like so white, hot and fast, and then it's just over.

• 1:55:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. Not for me, but that's okay.

• 1:55:53Speaker 04

  No, but you know what I mean? Like in terms of like the press, you know?

• 1:55:56Yasi Salek?

  Totally. But they, they burned away, I think they burned away the, the field for then everything that came after them. So, yeah, they burned hot so that then all of this stuff came in their wake. No, you're right. I feel like, you know what? I feel like I had a Gucci bucket hat and long hair around this time. You know, I was really riding two waves here, Diesel jeans. Like, it was still very much the early 2000s. It was still very much like Paris Hilton era.

• 1:56:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:56:20Yasi Salek?

  Like, we're watching MTV.

• 1:56:22Speaker 05

  I was, I mean, I was wearing the one spaghetti stripe tank top over the other spaghetti stripe tank top, but I think those still came from Urban Outfitters.

• 1:56:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:30Speaker 05

  I don't think I had segwayed to American Apparel yet. And like, please note that I did.

• 1:56:35Yasi Salek?

  Oh.

• 1:56:36Speaker 05

  Like, I was, I was there.

• 1:56:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:38Speaker 05

  But-

• 1:56:38Yasi Salek?

  No, you're right. This is-

• 1:56:39Speaker 05

  But, but I think it was-

• 1:56:40Yasi Salek?

  Low-cut Diesel jeans, that's, and tucked into Uggs.

• 1:56:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:56:44Yasi Salek?

  With a halter top.

• 1:56:45Speaker 04

  Low-cut Diesel jeans tucked into Uggs with the halter top.

• 1:56:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was wearing- I was wearing J Brand jeans the first time around.

• 1:56:56Yasi Salek?

  A little later, yeah.

• 1:56:57Speaker 05

  The two skinny, um, the tank top over the tank top. And then I had a, like a Marc Jacobs, a Marc, my Marc Jacobs hoodie that I wore everywhere. Yeah.

• 1:57:07Yasi Salek?

  Chris was wearing this outfit.

• 1:57:08Speaker 04

  More or less. I mean, like, people, it was hard. People tried to look like them.

• 1:57:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, but you couldn't.

• 1:57:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:57:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:57:19Speaker 04

  But you, you know, a lot of people with jean jackets.

• 1:57:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:22Speaker 04

  Not that that was exclusive to the Strokes at the time, but like, it was just, yeah, there was like an effort to be New York downtown cool.

• 1:57:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, yeah. Thing is, like, it was, it was, it was such like a natural continuum out of grunge in a way that Interpol wasn't though. Cause I'm like, thinking about it, they still wore like thrift store t-shirts. And like, you know, it was like, wasn't that far away. Like, everyone makes a lot about how they looked so different. They just had a little bit tighter jeans.

• 1:57:53Speaker 04

  They were skinny.

• 1:57:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they were skinny.

• 1:57:54Speaker 04

  And taller.

• 1:57:55Yasi Salek?

  And taller and like, different hair. And the, the hair was more intentional. Yeah.

• 1:58:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

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• 1:59:36Yasi Salek?

  Chris Ryan, were you working in music media at this point yet?

• 1:59:39Speaker 04

  I was writing a little bit freelance, yeah.

• 1:59:41Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:59:42Speaker 04

  And I was working, I was in and around Spin Magazine at this time.

• 1:59:46Yasi Salek?

  And were they losing their minds over the Strokes?

• 1:59:49Speaker 04

  I think it exploded, or they used the full force of like their, their, their power or their, their bully pulpit on the second record, but with the first record, I think they were just like, we got one. You know, finally, there's, there's something that's kind of like given us, given us something to kind of document. And also crucially, locally, so like these guys could go hang out with these people at bars and stuff like that, so.

• 2:00:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I'm so curious who was on the cover of Spin Magazine in October of 2001. Well, it was a young upstart named Kurt Cobain. Okay. And September was Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray.

• 2:00:31Speaker 04

  But you gotta plan those things far out of advance.

• 2:00:33Yasi Salek?

  Sure. Yeah, they couldn't have known. Okay, so after, after Is This It?, they played a West Coast tour. They played Conan O'Brien. They headlined Reading and Leeds. Pretty kind of a big deal because they're headlining these festivals next to like The Foo Fighters and Jane's Addiction.

• 2:00:47Speaker 04

  And they have 10 songs.

• 2:00:48Yasi Salek?

  And they have 10 songs.

• 2:00:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:00:50Yasi Salek?

  And it means they got played the same too, you know?

• 2:00:52Speaker 05

  For 36 minutes of, yeah.

• 2:00:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. To be fair.

• 2:00:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:00:57Speaker 04

  They're awesome live. They are really, really, really good live, especially at this point, as they start to play more and more shows to bigger and bigger audiences. Like, they just really kicked ass.

• 2:01:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I'm not saying they didn't-

• 2:01:08Speaker 04

  I can't remember when I saw them around, but this is like around the first time I saw them. And I was like, whatever reservations I had or like dubiousness I had, I was like, this, this is very impressive. Yeah.

• 2:01:19Speaker 05

  And the girls were very hot.

• 2:01:21Speaker 04

  Well.

• 2:01:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:01:22Yasi Salek?

  Didn't hurt. Didn't hurt. There's a feature around this time in the website, Numu?

• 2:01:32Yasi Salek?

  Sean Fantasy wrote for this website.

• 2:01:33Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:01:34Yasi Salek?

  Numu? I don't, it's N-E-U-M-U. You don't remember it?

• 2:01:37Speaker 04

  I don't.

• 2:01:37Yasi Salek?

  Numu, probably for music.

• 2:01:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:01:40Yasi Salek?

  Um, that's basically about how sick they are of all the Strokes hype.

• 2:01:45Speaker 04

  Oh, but Sean didn't write this.

• 2:01:47Yasi Salek?

  No, no, no. This is September. This is like before Is This It? even really comes fully out.

• 2:01:51Speaker 05

  Listen, you know bloggers got a blog.

• 2:01:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:54Speaker 05

  Just like, uh, everyone in the UK has to fill content every week and write that display, so you buy it off the shelf?

• 2:02:01Yasi Salek?

  It's so, it's, I, I just bring it up because it's very interesting, because you can really hear this guy that I'm sure existed that was like, where was all the press when Guided by Voices released the incredible isolation drills earlier this year? Did I miss those three-page spreads on low, litigre, black box recorder?

• 2:02:23Speaker 05

  It's, that's comforting in a way. It's like the more things change and the worse things get, the more they also stay the same, right? Like, we still have that guy.

• 2:02:31Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:02:31Speaker 05

  You know, we have many of those guys.

• 2:02:33Yasi Salek?

  That guy now is saying, the new Strokes album is really good.

• 2:02:36Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:02:37Yasi Salek?

  You guys are wrong.

• 2:02:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:02:39Yasi Salek?

  And everyone else is like, right.

• 2:02:44Yasi Salek?

  This is also, to tie into NMEU, the kind of the start, and you correct me, Chris, because you were talking about your writing for websites, really, the blog era is starting.

• 2:02:53Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:02:54Yasi Salek?

  The nascent blog era.

• 2:02:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think everybody was trying to create, figure out what their relationship was between the legacy publications and what their web execution was going to be.

• 2:03:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and they solved that.

• 2:03:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I worked at spin.com.

• 2:03:09Yasi Salek?

  Right, which was a separate entity.

• 2:03:10Speaker 04

  For Andy Greenwald at the time.

• 2:03:11Yasi Salek?

  I wrote CR and Andy right here.

• 2:03:13Speaker 04

  Uh, and we were given editorial independence because we were not acknowledged as like a...

• 2:03:20Yasi Salek?

  You were not real boys.

• 2:03:21Speaker 04

  But we would do like our own top 20 list at the end of the year, and I think at one point we did that, and I think we did get a note from the mothership being like, "Why is your top 20 list different than the magazines?"

• 2:03:33Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:03:33Speaker 04

  You know, like, "Why are you, do you have Party of Helicopters and Belle and Sebastian 1 and 2 when it's supposed to be like Beck and Outkast?"

• 2:03:41Yasi Salek?

  They were like, "Go work at NMEU." If this is what you want to do.

• 2:03:44Speaker 04

  They were like, "Go work in retail." And, yeah, there was pushback in like, I think, you know, like The Voice and these places, like, I think there, there was a degree of cynicism about these guys even from inception, but, but yeah, like, for the most part, we didn't know how good we had it.

• 2:04:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, and there were also like, fan blogs starting around this time that I think did a lot to spread the word.

• 2:04:07Speaker 04

  Live journals and stuff.

• 2:04:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, there was like, a Strokes fan blog called Modern Age, run by a woman named Lori Young, that apparently like, a lot of people read, and it would kind of, she also wrote, she wrote, I think, pretty much exclusively about the Strokes and the White Stripes. It's like, that was kind of a thing happening back then. The Strokes were almost on the cover of Rolling Stone in September of this year, and then the last, I don't know if it was last minute, but they did go, weird choice with the vines. They put their money on the vines.

• 2:04:33Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:04:33Yasi Salek?

  And the title said, "Rock is Back."

• 2:04:35Speaker 04

  Well, it was.

• 2:04:36Yasi Salek?

  And it was. Just elsewhere. Just elsewhere. This is also the month that MTV did that 24-hour Courtney Love broadcast, you remember this?

• 2:04:43Speaker 04

  I recall.

• 2:04:44Yasi Salek?

  24 Hours of Love?

• 2:04:44Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:04:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, kind of amazing. It's similar to what we always talk about that I wanted to do with Guided by Voices.

• 2:04:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:04:50Yasi Salek?

  Which is I do a 24-hour telethon of Guided by Voices. During this time, Ryan Adams came to hang out.

• 2:04:57Speaker 04

  Oh, good.

• 2:04:57Yasi Salek?

  With Courtney Love, and he brought with him Albert and Fab.

• 2:05:00Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:05:01Yasi Salek?

  And, because Ryan Gentles was also managing Ryan Adams at this time, and actually, I believe the Strokes made him drop Ryan Adams.

• 2:05:10Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:05:11Yasi Salek?

  When they were making their album.

• 2:05:12Speaker 04

  This is documented in Meet Me in the Bathroom.

• 2:05:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:14Speaker 04

  Ryan Adams.

• 2:05:16Yasi Salek?

  Lot of, lot of Ryan Adams.

• 2:05:17Speaker 04

  Had moved to New York after Whiskey Town and had, was around.

• 2:05:22Yasi Salek?

  A polarizing figure.

• 2:05:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, was dating Parker Posey.

• 2:05:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:25Speaker 04

  And would come into the Kims a lot.

• 2:05:28Yasi Salek?

  To buy that snuff horn?

• 2:05:29Speaker 04

  No, just to be like, like, Parker would be with him, and like, they would just like wander around the store for a while. There was one time where like, I think I had a conversation with him, and then the next day he came in and I referenced the conversation, and he was like, "I don't know who you are."

• 2:05:42Yasi Salek?

  Didn't he ask you to be in a band with him?

• 2:05:44Speaker 04

  We said that we were starting a band, and he was like, "I'll be in your band," and then the next day was like, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

• 2:05:50Yasi Salek?

  Sure, yeah.

• 2:05:52Speaker 04

  But yeah.

• 2:05:53Yasi Salek?

  Drugs are helps, drugs. You can, I think, watch clips of this, Fab and Albert just sleep in a bed.

• 2:05:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:06:00Yasi Salek?

  While Ryan Adams and Courtney like, play guitar.

• 2:06:02Speaker 04

  The description of, of this night was quite vivid.

• 2:06:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:05Speaker 04

  In Meet Me in the Bathroom.

• 2:06:06Yasi Salek?

  In the Bathroom, yeah. According to Meet Me in the Bathroom, they also at this time turned down $600,000 for a song placement at a Heineken ad. Lot of stories like this right around this time.

• 2:06:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:06:18Yasi Salek?

  Because no one knew that the bottom was about to fall out.

• 2:06:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:06:23Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:06:23Speaker 04

  I don't think these guys have ever seemed to be like, scratching and clawing for a living after this.

• 2:06:27Yasi Salek?

  No, but they absolutely sold a song for less money to a commercial later on.

• 2:06:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:06:31Yasi Salek?

  So, you know.

• 2:06:32Speaker 04

  But I like the idea that they're still trying to hang on to some.

• 2:06:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, some, some.

• 2:06:36Speaker 04

  Idea of like.

• 2:06:37Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:06:37Speaker 04

  It's not Heineken music, it's, it's our music.

• 2:06:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's our music.

• 2:06:43Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:06:43Yasi Salek?

  And certainly not our music.

• 2:06:45Speaker 04

  Fair's fair, you know?

• 2:06:46Yasi Salek?

  Fair's fair. Thursday famously turned down $1 million for an American Express ad.

• 2:06:50Speaker 04

  Did they? For what song?

• 2:06:52Yasi Salek?

  I don't even know. No, actually, they were supposed to be in it themselves.

• 2:06:55Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 2:06:55Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Maybe also a song.

• 2:06:57Speaker 04

  Sometimes when we're like, on the road, we need...

• 2:06:59Yasi Salek?

  We use, we swipe our American Express. I have no idea. I'm sure, given the chance to do it over.

• 2:07:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:07:05Yasi Salek?

  They might have made a difference. It's just Martin Scorsese who does that.

• 2:07:08Speaker 04

  He's the only person with an American Express card.

• 2:07:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:12Yasi Salek?

  I thought that was a weird thing, so I was like, "You think Thursday fans have like, good credit? Like, what are we, who are we targeting here?"

• 2:07:19Yasi Salek?

  In October, they play a legendary Halloween show at Hammerstein Ballroom. Sean said he went to one of these shows.

• 2:07:25Speaker 04

  He went to the White Stripes.

• 2:07:27Yasi Salek?

  The Radio City. Yeah. Where, is it Julian and a cast? Julian had broken his leg.

• 2:07:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:07:33Yasi Salek?

  And, yeah, I've watched all the YouTube videos. I don't get FOMO about many of these things, but.

• 2:07:38Speaker 04

  But that's one.

• 2:07:39Yasi Salek?

  That's one, yeah.

• 2:07:40Speaker 04

  Did you like the White Stripes?

• 2:07:43Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I was, I was Strokes-focused, you know, because of the boy band, the, the five-person.

• 2:07:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:07:48Yasi Salek?

  Quality of it.

• 2:07:49Speaker 04

  And not that guy with his sister-wife.

• 2:07:51Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. I was weirdly more into the White Stripes, I think.

• 2:07:54Speaker 04

  That makes sense, you know? Like, there's something for everybody. Yeah.

• 2:07:58Yasi Salek?

  Not now, maybe, but at the time, I, definitely whenever I was working at the record store, Morning Glory Music, may it rest in peace, and the guy at my record store, who also looked like Rivers Cuomo, because everywhere you went, there was at least one guy that looked like Rivers Cuomo. Where I went to college, there were men against them. Smelled like onions, and he.

• 2:08:15Speaker 04

  Poor guy.

• 2:08:16Yasi Salek?

  That was not a value judgment, it's simply fact.

• 2:08:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:08:19Yasi Salek?

  He smelled like onions. He, he gave me White Stripes and the Strokes, and I just remember find, kind of like, being more interested in White Stripes, and just probably was my like, latent punk bias or whatever, where I was like, "This sounds grittier," or something, you know? The boys in college that I hung out with that, like, you know, played at parties, they just did Strokes songs. So, that was their, you know, I was like, so that was.

• 2:08:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:08:47Yasi Salek?

  What was in front of me. So, I was like, "Oh, of course that."

• 2:08:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:08:50Yasi Salek?

  I just, I have, I have such a weird relation, because it's like, man, life comes at you fast. Like, we do this show for five years, and now we're doing music that like, I lived through.

• 2:09:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:09:00Yasi Salek?

  Which is so weird, and I think it's part of the reason I don't have the same sort of like, fantasy mythol, mythological relationship with these bands, because I was like, I kind of lived, I kind of lived it, you know? Yeah, you know, the architecture of it. Like, again, I moved to New York after Chris, but like, they were just at Cabin. They were famous, they were, they were there.

• 2:09:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure. It is New York, you know what I mean? So, it's like, you're like, the guy, like, yes, like, they were at bars, like, you would just see them around. You would see them with Ryan a lot.

• 2:09:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:34Speaker 04

  Hanging out, Niagara.

• 2:09:36Yasi Salek?

  Niagara. Wow.

• 2:09:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:09:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:09:40Yasi Salek?

  Okay, in 2002, January of that year, the Strokes play Saturday Night Live, hosted by Jack Black. They played Last Night and Hard to Explain. Albert wore a yay as pin, so it was very nice, supporting, as well.

• 2:09:52Speaker 04

  Local music.

• 2:09:52Yasi Salek?

  Mm-hmm, yeah, local music. According to the people at Meet Me in the Bathroom, this is when everyone started to get real jealous.

• 2:10:01Speaker 04

  Of whoms?

• 2:10:02Yasi Salek?

  Of the Strokes.

• 2:10:02Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 2:10:03Yasi Salek?

  Paul Banks said, "People in other bands had this real need to say, 'Someone else writes their songs, or they're just rich kids.'" You had to find some way to not accept the fact that there's actually five dudes out there that are cool as fuck, that are writing insanely awesome music, and they did it by themselves. "They are cooler and better than you are, and they will steal your girlfriend." That was just a really tough pill for a lot of people to swallow, including me.

• 2:10:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:10:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, fair enough.

• 2:10:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:10:23Yasi Salek?

  You know? That, I mean, and that is what they're projecting, like, that is what is, that's on the label, that's...

• 2:10:28Speaker 04

  I think there was also like, at Saturday Night Live, and afterwards, there was probably a feeling of like, "Okay, well, like, how big can this get?" Right? Because like, it was New York big.

• 2:10:37Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:10:38Speaker 04

  Then it was music industry big, then it was like, New York and London big.

• 2:10:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:42Speaker 04

  And then it was like, "But you're on Saturday Night Live, and last night's on TV all the time, and like, every actress seems to want to date one of you guys," and...

• 2:10:53Yasi Salek?

  Who else played Saturday Night Live in?

• 2:10:57Speaker 04

  In general?

• 2:10:57Yasi Salek?

  In 2002.

• 2:10:58Speaker 04

  Mark McGrath actually just paid a residency on Saturday Night Live.

• 2:11:03Yasi Salek?

  Just every, actually, every other, every 51 other weeks of 2002, it was, "I Just Want to Fly" by Sugar Ray.

• 2:11:13Yasi Salek?

  I'll tell you, okay.

• 2:11:14Speaker 04

  Because I was definitely blocked.

• 2:11:16Yasi Salek?

  Bubba Sparks.

• 2:11:16Speaker 04

  Okay, sure.

• 2:11:17Yasi Salek?

  Mick Jagger, no doubt.

• 2:11:19Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:11:19Yasi Salek?

  Britney Spears, Outkast, India RE.

• 2:11:23Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:11:23Yasi Salek?

  Kylie Minogue, James E. World, Andrew WK, POD, Eminem, Moby.

• 2:11:32Speaker 04

  So, still sort of setting the mainstream.

• 2:11:35Yasi Salek?

  POD.

• 2:11:36Speaker 04

  Pop culture.

• 2:11:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Later, October of 2002, the White Stripes play.

• 2:11:40Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:11:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:42Speaker 04

  But so, the Strokes go first.

• 2:11:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it wasn't like, I think it was a huge deal. Right? Would you, I mean, because there, there are like, older eras of Saturday Night Live when like, Flipper played or whatever, or like, The Replacements played, and it was like, maybe not, The Replacements were kind of a big deal to play, but it wasn't like, you would have more esoteric bookings, but by this time, it wasn't esoteric.

• 2:12:03Speaker 04

  There was also like, emerging of like, because that was probably when I would have first heard about like, Saturday Night Live after-parties, and Saturday Night Live parties going until like, 4:00, 5:00 in the morning, or whatever, at least. And the idea of like, the Strokes culture and like, celebrity culture starting to really merge.

• 2:12:21Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:12:22Speaker 04

  And like, "Oh, there's like, these other bars that you can't even fucking go to."

• 2:12:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Enter Drew Barrymore.

• 2:12:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, enter Drew Barrymore.

• 2:12:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, they did become good friends with Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz. And David Cross.

• 2:12:33Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:12:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, during this time, thanks to those after-parties. And Jimmy Fallon had like, a fake joke band with Mark Ronson in it, that opened for the Strokes a couple times.

• 2:12:43Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:12:44Yasi Salek?

  Insane times.

• 2:12:45Speaker 04

  Well, doesn't the, we're skipping ahead, but doesn't like, the Julian Casablanca's Christmas song start as an SNL skit with Jimmy Fallon?

• 2:12:54Yasi Salek?

  I think so, yeah.

• 2:12:55Speaker 04

  "Wish It Was Christmas Today." "Wish it was Christmas today," you know? I drafted it on this podcast.

• 2:13:02Yasi Salek?

  That's right.

• 2:13:02Speaker 04

  It's fine, you don't have to like it or remember it, but I do.

• 2:13:06Yasi Salek?

  Well, don't say I don't like it, I just don't remember.

• 2:13:10Yasi Salek?

  Um, okay. This is a slight MTV blind spot for me because I was in college.

• 2:13:17Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:13:17Yasi Salek?

  I'm not home.

• 2:13:18Speaker 04

  You're outside.

• 2:13:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So like, once in a while, you're hungover and watching Dismissed or whatever, but like, I don't remember much of what was on video wise here and there, you know?

• 2:13:29Speaker 05

  But I was there.

• 2:13:30Yasi Salek?

  You were there.

• 2:13:31Speaker 05

  I was there because I'm still in high school in January 2002. So I, I, you're probably right that I first encountered them by last night or someday video. But the, you know, T R L was just fully Britney, Justin, teeny bopped out.

• 2:13:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:13:49Speaker 05

  That way. And like, I, I don't think that like, T R L V M A's land and Strokes land interacted very much, or they didn't in my memory. And what I was subscribing to.

• 2:14:01Yasi Salek?

  Not until I feel like.

• 2:14:01Speaker 05

  On the one hand.

• 2:14:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Has played the V M As.

• 2:14:04Speaker 05

  And then which, and when was that?

• 2:14:06Yasi Salek?

  That was 2000, right after Fever.

• 2:14:09Speaker 04

  I don't think T R, but like to Amanda's point, I don't think T R L was ever like.

• 2:14:13Yasi Salek?

  No, no, no.

• 2:14:13Speaker 04

  Now Carson Daly is dressed like Joey Ramone. It was like.

• 2:14:17Speaker 05

  So this is, it seems like 2004, according to the, to the A I result from the Google. So I guess we should fact check it. Yes.

• 2:14:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, 2004. So that was much later.

• 2:14:26Speaker 05

  That's maps.

• 2:14:27Yasi Salek?

  I also, again, because I wasn't watching, but I still think the Strokes, while they were in rotation on T V, I don't think they were in like heavy prime time rotation where they, was it a little more like, MTV two alt rock block?

• 2:14:38Speaker 04

  I think they last night had definitely, and, and perhaps hard to explain had crossed over.

• 2:14:42Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:14:42Speaker 04

  Um, to some extent, now whether or not they were.

• 2:14:44Speaker 05

  I don't think they were a T R L. Like, I don't think that the people were standing outside with the signs being like, Carson Daly, please.

• 2:14:52Yasi Salek?

  Play last night.

• 2:14:52Speaker 04

  It was more weird events like Courtney.

• 2:14:56Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:14:56Speaker 04

  When Human Giant took over MTV for like a night or something like that.

• 2:15:00Yasi Salek?

  Well, they did that two dollar bill show.

• 2:15:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:15:02Yasi Salek?

  Which is the kind of the next thing. Do you remember this? I didn't, I didn't experience this in real time. It was, they did a series of these throughout the 2000s. This was the first one. It was like a real show that cost $2 and they filmed it. But that was kind of a big deal because it was like a feature on MTV and they were the first featured band.

• 2:15:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:15:20Yasi Salek?

  And Julian said, people were saying that was the beginning of the end. I'd never really thought about it. That show is probably symbolic in a lot of ways. People were kind of becoming superstars and like not remembering the goal of being a great band.

• 2:15:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. I will also say when you read like, for instance, like the, just the Tik Tok in their Wikipedia.

• 2:15:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:37Speaker 04

  It goes from these like iconic Hammerstein Ballroom, Radio City shows and like these tours to like, then they played this festival, this festival, this festival, this festival, this. And they just kind of get sucked up into like the generic music industry, even though they're still pretty cool. I think that they, they buy themselves some time, like up through First Impressions probably, or up at least through Room on Fire, but there, it's quickly, they just become like, they're just like a rock band. They're in the music industry.

• 2:16:06Speaker 05

  Right. And they're also drunk all the time.

• 2:16:08Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:16:09Yasi Salek?

  Sure. I mean, if I was 22 and I was a.

• 2:16:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:16:11Yasi Salek?

  I was 22 and I wasn't in a famous rock band. I was also drunk all the time. And that was fun. Um, The Strokes played Coachella this year. That is the first time I saw them play live. Did this Coachella and it was good.

• 2:16:22Speaker 05

  Okay. That's great.

• 2:16:24Yasi Salek?

  Same.

• 2:16:24Speaker 05

  2002.

• 2:16:25Yasi Salek?

  2002. Oasis also played that year. Jim Merlis gets a call. This is pertinent to your interests. Amanda from Drew Barrymore's people saying she and Cameron Diaz would like to go backstage at Coachella. And could he help do that via The Strokes?

• 2:16:41Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 2:16:42Yasi Salek?

  And he's like, yeah. And that is where they met. And according to Jim Merlis, by the time Oasis took the stage, Drew Barrymore and Fabrizio were making out.

• 2:16:54Speaker 05

  Listen, goal oriented.

• 2:16:55Speaker 04

  I wonder if she went being like, I'm a fab girl. Or if she was just like, I just want to go see Coachella. And then this like, like this star crossed lovers thing happened.

• 2:17:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I wonder if she, I'm famously always kind of been like, went on a rider, like up in the music spaces. You know, she did Eric Erlinson from Hole and, you know, she likes music and a good time.

• 2:17:16Speaker 05

  Also, you know, she's like a sunflower sunny girl and he's just a puppy dog. So it makes sense.

• 2:17:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:17:24Yasi Salek?

  I see what you're saying. Archetypically.

• 2:17:28Yasi Salek?

  Also, I, the thing that charmed me the most about this story is that like celebrities used to have to call somebody.

• 2:17:34Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:17:34Yasi Salek?

  And it's now it's just.

• 2:17:35Speaker 04

  Well, they were going down.

• 2:17:36Yasi Salek?

  The only thing.

• 2:17:37Speaker 04

  They weren't like, get me into the, to the governor's ball.

• 2:17:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:40Speaker 04

  Party. They were like, I, I want to get, you know, I want to go to this show.

• 2:17:44Yasi Salek?

  I went backstage at Coachella. It was absolute fucking hell on earth. It was just like influencer after influencer and just like the worst things I've ever seen. I was like, never coming back here again.

• 2:17:52Speaker 05

  Never been to Coachella.

• 2:17:53Yasi Salek?

  The best time ever.

• 2:17:54Speaker 04

  Never been to Coachella.

• 2:17:55Yasi Salek?

  Funnest place on earth was backstage at Coachella. It was just bands and beers and drugs and laughing.

• 2:18:02Speaker 04

  And laughing.

• 2:18:04Yasi Salek?

  That's right.

• 2:18:04Speaker 04

  And comedy.

• 2:18:05Yasi Salek?

  And yeah, well, that was with the drugs. You were going to do some laughing. Okay. So then they're just touring. They're touring nonstop. They're partying. They're opening for the Rolling Stones. Like, it's like off to the races. Um, at some point during a European run, Julian punches a guy named John Voightman, uh, in the head. This was, he was the head of RCA's International.

• 2:18:27Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 2:18:27Yasi Salek?

  Oh, okay. Division.

• 2:18:28Speaker 05

  All right.

• 2:18:29Yasi Salek?

  At a French TV show because he did not want to perform in front of a live audience. And Jim Merlis was like, yeah, that did happen. It was bad.

• 2:18:35Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:18:36Yasi Salek?

  They're tired, I think. Then in August is Sean's happy, happy show, The Strokes and White Stripes Play Radio City Music Hall. Um, Dean Wareham.

• 2:18:45Speaker 04

  August 02.

• 2:18:46Yasi Salek?

  August 02.

• 2:18:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:18:47Yasi Salek?

  Okay. The Strokes and White Stripes played this show and Dean Wareham said, I remember doing interviews around this time. Dean Wareham of Galaxy 500. Would have been.

• 2:18:55Speaker 04

  Luna.

• 2:18:56Yasi Salek?

  Luna by this point, Luna.

• 2:18:57Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 2:18:58Yasi Salek?

  Um, I remember doing interviews around this time and everyone was just like, is it true that the White Stripes have saved rock and roll? And New York is the place again? And I was like, I guess so. Uh, I thought it was cute. They did these shows together, The White Stripes and The Strokes. Two in New York and two in Detroit and kind of just split everything 50 50 because by that point they were like close friends. And they were sort of like, maybe a little neck and neck, right? In popularity.

• 2:19:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. When did House of Jealous Lovers come out?

• 2:19:26Yasi Salek?

  2000. Also two.

• 2:19:30Speaker 04

  Okay. Cause this is also like one of my first paid writing gigs.

• 2:19:36Speaker 04

  Was doing DFA records for Time Out.

• 2:19:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, March of 2002.

• 2:19:41Speaker 04

  And I wound up like going to the studio. So this is also like, even in its infancy, like the DFA thing is like coming up and kind of almost replacing The Strokes version of cool.

• 2:19:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:54Speaker 05

  Right. Yeah.

• 2:19:54Yasi Salek?

  That's, that's a really good point to mention, particularly because it actually predates The Strokes.

• 2:20:01Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 2:20:02Yasi Salek?

  Because that Fisher Spooner single, whose name I cannot remember right now. The first one came out in 2000.

• 2:20:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:08Yasi Salek?

  So like, and like the electro clash of it all was already happening.

• 2:20:11Speaker 04

  Gold's Worthy's working on Exterminator.

• 2:20:14Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:20:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:15Yasi Salek?

  And the, these parties, these like kind, I guess they started out as gay parties, but became kind of everyone parties in these like, Larry T was, Larry T coined the term electro clash, throwing these parties Berliniumsberg in Williamsburg. And everyone was going, and that was a kind of concurrently happening. But yeah, House of Jealous Lovers kind of was like the start of, to me, I remember this all being one thing.

• 2:20:38Speaker 05

  True.

• 2:20:38Yasi Salek?

  But maybe it's because by the time I was active in it, it was kind of all, all one thing, you know?

• 2:20:44Speaker 05

  And also you were there for.

• 2:20:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we would go to like, well, I was on this coast, but like we'd go to CineSpace and block party would play, but they would be playing tons of like electro clash and justice and whatever. You know, it was all like when everyone's wearing American apparel and it was just like insane. But it was one melange of something. But I guess that doesn't quite happen yet.

• 2:21:03Speaker 05

  Yeah. I was working at Houston's in Atlanta at this time.

• 2:21:06Yasi Salek?

  Hell yeah.

• 2:21:06Speaker 04

  As a, as a maitre d?

• 2:21:08Speaker 05

  As a hostess.

• 2:21:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:21:10Yasi Salek?

  Gorgeous.

• 2:21:10Speaker 04

  I didn't want to gender your.

• 2:21:11Speaker 05

  Thank you so much. Yeah. But at Houston's they do. So it was, I was the hostess.

• 2:21:15Yasi Salek?

  They're an old fashioned establishment.

• 2:21:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:21:18Yasi Salek?

  Um, The White Stripes became quite huge right around this time.

• 2:21:25Speaker 04

  Yes. Well.

• 2:21:26Yasi Salek?

  Because of Fell in Love with a Girl.

• 2:21:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:21:29Yasi Salek?

  And the video, the Lego video by Michel Gondry, White Blood Cells came out. The Strokes got asked to do the V M As.

• 2:21:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:21:37Yasi Salek?

  To our point earlier. So they were going to be part of that world.

• 2:21:40Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:21:41Yasi Salek?

  However, it was going to be a medley with The Vines and the Hives.

• 2:21:45Speaker 05

  And they.

• 2:21:46Yasi Salek?

  They said no way. So it did end up being The Vines and the Hives, doing like a battle of the.

• 2:21:49Speaker 04

  They were like the house band.

• 2:21:50Speaker 05

  And I, the V M A audience do not remember that.

• 2:21:54Yasi Salek?

  You are like, who are these Swedish men?

• 2:21:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:21:56Yasi Salek?

  With black and white outfits.

• 2:21:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:21:58Yasi Salek?

  Get Free and Man Offender are both fucking stone cold bangers. Like, they are absolute tracts. Am I wrong? You're fucking.

• 2:22:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm just, I'm just saying.

• 2:22:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:22:09Yasi Salek?

  This is, hey, you want me to remember?

• 2:22:11Speaker 05

  There's a reason The Strokes said no.

• 2:22:12Yasi Salek?

  Christmas song that everybody made with Jimmy Fallon. You don't remember Get Free by The Vines.

• 2:22:20Speaker 04

  I have a theory about the White Stripes thing versus the Strokes thing.

• 2:22:22Yasi Salek?

  Please.

• 2:22:23Speaker 04

  But it it kind of ties into Room on Fire.

• 2:22:25Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Um, I have theories about that too, which is that Jack White was absolutely born to be the ambassador of rock and roll music and showing up at every Rock Hall of Fame and thing and Julian Casablanca is absolutely not cut from that cloth.

• 2:22:39Speaker 04

  There's that.

• 2:22:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:41Speaker 04

  White Stripes had several albums to get ready for what was about to happen to them and thought that they were gonna basically play like 50 people in Detroit for their lives. But like, they had put out records on sympathy for the record industry before.

• 2:22:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:54Speaker 04

  Was it Distill that got big or was it the one before that that started to get?

• 2:22:57Yasi Salek?

  I think it was just still.

• 2:23:00Speaker 04

  In any case, they also were like, the next record's not gonna sound like the previous record.

• 2:23:04Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:23:05Speaker 04

  And music critics really like that. They really like being able to tell like the story of like, and then this is where they're going.

• 2:23:11Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:23:11Speaker 04

  The Strokes did not give us that.

• 2:23:13Yasi Salek?

  No, we're gonna get right into that. Yeah. But I also think just constitutionally, they are absolutely different people. Like,

• 2:23:23Yasi Salek?

  you get the sense that Jack White was like, had a 17 year plan. And sort of set out to accomplish. Like, there was not a doubt in this man's mind that this is like, we're gonna go ahead and do this. And and he was really pulling from like one ancient text, you know, and Julian Casablanca sounds like while he was so, he's always more like, couldn't see the forest for the trees, you know, like, he's in there like, I need to make the hi hat perfect or whatever, and not really thinking about like, our place in the pantheon of rock and roll. Okay, they start making said next album in January 2003. They were asked, are you not afraid of backlash after all the hype? And Julian said, I hope we make an album so good, everyone has to love it. No offense

• 2:24:08Yasi Salek?

  to you, my friend, but if people see the British press as this empire that builds and crushes bands, they're wrong. They could tell us we're the worst band in the world in a couple of months and it won't faze me. We're having a good time.

• 2:24:18Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:24:19Yasi Salek?

  I think it did faze him, but.

• 2:24:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was like, I don't agree. I think he.

• 2:24:24Yasi Salek?

  I think it was.

• 2:24:24Speaker 05

  Cares very deeply. I think he was pretty fazed.

• 2:24:26Yasi Salek?

  Uh, yeah.

• 2:24:27Speaker 05

  Julian reads his own comments.

• 2:24:28Yasi Salek?

  Faze maxing.

• 2:24:31Speaker 04

  He got, he got fazed.

• 2:24:33Yasi Salek?

  He was heavily fazed by the British media.

• 2:24:38Yasi Salek?

  We're going straight to hell.

• 2:24:41Yasi Salek?

  Room on Fire comes out in October of 2003. I think we haven't really mentioned, you know what else comes out in 2003? And you kind of alluded to this. Get rich or die trying by 50 Cent, which in addition to what I just mentioned, that every party you went to had, you know, rock music of the ilk of the Strokes and the White Stripes and some shit to throw your ass to that was a lecture class. It also absolutely had a 50 cent song at least one time, if not 10 times.

• 2:25:08Speaker 05

  I went to a party in college that at some point the drunk hockey players just put in the club on repeat and it was like a full hour.

• 2:25:15Speaker 04

  There's also like a nice, like, you know how you can be like, oh, that's a pretty tall building. And then you see the Empire State Building next to it. You're like, no, it's not. It's like 50 dwarfed everything so heavily. And as did Eminem and as did a lot of stuff at the time where you were just like, oh, so that's popular.

• 2:25:35Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:25:36Speaker 04

  And we can, we can talk like, once, I don't think, the Strokes didn't have a second chapter of a story to tell after we're really hot guys from New York who've known each other for a long time and are cool.

• 2:25:50Yasi Salek?

  And we smoke.

• 2:25:50Speaker 04

  And we smoke and drink and have really hot girlfriends.

• 2:25:55Speaker 04

  I think that you, you have to give a little bit of something to the music press for them to be like, cool, and chapter two for this is this, you know? You're gonna make OK Computer now or something. And they didn't. But I will say that the songs on, am I allowed to talk about Room on Fire now?

• 2:26:12Yasi Salek?

  You're allowed to do whatever you want.

• 2:26:14Speaker 04

  The songs on Room on Fire are a herd of goats because they are the greatest of all time. Like this.

• 2:26:19Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 2:26:21Speaker 04

  I think way superior to the first record.

• 2:26:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:23Speaker 05

  That's.

• 2:26:24Yasi Salek?

  This has been your take for as long as I've known you.

• 2:26:26Speaker 04

  And you know who shares this opinion and who was very happy to hear it? Albert Hammer Jr.

• 2:26:31Yasi Salek?

  Albert Hammond Jr.

• 2:26:33Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:26:33Speaker 04

  He came on whatever version of the watch was back in the day for promoting one of his solo records. I was like, just so you know, dog.

• 2:26:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:42Speaker 04

  ROF over.

• 2:26:44Yasi Salek?

  Is this it?

• 2:26:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:45Yasi Salek?

  And he said.

• 2:26:46Speaker 04

  Damn, man, thanks.

• 2:26:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:48Speaker 05

  Came on the watch to talk about what?

• 2:26:50Speaker 04

  His solo record.

• 2:26:51Yasi Salek?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:26:53Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:26:53Yasi Salek?

  How was that?

• 2:26:54Speaker 05

  I didn't know that's the kind of guest booking you guys were doing at that time.

• 2:26:57Speaker 04

  In 16?

• 2:26:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:02Yasi Salek?

  Okay. What do you think, Amanda?

• 2:27:04Speaker 05

  I don't agree with you, but I, I have always loved and respected you. And that's the kind of take that, you know, we turn to Chris Ryan for.

• 2:27:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:27:13Speaker 05

  I have vivid memories of coming home from college and playing this to my dad. For my dad being like, no, like, like, I went to college and I found this, right? Like, like, I went, I have, I have climbed the mountain and I understand.

• 2:27:30Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:27:30Speaker 05

  Music now.

• 2:27:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:27:31Yasi Salek?

  What did your dad say?

• 2:27:32Speaker 05

  And he was just like, and then 1251 started. He was like, so this is the Cars? And I was like, oh, and he's like, I'd like to play the Cars for you now. And I was like, I see what you mean there. Um, but what was interesting was that in my re-listen, and listen, like, I, some of these songs I've heard, I have lived with this album too, because it came out when I was in college.

• 2:27:56Speaker 04

  This is the first one that comes out as you are already a Strokes fan.

• 2:27:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, one year after Is This It? I mean, they're quite.

• 2:28:02Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:28:03Yasi Salek?

  Close proximity.

• 2:28:04Speaker 05

  I remember like, the room is on fire and she's fixing her hair was like painted on someone's wall in college. So, yeah.

• 2:28:11Yasi Salek?

  Really captured the hearts and minds.

• 2:28:13Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 2:28:13Yasi Salek?

  Where were you in college?

• 2:28:14Speaker 05

  I went to Dartmouth.

• 2:28:15Yasi Salek?

  Dartmouth.

• 2:28:16Speaker 05

  Sure. But, you know.

• 2:28:17Yasi Salek?

  Where did Vampire Weekend go to college?

• 2:28:20Speaker 05

  Columbia.

• 2:28:20Yasi Salek?

  Columbia.

• 2:28:21Speaker 05

  Thank you so much for that. Um, but I listened, when I was listening to this, like, sequentially on the way back, I don't think I'd ever heard The Way It Is before. Maybe, I'm sure I have, because I know, I like, I know the end has no end. I know the rest of the album, but I was like, what is this? And I have not heard this. And I guess that just means that I don't sit and I don't listen to this album front to back the way I do Is This It?

• 2:28:45Speaker 04

  This record as it exists digitally is a crime against God because the songs don't start for five seconds.

• 2:28:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, why is that?

• 2:28:53Speaker 04

  I don't know. I don't know why they've never fixed it or if they think it's cool or like if it's to stop it from being like put into playlists or mixes. I have no idea. But this is the deal.

• 2:29:03Yasi Salek?

  It's so annoying. Because every time I, I'm like, I'm sorry, did I not?

• 2:29:07Speaker 04

  If you try to listen to this record as an album.

• 2:29:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:10Speaker 04

  You, if the song started as soon as the track started, you'd be like, this is, this is among the greatest rock records ever. And instead, you're like, okay, like, start, start, start.

• 2:29:21Yasi Salek?

  Is that only on digital or is that?

• 2:29:23Speaker 04

  I don't have a physical copy of this, much to my chagrin, I guess.

• 2:29:26Yasi Salek?

  You have a record player? I have one right here.

• 2:29:29Speaker 04

  I don't have a record player on me now.

• 2:29:33Speaker 04

  So we can't do this experiment.

• 2:29:34Yasi Salek?

  Do this experiment. Well, you know, bang our line.

• 2:29:37Speaker 04

  These guys, you know, the first song, he does try to do the like, fame's hard, man.

• 2:29:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:44Speaker 04

  This is tough.

• 2:29:45Yasi Salek?

  I want to be forgotten and I don't want to be reminded.

• 2:29:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:29:48Yasi Salek?

  Pretty god tier first two lyrics of your second follow up album.

• 2:29:53Speaker 05

  Really, really.

• 2:29:53Yasi Salek?

  Extremely hyped up.

• 2:29:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:30:04Speaker 05

  Reptilia, listen, first four.

• 2:30:06Yasi Salek?

  Reptilia is a god tier song.

• 2:30:07Speaker 05

  Reptilia is incredible.

• 2:30:08Yasi Salek?

  There's no getting around that.

• 2:30:09Speaker 04

  It's unbelievable.

• 2:30:10Speaker 05

  And listen, the room is on fire and she's fixing her hair. I, you know, I think about it a lot.

• 2:30:13Yasi Salek?

  Maybe one of the more, most painful songs in the discography of Julian Casablanca amongst many other ragged and miserable songs. This one is really.

• 2:30:22Speaker 05

  Onto Automatic Stop, which I like a lot.

• 2:30:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:25Speaker 05

  Into 1251, which is of course the Cars, but it's important for 19 year old girls to learn about the Cars.

• 2:30:30Speaker 04

  And I was looking up the, the lyrics to 1251 last night on Genius.

• 2:30:36Speaker 05

  Oh, great.

• 2:30:37Speaker 04

  And Genius says, Julian Casablanca said, this is a song about, quote, that moment before you fuck.

• 2:30:48Yasi Salek?

  He gave us a rich tapestry to work with.

• 2:30:52Speaker 04

  I was like, all right, Philip Roth, chill out.

• 2:30:55Speaker 05

  I was imagining the clapping as you're like, great.

• 2:31:08Yasi Salek?

  He also ripped off a bit of Bull in the Heather in that song.

• 2:31:11Speaker 04

  Do you think he knew that?

• 2:31:12Yasi Salek?

  He admitted it.

• 2:31:13Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:31:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:14Speaker 04

  It's worth mentioning that they were going to make this record.

• 2:31:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:18Speaker 04

  With Nigel Godrich, who was Radiohead's producer.

• 2:31:21Yasi Salek?

  Kind of a big deal.

• 2:31:21Speaker 04

  BFD.

• 2:31:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it was like, oh, where are the Strokes gonna go with their sound if they're working with a guy who made OK Computer?

• 2:31:28Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:31:29Speaker 04

  And they were like, this isn't working. And Nigel is very pleasant about it. Yeah. And he was very pleasant about it. He was like, Julian and I are just too alike.

• 2:31:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they were both too like controlling, basically.

• 2:31:41Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:31:41Yasi Salek?

  Um, and I maybe when he tried to be like, okay, so here's what happened. The hobo put on a bathing suit. He's swimming laps.

• 2:31:48Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:31:49Yasi Salek?

  The water is only rippling a little bit.

• 2:31:50Speaker 04

  Do you think Nigel Godrich responded with like, in his, the hobo's bathing suit, a speedo?

• 2:31:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it was a thong.

• 2:31:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:31:56Yasi Salek?

  I can't, should have been a fly on that wall, you know?

• 2:32:00Speaker 04

  I'm surprised these songs, any recordings, I guess he never really like brought these songs to completion, but the Nigel Godrich mixes would be cool to hear.

• 2:32:08Yasi Salek?

  It was 10 days. I think they worked on Meet Me in the Bathroom and maybe one or two other songs. So I guess maybe that would be the only thing. Um, The Strokes said they found working with him, quote, soulless.

• 2:32:19Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:32:20Yasi Salek?

  Nigel Godrich apparently wanted to record as a band. Julian was like, I need every instrument recorded individually and layered. So, and they were like arguing. And also Nigel Godrich wouldn't let JP Bowersock in the control room. Dave Bowersock was like, I can help you. I can sort of like mediate here, but like, I guess he didn't want people looking over his shoulder, according to JP Bowersock.

• 2:32:44Speaker 05

  Soulless sounds a little bit like, hey, we're now 23, we're rich and famous and we're drunk all the time. And you are a professional person.

• 2:32:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:52Speaker 05

  And are trying to make us, you know, do things the way that people always do, which is like, nobody, I guess, nobody is wrong in that context, but you can imagine how it doesn't fit.

• 2:33:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, 100%. Gordon told a story, which I don't know if this is true, but if it is, it makes a lot of sense, that Julian told him, he's like,

• 2:33:10Yasi Salek?

  Julian went to Nigel, was like, I really like that drum sound, but can we work on the hi hat? And Nigel said to him, Julian, a hi hat's a hi hat. Which is like.

• 2:33:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, not, not to Julian Casamancas.

• 2:33:21Speaker 04

  You were talking about the big four bands from New York at this time, Yaya, STV on the radio, Interpol and Strokes. Interpol and Strokes essentially do the same thing, where they make, album two is basically album one B.

• 2:33:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, part and parcel for sure.

• 2:33:36Speaker 04

  Whereas, I think that Yaya is, well, depending on how you think about it, the Yaya is like, sounded huge compared to their EP.

• 2:33:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:43Speaker 04

  The EP is like this garage punk record.

• 2:33:45Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:33:46Speaker 04

  And then by the time they make Maps, you're like, this is fucking Pat Benatar.

• 2:33:50Yasi Salek?

  Which is also insane, because they did, it's not like they were like, we hired Nigel Godrich, they were with Dave Siedek.

• 2:33:54Speaker 04

  But they were just like, let's grow, let's be, let's make this sound bigger.

• 2:33:58Speaker 05

  I, you know, in, in fairness.

• 2:34:00Speaker 04

  And TV on the radio, similarly, I think, God.

• 2:34:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:02Speaker 04

  That's Dave, though, I guess.

• 2:34:03Yasi Salek?

  I think in fairness, the thing with the Yaya is they had a background of also folk music.

• 2:34:09Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:34:09Yasi Salek?

  Folk, whatever, like earnest singer songwriter stuff, because that's what Unitard was, which was the band that preceded the Yaya. So they had like a sort of a backstock of those kind of Maps-esque songs.

• 2:34:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:34:19Yasi Salek?

  And when they had to make their album, they were like, okay, here's what these ones, and then they went back to the well. And so they just kind of had both going on, and then they had access to money to produce them at a high level, you know? And so it sounds so great. And yeah, to your point, The Strokes were like, we're just gonna.

• 2:34:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, we had these 10 songs, and now we're gonna make another one.

• 2:34:38Speaker 04

  Same guy's gonna make them and they're gonna sound the same, but they're, I mean, I think they are sharper. They sound like a band that's played 400 shows since the last record came out. And they're kind of just like more interesting. To me, the songs are more interesting. There's like, oh, what a cool Motown bassline here, or what a cool, like, the, the way that this song changes, like two thirds in, is just like, there's a little bit more like surprises and wrinkles to the songs, but they still have the like, is this it quality?

• 2:35:07Yasi Salek?

  This is what I wanted to tell you guys earlier, which applies to both of these albums.

• 2:35:12Yasi Salek?

  Which is what I think is so, and maybe, maybe is maybe a little bit more in Room on Fire, but I think it's all over. But the thing about Julian's songwriting that he sort of learned in school is that instead of using big guitar chords, he writes in counterpoint, which is every part is a melody. So the two guitars are playing a melody, and the voice is doing a melody, and the bass is doing a melody. And this is how Bach wrote, like, it's like so antithetical to like, what was common, it's not how the Velvet Underground wrote, it's not how just straight ahead rock songs were written.

• 2:35:48Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:35:49Yasi Salek?

  I think it's kind of a magic trick that we are able to experience them as straight ahead rock songs, you know? But they, they are not that. And I think when they start to get outside of these first two albums, that's when you really start to hear, or like, like how you can see the texture too much.

• 2:36:06Speaker 04

  Well, ironically, first, that's also how pop music works, where it's supposed to be like melody first, everything serves the melody that we're gonna come up with, and there's all these little hooks. And earworms, but it's not about like, the rhythm guitar does this, and then the bass and the drums are working a concert behind it to like, kind of keep it anchored. And it's like, those first two Strokes records, like, like I said, like, the way I remember them as, is as ditties, as, as like.

• 2:36:33Speaker 05

  I mean, we have been trying to rec, like, which one is that by, like, a guitar line or, but like, it's been interchanging whether we do a lyric, a guitar line, a drum, you know, like a, yeah. Because they are all so specific.

• 2:36:46Yasi Salek?

  And it's something you can only do, I think, when one person writes everything. Like, you can't have them so perfectly be all attached to each other, doing all this counter melody stuff, if one person isn't right.

• 2:36:56Speaker 04

  Do you know who, they don't do the exact same thing, but do you know who does something sometimes I feel is similar to this? Malcolm X. Where he's singing his guitar part, or the guitar part is the guide for the vocal line.

• 2:37:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:08Speaker 04

  But especially on like Crooked Rain, he's always like, his, his vocal is just doing what the guitar is doing.

• 2:37:14Yasi Salek?

  Someone else who does this in a way I can't explain, because as you know, when I talk about this stuff, I'm absolutely doing theater, I don't understand music, but Radiohead. Very like famously, Radiohead is doing really complicated things with what the voice is doing with respect to

• 2:37:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:37:29Yasi Salek?

  the different instrumentation and how it's like going down when this is going up, and it's like, very meaningful, and I don't get it at all, but it, you know, Nigel Godrich could have been a good producer here. Um, but listen, you love Room on Fire as it is, so it worked out fine with, with Gordon. Do you know, a fun thing that I learned about this is that Damon Albarn came to the studio one night. They had like gone to a Blur show, I guess, and like brought him back. And he listened to some of those songs and he was like, these need backing vocals.

• 2:38:02Yasi Salek?

  And they were like, okay, why don't you do backing vocals? And so they did backing vocals with Damon Albarn, some of these songs.

• 2:38:08Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:38:09Yasi Salek?

  And then they were just very bad, so they deleted them.

• 2:38:12Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:38:12Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:38:13Yasi Salek?

  Thought it was just, there's an alternate reality.

• 2:38:14Speaker 04

  So somewhere there's a Nigel Godrich.

• 2:38:16Yasi Salek?

  No, it's just still with Gordon, yeah.

• 2:38:18Speaker 04

  A version of Room on Fire.

• 2:38:20Speaker 05

  When they delete it, like, it's gone forever.

• 2:38:23Speaker 04

  Delete, drag to trash, end to trash.

• 2:38:26Speaker 05

  I'm like, how thorough were they?

• 2:38:27Yasi Salek?

  Thoroughly computer. Set it on fire.

• 2:38:30Speaker 04

  You think it's like the Hunter Biden laptop, like he can find it somewhere? In a pawn shop.

• 2:38:35Speaker 05

  I don't know what the tech was in 2003, you know?

• 2:38:38Yasi Salek?

  I did read that the second album, the vibes are pretty bad.

• 2:38:44Speaker 04

  True.

• 2:38:44Speaker 05

  Between them?

• 2:38:45Speaker 04

  This is.

• 2:38:46Yasi Salek?

  Between the band, yeah. I mean.

• 2:38:48Speaker 04

  Ryan Adams's influence.

• 2:38:49Yasi Salek?

  Ryan Adams is allegedly up in the mix. Um, Julian was, you know, increasingly miserable. Albert is hanging around with Ryan Adams a lot and.

• 2:39:02Speaker 04

  Doing heroin.

• 2:39:02Yasi Salek?

  Doing heroin. Julian is really mad at Ryan Adams about this. Ryan Adams claims that he never gave Albert heroin.

• 2:39:11Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:39:12Yasi Salek?

  Said 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. I was like, it was like, no one ever listens to my music, but do you want to hear it? And I'd be like, fuck yeah. I loved him so deeply. I would never have given him a bag of heroin. I remember being incredibly worried about him, even after I continued to do Speedballs. I do remember thinking The Strokes guys were way more into heroin than I was. So Ryan basically is like, Julian was doing heroin.

• 2:39:40Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:39:41Yasi Salek?

  Coming to my apartment, asking for it. So I don't know why he's saying I'm doing heroin. I don't know what happened. One thing I do know is that people who do drugs are not running up to give other people their drugs.

• 2:39:53Speaker 04

  Sure. Yes.

• 2:39:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:39:54Yasi Salek?

  That's not junky behavior, to be like, hey, man.

• 2:39:58Speaker 04

  Let's share.

• 2:39:59Yasi Salek?

  Let's, here, I, you know, I don't know, but whatever happens, people are doing drugs. That's one thing we can know.

• 2:40:06Speaker 04

  It's, it's just, it's like, the, the well got poisoned. It went from probably booze and cigarettes and probably some coke to harder, harder, harder stuff.

• 2:40:14Yasi Salek?

  Stuff, yeah. Can, do you feel like you can hear that in this album? Do you think, do you, is it part of the reason you like it better? Is there like maybe a tension that you're hearing?

• 2:40:22Speaker 04

  No, I, I feel like I hear the dissolution of the band, like, on the records that are to come.

• 2:40:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Yeah, they still maybe had it a little under control.

• 2:40:31Speaker 05

  I think so.

• 2:40:32Yasi Salek?

  Literally, under control.

• 2:40:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:40:34Yasi Salek?

  Although also a song called Meet Me in the Bathroom.

• 2:40:37Speaker 05

  I mean, yeah, it's there.

• 2:40:38Speaker 04

  But it's just a chat.

• 2:40:39Speaker 05

  It's just, they're barely holding it together, and you can feel that, which makes it kind of interesting in its own way, right? Because that, again, that's performing like a very traditional rock band, very cool.

• 2:40:50Yasi Salek?

  They just went through it really fast.

• 2:40:52Speaker 05

  They just, they are, they are burning through much, you know?

• 2:40:54Speaker 04

  I think Andy talks about that in Meet Me in the Bathroom, where he's just like.

• 2:40:57Yasi Salek?

  Talks about you a lot, Meet Me in the Bathroom.

• 2:40:58Speaker 04

  Does he?

• 2:40:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, mentions you multiple times.

• 2:41:02Speaker 04

  It's, it's, but Greenwald says like, the thing is, is that this was like 18 months.

• 2:41:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it just really, and you know, you have to wonder how much of that has to do with the time period, you know, like, we have nascent internet. Things are spreading faster. You have Napster.

• 2:41:20Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:41:20Yasi Salek?

  We have file sharing, you know, like.

• 2:41:23Speaker 04

  LimeWire.

• 2:41:23Yasi Salek?

  LimeWire, totally. Like, things are, things, the acceleration is, is a lot faster. This actually had a much higher chart debut than Is This It? It hit number four on the Billboard 200, which is quite high. Um, sold about 600,000 copies by 2006, and it eventually went platinum.

• 2:41:41Speaker 04

  It's all killer, no filler, but I think it's.

• 2:41:44Speaker 05

  And the back half is a little filler, but that's okay.

• 2:41:46Yasi Salek?

  I don't mind the back half.

• 2:41:48Speaker 04

  Analyze this.

• 2:41:48Speaker 05

  But like, can you just look at, don't hit play and sing me any part of any of the songs?

• 2:41:55Speaker 04

  I think I know Under Control.

• 2:41:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, Under Control, because it's right there in the title.

• 2:42:00Speaker 04

  And I think I know. End has no end.

• 2:42:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, because once again, you can sing The End Has No End.

• 2:42:07Speaker 04

  My middle, the middle of this album is like.

• 2:42:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:42:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. Automatic stop, 1251.

• 2:42:12Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 2:42:13Speaker 04

  Talked way too much between Love and Hate and Meet Me in the Bathroom. That's.

• 2:42:16Speaker 05

  To me, these albums are.

• 2:42:18Yasi Salek?

  The way it is.

• 2:42:19Speaker 04

  Is this it?

• 2:42:20Yasi Salek?

  No. Is this it? Um, to me, these albums are comparable. Like, they have, they're like, equally good. I have a more affection for the first one, just because I'm more familiar with the first one. And I have like more reflex towards those songs because I heard them so many times, but also good album. To me, after this, they start becoming like track song, track, you know, a band that has a few good tracks here and there.

• 2:42:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:42:48Speaker 04

  Do you find that as, as you study their biography for this, like, their narrative is any less legible after this record? Because they stopped living together. It seems like they're more of a like, we get together tour, and then make.

• 2:43:02Yasi Salek?

  I find their narrative illegible from day one.

• 2:43:05Speaker 04

  I don't know. I think that there's like a two-year run where it's like, Kings of New York, they're living together, Amanda Decadne, Courtney Love.

• 2:43:13Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:43:13Speaker 05

  You know, you know who Nick Balenci was dated before Amanda Decadne?

• 2:43:16Speaker 04

  Who?

• 2:43:17Speaker 05

  Pearl Lo.

• 2:43:18Speaker 04

  I don't know who that is.

• 2:43:19Speaker 05

  Oh, Daisy Lo's mom.

• 2:43:20Yasi Salek?

  Correct. With Gavin Rossdale.

• 2:43:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:43:23Yasi Salek?

  Kind of a legendary British scene fixture. She was also a musician, also older. Nick Balenci was older woman. Not that much older, but you know, eight years or something. I think they kind of fall off the earth, for me anyways, after this. Let's talk real quick about what happens after this. They go on the Room on Fire tour, supported by Kings of Leon, the Southern Strokes, and Regina Spector, random, um, which I thought was very cool.

• 2:43:48Speaker 05

  Is that Regina Spector before or after? She's one, two?

• 2:43:51Yasi Salek?

  Zionism?

• 2:43:52Speaker 05

  Well, I didn't know about that. She's, is she one, two, three, four?

• 2:43:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:56Speaker 04

  So that's feist.

• 2:43:57Speaker 05

  That's feist, that's feist in the Apple commercial. But is Regina Spector not in an Apple commercial?

• 2:44:01Yasi Salek?

  So the Soviet, the piano song from Soviet Kitch?

• 2:44:04Speaker 04

  She was just Julian liked her a lot. I remember that.

• 2:44:07Yasi Salek?

  They did a song together. Albert said, I was doing a lot of cocaine on this tour. And what was funny was when Caleb Falwell, and I would, from Kings of Leon, and I would do some, and he'd be like, don't tell Jared about it. And then I do something with Jared, and he'd be like, don't tell Caleb. I go back and forth. In the meantime, I was doing double duty over here.

• 2:44:27Yasi Salek?

  Another really important thing that happens during this tour cycle that extends to 2004 is The Killers. Hot House comes out, and Mr. Brightside is a huge.

• 2:44:37Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:44:39Yasi Salek?

  And Nick Balenci said, we had these conversations that went along the lines of, gosh, I think our songs are better than Mr. Brightside by The Killers, but how come that's the one everyone's listening to?

• 2:44:47Speaker 04

  Happens to the best of us.

• 2:44:48Yasi Salek?

  They just did it in a different way. They recorded it in a different way. They promoted it in a different way. We could be that big. But you couldn't, actually.

• 2:44:56Speaker 04

  You would have invented Facebook, right?

• 2:44:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's true.

• 2:44:58Yasi Salek?

  There's what?

• 2:44:59Speaker 05

  It's true. You would have invented Facebook.

• 2:45:01Yasi Salek?

  Right. Well, there's, there's real interesting reasons. He, he said it, but he didn't really say it. We'll get into it. The way they recorded really handicapped them from being a massive band. They are not sonically a band that is gonna be The Killers, or is gonna be Kings of Leon.

• 2:45:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:45:19Yasi Salek?

  And that was by design. Okay. In September of 2005, Julian Casablanca's marries, Julia Jozlin, who was Ryan Gentil's assistant. Um, they eventually have two children and got divorced in 2018, but, you know, here they're married. And then it's, you know, it's time for first impressions of Earth.

• 2:45:39Speaker 05

  Yeah. This is the nadir for me.

• 2:45:42Speaker 04

  Is it?

• 2:45:43Speaker 05

  I, yeah, which I was surprised by.

• 2:45:45Speaker 04

  Because we, do we come back out of a nadir?

• 2:45:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:45:48Speaker 04

  And we reclimb Strokes mountain at a certain point?

• 2:45:50Speaker 05

  In a different way.

• 2:45:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:45:52Speaker 05

  It's more of like a, a hill, you know?

• 2:45:54Yasi Salek?

  Okay, a hill and hill situation. In 2006, is The Strokes like, you're like, The Strokes is my favorite band, and I can't wait for the third album. Is that kind of the vibe?

• 2:46:04Speaker 05

  Yes. And I'm about to graduate college. I'm gonna move to New York, to move, but, you know, I guess even there, and it's mostly because I can't afford Manhattan, but I moved to Brooklyn. But I'm like, here we go. Like, I have been.

• 2:46:16Yasi Salek?

  My story is starting.

• 2:46:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. And I've also been consuming this from afar.

• 2:46:21Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna be the voice of our generation.

• 2:46:22Speaker 05

  And they, and they have become like the poster boys for like a New York that is glimmering and like waiting for me.

• 2:46:28Speaker 04

  You're like, I got a subprime mortgage. Nothing can stand in my way.

• 2:46:32Speaker 05

  So yeah, they're huge. And they are still, even though Room on Fire is not as, I mean, I guess it's more commercially successful, but like, to me, not as great.

• 2:46:40Speaker 04

  It's not as big of a single on this.

• 2:46:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's just like.

• 2:46:43Yasi Salek?

  Not, it's not Last Night.

• 2:46:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:46:45Speaker 05

  It doesn't have the heat that is this it and Last Night does. And like many other bands have come up in their wake. And like, you know, Mr. Brightside was essential.

• 2:46:55Yasi Salek?

  To me, Block Party came, and I was like, Strokes, who?

• 2:46:58Speaker 04

  It's also like Seven Nation Army happened.

• 2:47:00Speaker 05

  Sure. Franz Ferdinand was very, very big at my college, for whatever reason.

• 2:47:05Yasi Salek?

  Fucking great band, honestly. Really low-key kind of underrated band because they just had that one really big song. They're actually really good.

• 2:47:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:47:11Yasi Salek?

  Scottish Strokes.

• 2:47:12Speaker 05

  But The Strokes like set the template. They burned brightest, hottest. Everyone was copying them. And I was like, no, that's it. That's what, that's what we're gonna be. And, you know, like Julian was like the hottest person in the world to me at that time. Because once again, I was 22, and he seemed like an emotionally unavailable asshole rock star. And I was like, that's it. That's what we're looking for. New York, here I come. And then they do first impression, first impressions of Earth. And I was like, what is this? But it's, I don't think I minded as much at the time I was trying, but on, on a re-listen, I was like, this is, what happened was I was just instinctively skipping every single track. And then I was like, no, no, no, I'm doing this for an exercise. I actually do have to listen to all of this.

• 2:47:54Speaker 04

  90 seconds. To your point, uh, I wonder actually, like, this is almost like a, could become a staple of bands playing. Is at what point in a band's career do they become a tracks band instead of an albums band? And I'm sure this is.

• 2:48:07Yasi Salek?

  Definitely 2006 for Strokes.

• 2:48:09Speaker 04

  Much to the chagrin of the rest of the Strokes who start beginning, uh, they, they start contributing songwriting material to The Strokes at this time.

• 2:48:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:17Speaker 04

  Along with Julian, rather than just playing Julian's stuff. But yeah, this is like Razorblade is good. Heart in a Cage is good.

• 2:48:26Yasi Salek?

  I'm a You Only Live Once truther.

• 2:48:28Speaker 05

  Well, here's the thing.

• 2:48:30Yasi Salek?

  The Julian solo is the, that is the peak.

• 2:48:34Speaker 05

  That's my, that's my, that's my song.

• 2:48:36Yasi Salek?

  That is the peak Strokes experience for me. That's the best thing The Strokes have ever put out is Julian solo doing the demo of You Only Live One.

• 2:48:42Speaker 05

  Ten decisions shape your life. Yeah. You'll be aware of five. Also, I too was born in 1984, so don't worry about it. Oh, my God, it's so good. But so that, that they didn't even go with the good one, you know?

• 2:48:52Yasi Salek?

  I mean, this one's not bad. It's okay. But it's a shadow.

• 2:48:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:48:56Yasi Salek?

  Of the, of the Julian solo. I did not hear this album until this month.

• 2:49:05Yasi Salek?

  So I just want to tell you, I did not experience it.

• 2:49:07Speaker 04

  That's the case for the other Strokes records that we're about to talk about?

• 2:49:10Yasi Salek?

  This is, that was, Strokes were gone for me.

• 2:49:12Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:49:13Yasi Salek?

  Memory hold.

• 2:49:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:49:15Yasi Salek?

  Like, it just did not matter. Like, not even, like, did this demo matter to you? You'd heard the, you'd heard the Julian solo version before.

• 2:49:22Speaker 05

  That was later, wasn't it? It comes out a few years later, but then it's in, it's in somewhere. The Sofia Coppola.

• 2:49:28Yasi Salek?

  That's when it, that's when that came across my desk. And I was like, this is the, one of the best things I've ever heard. But this happening? No.

• 2:49:34Speaker 05

  And I do think that one of the, which, uh, of these songs is in Marie Antoinette, my favorite.

• 2:49:42Speaker 04

  Whatever Happened.

• 2:49:42Speaker 05

  Whatever Happened. Yeah.

• 2:49:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:45Speaker 05

  So that's a Room on Fire. Okay.

• 2:49:47Yasi Salek?

  You'd remember maybe best, Chris, because you were working, you were working in magazines. What was like, the vibe on, like, in general, like, was it even, were The Strokes even cool anymore in 2006, you know? Or had they been supplanted?

• 2:50:06Speaker 04

  I mean, my life, like, I had gone from Kims in 01 to like, oh, 304, I think, before, started working at The Fader.

• 2:50:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:16Speaker 04

  Which was stuff that was like below The Strokes in terms of its.

• 2:50:19Yasi Salek?

  And The Fader was a TV on the radio, a proud TV on the radio.

• 2:50:22Speaker 04

  Proud TV on the radio, but also was getting way into like Atlanta rap and stuff like that and mixtape rap. And by the time, I, I dare say, was College Dropout coming up, out around this time?

• 2:50:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. So that's what was, was happening for me at that time.

• 2:50:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so I was gonna say, that's even earlier. Because I worked, I worked at a label, a hip hop label in 2003, that had like, Consequence 12 inches. That's Kanye West's cousin. That was produced by Kanye West. And I remember having the College Dropout.

• 2:51:04Speaker 04

  The promo.

• 2:51:05Yasi Salek?

  The promo in 2003. So yeah, it was, it was definitely much earlier than 2006.

• 2:51:09Speaker 04

  Okay. So by 06, it was like, the Kanye was most of what I was thinking of.

• 2:51:12Yasi Salek?

  I mean, to your point, for me anyways, it was like, Hallertronics. It was just like, things had really like, gone somewhere else. And I was also, you know, as my friend Crystal pointed out, I lived in streetwear in D Sli's corner, which was a separate corner of the in D Sli's.

• 2:51:28Speaker 05

  What was happening there?

• 2:51:30Yasi Salek?

  You know, we, Monday nights at Sway, it was retail mafia night.

• 2:51:33Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:51:34Yasi Salek?

  You had the guys from A Life and Supreme and everyone's smoking blunts. And I had a new era with the stickers still on, gold bamboo earrings, you know?

• 2:51:45Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:51:46Yasi Salek?

  It was a time. I'm happy that it happened for you.

• 2:51:49Speaker 04

  What was happening for The Strokes?

• 2:51:50Yasi Salek?

  I don't know. Again, none of my business. Oh, you want me to tell you? I do now. I know now. Can we get back on track?

• 2:51:56Speaker 04

  No, I think our, our story is just interesting. And I'm sure all the listeners are basically 50/50. They're like, I'm kind of interested in Julian.

• 2:52:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:04Speaker 04

  What was up with Amanda going to Brooklyn?

• 2:52:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. What part of Brooklyn did you live in?

• 2:52:08Speaker 05

  I moved to Brooklyn Heights around the same time as, like.

• 2:52:12Speaker 04

  You had that place the whole time, right?

• 2:52:13Speaker 05

  And, well, until I moved to Fort Greene. But.

• 2:52:15Speaker 04

  Oh, right.

• 2:52:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. But I lived there through girls. And when girls happened, and they, Lena Dunham lived across the street, and they all lived around the thing. So that was kind of, that was the era that, I didn't know I was walking into that, but that.

• 2:52:28Yasi Salek?

  But you really were.

• 2:52:29Speaker 05

  Is what I became. What else was I doing in 2006? I worked from like 2 PM to 1 AM every day. So I wasn't really going to a lot of shows.

• 2:52:41Speaker 05

  That was having a post. Yeah. And then nannying in the morning, because again, I was making $28,000 a year.

• 2:52:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:48Speaker 05

  Maybe 30 at that point. Um, so, you know, I didn't move to like Williamsburg. I wasn't at like loft shows or whatever, but.

• 2:52:56Yasi Salek?

  They weren't there anymore in 2006.

• 2:52:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's true.

• 2:52:59Yasi Salek?

  Where were you living?

• 2:53:01Speaker 04

  Oh, six, though. I think I was living with Phoebe by then.

• 2:53:03Yasi Salek?

  Amazing. Also Brooklyn.

• 2:53:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, at Carl Burns.

• 2:53:06Yasi Salek?

  I was living down the street from Sean, but we didn't know each other. On Orchard.

• 2:53:09Speaker 04

  Ships passing in the night.

• 2:53:10Yasi Salek?

  Right above Lucky Jack's. What a time.

• 2:53:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:53:13Yasi Salek?

  I'm at McFish every night.

• 2:53:15Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:53:15Yasi Salek?

  Putting in my time, except Monday nights where we went to Sway, retail mafia night. Um, okay, back to The Strokes, first impressions of Earth, uh, produced a bit by Gordon Raphael, but then.

• 2:53:29Speaker 04

  David Kane.

• 2:53:30Yasi Salek?

  David Kane kind of took over. It was supposed to be them both. Here's what I thought was really interesting. Gordon remembers Julian coming to him, being like, asking these two questions. Gordon, when I'm in a club and I hear a Nirvana song, it's so huge sounding. And then one of our songs come on, comes on afterwards, and it's like thin and small.

• 2:53:47Speaker 04

  What club?

• 2:53:48Yasi Salek?

  Why is, I don't know.

• 2:53:51Yasi Salek?

  Backspace.

• 2:53:53Yasi Salek?

  Why is that? Is that a production thing? Well, I mean, again, but to our point, CineSpace, whatever, like, I mean, that was kind of happening.

• 2:53:58Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 2:53:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, and Gordon's like, sit down, let me explain something too. Kurt Cobain writes songs with big, giant, full chords on guitar, hits all the strings at once, and then runs that through a chorus pedal, and your songs were lovely, amazingly well-played, single-note melodies on one guitar with sparse, two-note, three-note, or openly-played chords. And he's like, is it possible to make something cool that also sells? That was Julian's question to Gordon, according to Gordon.

• 2:54:29Speaker 04

  These guys are all, the Killers really put the zap on their head.

• 2:54:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I know, again, I'm only putting myself in their mind state, but I imagine it must be tough to sort of resurrect an entire genre, be so cool, and inspire these other bands who then completely financially lap you, commercially lap you, such as the Kings of Leon and The Killers.

• 2:54:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:54:57Yasi Salek?

  Mr. Brightside's a big fucking song.

• 2:55:00Speaker 05

  It's a banger.

• 2:55:00Yasi Salek?

  You can play Mr. Brightside at an NBA game.

• 2:55:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:55:04Yasi Salek?

  You can play Seven Nation Army at an NBA game. You're not gonna play Last Night at an NBA game.

• 2:55:10Speaker 05

  It's your loss as an NBA attendee, but I've never been to an NBA game, so.

• 2:55:14Speaker 04

  Have you not?

• 2:55:15Speaker 05

  No, I've never been.

• 2:55:16Yasi Salek?

  Never? Even I've been to several NBA games.

• 2:55:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:55:20Yasi Salek?

  We'll get you there. According to Gordon, they bring in David Kane as the engineer, and he was like, he thought it was some young kid coming in just to help out. He was not a young kid. He had recently produced the new Paul McCartney album, and also, Back to Sugar Ray, produced their breakthrough, "Lord," with the song "Fly" on it. Um, kind of a cool guy, actually. Did you know that he produced the first few Fishbone albums and also designed their logo?

• 2:55:48Speaker 04

  I didn't know that.

• 2:55:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, on an Apple Macintosh, 128K.

• 2:55:52Speaker 04

  That's cool. That's what Steve Jobs is about.

• 2:55:53Yasi Salek?

  It's pretty cool. He used Mac Paint. Um, he also did, uh, The Bangles, A Different Light, so Manic Monday and all.

• 2:56:01Speaker 05

  I think it kind of makes.

• 2:56:02Yasi Salek?

  I love The Bangles. These are big.

• 2:56:06Speaker 04

  They're not making the Gil Norton mistake again.

• 2:56:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but also.

• 2:56:09Speaker 04

  Or the Nigel Godrich mistake.

• 2:56:10Yasi Salek?

  And Manic Monday is a big song, right? Like, a big production. He also produced, uh, Sublime, self-titled, co-produced it with Paul O'Leary, which I think is really cool. Sorry, just, this guy was cool. Um, they really wanted to work with him, and eventually Gordon is kind of more and more sidelined, and they're like, we're just gonna do this with, you know, him, it's fine. Um, Nick Valensi said the year was basically like, full of fits and starts. All the band members rarely in the same place at the same time. We'd write and arrange a song, call up the producer and record it, and then he would leave for a couple of weeks, and we'd start working on another song, and we'd call him back when we were ready to record again. Most of the other Strokes were like, this was joyless. It was, we're clocking it at the Strokes factory every day, you know?

• 2:56:52Speaker 05

  Even though they get credits?

• 2:56:55Speaker 04

  Or does that not really start happening till Angles?

• 2:56:57Yasi Salek?

  I think that's Angles. I mean, they are, I'm looking at the, the, the track listing, and they each have, like, they each have like one little song with Casablanca, but, I mean, it feels real, like, fine. Okay, like, I'll give you.

• 2:57:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't, like.

• 2:57:14Yasi Salek?

  Valensi has one, Hammond has one. I thought it was Angles where Julian kind of like disappears, and then that's what,

• 2:57:25Yasi Salek?

  like, he sort of like forces them to start.

• 2:57:29Speaker 05

  I mean, he's written, he is credited on every single song on this album. It's just that there are co-credits on, like, one band member each.

• 2:57:39Yasi Salek?

  Didn't really come up much in the research of, like, that being on purpose, but maybe the cracks are showing. I don't know, in his, in his, I can do this, do everything.

• 2:57:52Speaker 04

  I think by Angles, it becomes like a, if you want to stay a band, we have to be able to write songs on this.

• 2:57:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. And maybe he's out of juice, you know? How many, how many full albums can, can he write?

• 2:58:03Speaker 05

  Um, not three, according to this one.

• 2:58:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, again, the vibes are bad, no one's talking to each other, Albert Hammond's fucking balls to the wall, fucked up on heroin. Yeah, they weren't cohesive in any way. Um.

• 2:58:21Speaker 04

  They're no longer a gang.

• 2:58:23Yasi Salek?

  They're no longer a gang. Julian said, "My biggest regret in general is that I drank so much. I watered off any kind of intense introspection. We became as big as you can become while still staying under the radar, which is amazing and maybe ideal, but it was never this big breakthrough. There was never this MC Hammer moment where you're like, there's so much money, this success is gonna last forever, and then you squander it. To us, it always felt amazing, but like it could disappear at any second." I think people miss the messed up excitement of what we had. We could have stayed a little weirder, and people would have come around to us, but we rushed to it by sounding, by trying to sound slicker.

• 2:58:56Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm. Is that what you hear when you hear First Impressions of Earth, slick, a slicker album?

• 2:59:03Speaker 04

  Just feels like kind of a hangover record.

• 2:59:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:06Speaker 04

  It doesn't have a lot of joy. The riffs are a little serrated.

• 2:59:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:10Speaker 04

  This just sounds like an angry band, or like a band kind of having a, a koki bad.

• 2:59:15Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:59:15Speaker 04

  Come down, though not a come-down machine, evidently, yeah.

• 2:59:19Speaker 05

  It does feel.

• 2:59:21Speaker 04

  That's Strokes album comes two times.

• 2:59:23Yasi Salek?

  Right here.

• 2:59:26Yasi Salek?

  Learned, also heard of that for the first time, I'll tell you, in two weeks.

• 2:59:28Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 2:59:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:29Speaker 05

  It, I mean, but it does feel like a failed attempt to be that bigger, broader, more, like, less distorted, more polished.

• 2:59:38Yasi Salek?

  Well, we didn't really say, but.

• 2:59:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:59:40Yasi Salek?

  The Room on, the main criticism lobbied, lobbed at Room on Fire was that it sounds too much like, is this it? That was, that was like the, the constant critical thing. They were like, this is boring, you did the same album again. And so they're like, well, this is different.

• 2:59:55Speaker 05

  This feels like they left the basement, but they just kind of went into like a, an airless professional studio.

• 3:00:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:02Speaker 05

  And, I mean, like, I don't know what the act, but just the, the energy of it is like, now we are making this with a lot of money. And we're trying to wear our big boy pants.

• 3:00:11Speaker 04

  And this is just like, really like, sharp angles hitting each other.

• 3:00:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:00:14Speaker 04

  But not angles.

• 3:00:15Yasi Salek?

  But not angles. Still charted pretty well, honestly. They hit number four. Um, no one's selling albums anymore, though, so in the first week, they sold 88,000 copies.

• 3:00:25Speaker 04

  I don't think, I think this is the first Strokes record that I, I was like.

• 3:00:29Yasi Salek?

  No, thank you.

• 3:00:30Speaker 04

  No, that I was like, I don't need to listen to this right away. Like, you know, I'm not of, of the first two, obviously.

• 3:00:35Yasi Salek?

  The hype was also kind of died down and gone.

• 3:00:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:00:37Yasi Salek?

  Um, the only interesting, not only, but one of the more interesting things to me about this album is there's a B-side to Only, You Only Live Once, that I also just learned about, which is, um, them covering Marvin Gaye's Mercy, Mercy Me with Eddie Vedder on co-vocals and Josh Homme playing drums with.

• 3:00:57Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:00:57Speaker 04

  That's cool.

• 3:00:58Yasi Salek?

  Sure. Listen, why not? The lead single was Juice Box, which was strange.

• 3:01:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:01:04Yasi Salek?

  Um, okay, in 2007, The Transformers movie came out, and do you remember what Shia LaBeouf's character was wearing in that film?

• 3:01:11Speaker 04

  Strokes shirt.

• 3:01:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, sure. And Target was like, we'd like to please order that shirt, and they sold 20,000 shoes to Target. So, a little bit of a bright side, Mr. Brightside, if you will. January 2007 is when Albert says he came home from tour and started shooting heroin, because he had not been shooting it prior. Things are not getting better on that, on that front. Chris, you don't want to tell your Ryan Adams, Julian Casablanca's story?

• 3:01:34Speaker 04

  But isn't that, is that documented in Meet Me in the Bathroom?

• 3:01:37Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 3:01:37Speaker 05

  That's when Meet Me in the Bathroom comes out, right?

• 3:01:40Speaker 04

  Right, and there's like some revisionist commentary on like the controversial story of Julian being like, Ryan Adams got Albert Hammond hooked on the heroin.

• 3:01:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:52Speaker 04

  And Ryan Adams' retort to Julian Casablanca's was, who got you hooked on lasagna?

• 3:01:58Yasi Salek?

  I didn't read that in the book, but I've, it's been burned in my brain ever since you told it to me.

• 3:02:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would have to look up the source for that.

• 3:02:04Speaker 05

  I, if I recall.

• 3:02:06Speaker 04

  It might be in Vulture.

• 3:02:07Speaker 05

  Because he, I do think that it.

• 3:02:08Yasi Salek?

  That's a murder.

• 3:02:09Speaker 05

  I think that it came, when, because when is Meet Me in the Bathroom the book? 2012, 12, 13 or something?

• 3:02:17Speaker 04

  It came out then.

• 3:02:18Speaker 05

  So I, I think.

• 3:02:19Speaker 04

  It's like a contemporaneous interview or some sort of.

• 3:02:21Speaker 05

  I think that it's Ryan Adams' takes to Twitter, and is like, here we go.

• 3:02:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think it was on Twitter.

• 3:02:26Speaker 05

  But who got you hooked on lasagna?

• 3:02:28Yasi Salek?

  Just really, I'm sorry, but like.

• 3:02:31Speaker 05

  It was a, it was a different time.

• 3:02:32Speaker 04

  And Julian did seem like he, he was getting into some seven layers.

• 3:02:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. He did, he grew outward.

• 3:02:41Yasi Salek?

  He got sober, and he started getting interested in culinary activities, and that's okay.

• 3:02:46Speaker 04

  Oh, so Albert, Albert's fucked up.

• 3:02:48Yasi Salek?

  Albert's fucked up.

• 3:02:49Speaker 04

  He's moved to upstate New York, I think, or to Hudson or whatever.

• 3:02:51Yasi Salek?

  They have like a five-year gap between these albums, between First Impressions and Angles.

• 3:02:59Yasi Salek?

  Albert released two solo albums. Those are not ones that he came on the watch for.

• 3:03:03Speaker 04

  Podcasting did not really exist.

• 3:03:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:03:06Speaker 04

  If it did, and we were podding, I would have been there.

• 3:03:09Yasi Salek?

  You would have been like, come, please talk about Komotayama, your second, uh, your second solo album. Also went to rehab a few times.

• 3:03:16Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:03:17Yasi Salek?

  2008, this is like really telling of a time, Pharrell Williams publicly expressed interest in producing the next Strokes album. In an NME article, uh, he said, Julian Casablanca's and I collaborated on something with Santo Gold. Do you guys remember? Well, remember she went by Santo?

• 3:03:36Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 3:03:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Like, her, her name is Santi, but she went, her, her music project was Santo Gold.

• 3:03:41Speaker 04

  Sorry for mansplaining Santo Gold, too.

• 3:03:42Yasi Salek?

  Totally fine. It's not as bad as when you guys, was it you that told me it was incesticide?

• 3:03:46Speaker 04

  I think, but we also paid the price for that in the moment when you found out that we were wrong.

• 3:03:52Yasi Salek?

  Um, do you remember these Converse songs that they did?

• 3:03:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:03:55Yasi Salek?

  Pair these pictures, and they were like, anyways, that was one of the first ones, that one.

• 3:04:00Speaker 04

  Brandy content was like, just popping off.

• 3:04:02Yasi Salek?

  Funny, the fucking hamsters were driving that Scion, like it was nobody's business, down Hamsterdam Avenue. I loved those commercials. They were called Mookie and the Wood Chips, and they were playing at the Apollo Theater. You don't remember these?

• 3:04:14Speaker 04

  I didn't.

• 3:04:14Yasi Salek?

  I loved those commercials. We should bring back those Scion hamsters.

• 3:04:18Speaker 04

  Do they, they don't make scions anymore, do they?

• 3:04:22Yasi Salek?

  Well, we had it good for a second. Siam poured a lot of money into the music industry.

• 3:04:26Speaker 05

  It was the, yeah, the box. I remember we did then rent a, I remember those hamsters now because then we went to rent a car and we got one of the, the hamster cars. And I was like, oh gee. Zach was like, we are, I'm not driving this car. We went back to the counter.

• 3:04:42Yasi Salek?

  You got a PT freezer, because that's all they had left. Um, anyways, I thought that was funny. So he really wanted to do it. Um, that did not transpire. Um, in 2009, Nikolai put out a solo album under the moniker Nikolai, called The Time of the Assassins.

• 3:04:57Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 3:04:58Yasi Salek?

  This is something I remember really well, which was that Fab was living in LA, because I would see him around all the time at various bars, and he was dating Binky Shapiro. And along with Rodrigo Amorante, they made a band called Little Joy after the bar.

• 3:05:11Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 3:05:12Yasi Salek?

  In Echo Park, and released a self titled album called Little Joy. Um, Little Joy is now like a very high end cocktail bar, but before it was like an absolutely disgusting piece of shit dive bar. Shortstop was always there, yeah. Not always, but definitely from when I was going out.

• 3:05:28Speaker 05

  I was always under the impression that it had some sort of Strokes like ownership.

• 3:05:33Yasi Salek?

  Little Joy?

• 3:05:33Speaker 05

  Yeah. But it was just that Fab dated someone.

• 3:05:36Speaker 04

  Greg Duley owns Shortstop.

• 3:05:38Yasi Salek?

  Greg Duley owns the Shortstop.

• 3:05:39Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:05:40Speaker 04

  No, I was saying like, maybe that was what you were thinking.

• 3:05:41Speaker 05

  No, I, I, I know what that means to you. And Shortstop is important to me, but I always thought that Little Joy, but maybe it's just that was the connection and that got passed down to me. I was wrong.

• 3:05:52Yasi Salek?

  Or learned by George Tobata.

• 3:05:54Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:05:55Yasi Salek?

  I don't know.

• 3:05:56Speaker 05

  I haven't been to either place since the pandemic.

• 3:05:58Yasi Salek?

  A mythology place. Okay. Julian got sober in 2009 and put out his solo album.

• 3:06:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:06:05Yasi Salek?

  Phrases with a Z for the young.

• 3:06:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:06:10Yasi Salek?

  I quite like that.

• 3:06:11Speaker 04

  The title or the album?

• 3:06:13Speaker 05

  This is an absolute classic in my home. This is so out of the blue. The opening track is so meaningful.

• 3:06:20Yasi Salek?

  Color me surprised.

• 3:06:22Speaker 04

  I liked it.

• 3:06:23Speaker 05

  You know what? It's fine. It's just not.

• 3:06:25Speaker 04

  I liked it. I just had, it just never was a part of my life.

• 3:06:28Yasi Salek?

  Me neither, until, like I said, two weeks ago.

• 3:06:30Speaker 05

  This could just like every few years, we're just like, oh, it's like Julian solo season again. And then it's like all Zach and I are listening to.

• 3:06:37Yasi Salek?

  That's beautiful.

• 3:06:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's really.

• 3:06:39Yasi Salek?

  Eleventh Dimensions a fucking track.

• 3:06:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, of course.

• 3:06:43Yasi Salek?

  Of course, the apocalypse. This is really good. Should've paid attention. Was busy.

• 3:06:46Speaker 05

  Is Eleventh Dimension is, is I got a mind for the banks, right? I need to go somewhere new fast.

• 3:06:51Yasi Salek?

  He's still got it.

• 3:07:01Yasi Salek?

  He does an interview with The Guardian about it.

• 3:07:04Yasi Salek?

  And they are like,

• 3:07:09Yasi Salek?

  they're asking about the song Out of the Blue.

• 3:07:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, which is my favorite. It's meaningful to me.

• 3:07:14Yasi Salek?

  They interpreted it as like a sort of, of being about the Strokes.

• 3:07:20Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 3:07:20Yasi Salek?

  Being about frustration and sadness around the Strokes. And they said, Julian, however, does not want to deal with specifics. Quote, "It's about situations where you think nothing good will come. You feel stuck in a bad place. But I don't want to say it's about anyone in particular. Why? What would you like me to say?" And the person's like, that it's a seething rant about hating the Strokes. Julian says, "I have to go play music with them next week." It'd be like, hey, so you hate me? But the whole point of that song and those feelings is that those feelings are useless. They just turn pain on to yourself. And the guy was like, well, did you not just want to pull the look, guys? I wrote, is this it? So let me do what the hell I want card. Julian said, "For the band to really work, I need them to feel happy and creative." And this is the album where they all start writing.

• 3:08:05Speaker 04

  Ingles.

• 3:08:05Yasi Salek?

  Ingles. Uh, he said also about this album, "I want Finn Lizzie style Kung Fu rock with cool eighties melodies, but it'll, there's only a 20% chance it will be like that." Do you think that's what it sounds like?

• 3:08:19Speaker 04

  It sounds like a bunch of different guys trying a bunch of different stuff.

• 3:08:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:22Speaker 04

  And the place where it all comes together on Undercover of Darkness is my favorite Strokes song.

• 3:08:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's so interesting.

• 3:08:31Speaker 04

  And that, that's my favorite Strokes song, or that it comes together?

• 3:08:34Yasi Salek?

  That it's your favorite Strokes song. Yeah.

• 3:08:36Speaker 04

  Uh, and I remember for some reason, seeing them play this on Jules Holland, um, like on Dailymotion or something like early streaming video and just being like, that's as good as anyone's ever sounded. Julian's wearing skintight selvage with giant neon high tops. And, uh, they just, they burned through the song. They all seemed to be delighted with each other. I think Albert seems pretty healthy in this video.

• 3:09:17Yasi Salek?

  I don't know when it was, but during the making of this album, he was absolutely a five shoots to the wind.

• 3:09:20Speaker 04

  Yes. Is this the one where he's like, the condition to make this record was that I had to go to rehab?

• 3:09:27Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 3:09:27Speaker 04

  Okay. Well, in any case, they seemed delighted with each other in the video.

• 3:09:31Yasi Salek?

  Yes. It's during the making of that they're like, you literally have to go to rehab.

• 3:09:38Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:09:38Yasi Salek?

  And he's like, okay, sorry.

• 3:09:41Speaker 04

  He goes to rehab for like three months.

• 3:09:42Yasi Salek?

  And then they're good. Yeah.

• 3:09:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:09:43Speaker 04

  Uh, anyway.

• 3:09:44Speaker 05

  Also, that song, So Long, My Friend, I'll Wait For You.

• 3:09:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:09:48Yasi Salek?

  That's beautiful. I also, I don't, I don't want to be misleading.

• 3:09:51Speaker 04

  Rap Genius is, or not Rap Genius, Genius is like, Julian, this song is about a man going to war. And I'm like, this song is by Albert.

• 3:09:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's very clear.

• 3:09:59Yasi Salek?

  A man going to war to fight his heroin addiction, my, the love of my life, Albert Hammond Jr. Um, I wanted to say like, I know, I think we kind of made it sound like the Strokes flopped in 2006 and no one cared anymore, but that's like actually not at all true. Like they're still headlining festivals like left and right.

• 3:10:16Speaker 04

  Sometimes there are sentences worse than death, though.

• 3:10:19Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 3:10:19Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? Like you could be.

• 3:10:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:21Speaker 04

  Successful but irrelevant.

• 3:10:23Yasi Salek?

  Yes. I think that's, I think they're, they're borderline like a legacy act. Even in a very small time, like they're headlining festivals because they're a name draw, because they were one of the last bands to emerge before the monoculture collapsed. That was able to become really big.

• 3:10:37Speaker 05

  But they're still being trotted out to play last night and someday.

• 3:10:41Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 3:10:41Speaker 05

  They're from their first album, like at the, at the very end.

• 3:10:44Speaker 04

  And you're like, damn, that was five years ago. Like how is this being treated like rumors? Yeah.

• 3:10:49Yasi Salek?

  The guys that produced Ingles, another, another situation where they started with one guy called Joe Chigarelli, who recorded and mixed Icky Thump by The White Stripes. Um, they did 18 demos with him, but without Julian. Julian was like, am I? And then they were like, no, we don't like you. Also Julian's not here. This is weird. Um, so they only kept one song from that, Life is Simple in the Moonlight. And then the rest was produced by this guy, Guy Oberg, who is a Swedish music producer, who really kind of randomly came into the mix because he was the producer of Albert Hammond Jr.'s two solo albums. But he did the Moby album Hotel.

• 3:11:31Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 3:11:31Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:11:32Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 3:11:33Speaker 05

  Um, I realized, I've listened to this album a lot, which, but.

• 3:11:39Yasi Salek?

  Have you?

• 3:11:40Speaker 05

  I've heard a lot of tracks from this album. They are at this point, even in the House of Amanda, a tracks band and not a full album.

• 3:11:48Speaker 04

  Do you like Under the Cover, Undercover Darkness?

• 3:11:49Speaker 05

  I love it. And I like, but it's like, but I still have a relationship to these songs.

• 3:11:55Yasi Salek?

  I'm under, do you have a minute to talk about Undercover of Darkness?

• 3:11:58Speaker 05

  But like five or six of these, I'm like, oh yeah, it's this one.

• 3:12:02Speaker 04

  Games is good.

• 3:12:03Speaker 05

  Machu Picchu, I've heard a bunch of times.

• 3:12:05Speaker 04

  Two Kinds of Happiness is good.

• 3:12:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. So I listened to a lot of them.

• 3:12:08Yasi Salek?

  Two Kinds of Happiness is the Cars. That is a Cars song.

• 3:12:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, it's great. I like it. I love it.

• 3:12:23Speaker 05

  I'm looking at this track list right now and the runtime is 34 minutes total, which is surprising to me because in my head and even listening to these songs feel so much longer than all the is this it songs, even though they're like, we, we have the measurements here.

• 3:12:39Speaker 04

  I know what you mean.

• 3:12:39Speaker 05

  They're not, but there is something about.

• 3:12:42Speaker 04

  I feel that more acutely on all the albums after, where I'm like, holy shit, is this song five minutes long?

• 3:12:48Speaker 05

  Yeah. It's something like every once in a while they are.

• 3:12:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they're so dynamic. I think they are so dynamic. So you're kind of like, oh wow, I'm really going on a journey here with this song. It feels longer while you're just like on those like ditties on Is This It? You're like, fuck's over already? I want it to be 10 minutes long.

• 3:13:04Speaker 04

  A good indication of this is like, you know, you'd mentioned when we were talking about is this it is like, no, no guitar solos for the sake of guitar solos. There's a long guitar solo in Undercover of Darkness.

• 3:13:14Yasi Salek?

  Well, you let Albert Hammond out of his cage and he's doing just fine, babe. And he's gonna fucking.

• 3:13:18Speaker 04

  That's Nick.

• 3:13:21Yasi Salek?

  Yep. Great. What about the Ceeley Dan song? This is really in the air. Nobody's like, nobody said anything.

• 3:13:30Speaker 05

  Sure. I see. I now, I didn't say it to myself, but I hear what you're saying.

• 3:13:43Yasi Salek?

  Nothing right. It's, it's a, it's a

• 3:13:44Speaker 05

  We're all learning and growing.

• 3:13:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's, that is, oh, you're being

• 3:13:51Yasi Salek?

  I, I quite, actually, I'm, I'll quite like this album.

• 3:13:54Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 3:13:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like

• 3:13:55Speaker 04

  I think I enjoy listening to it more than first impressions.

• 3:13:58Yasi Salek?

  Well, yeah, in fairness, I experienced it in a very truncated period of time of like, and having, and I was like, oh, thank God, that's over. And now it's this, you know?

• 3:14:06Speaker 05

  But my emotional journey of listening back through all of them chronologically was, this was an upswing from first impressions, for sure.

• 3:14:12Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent. I, I like, listen, I love, You're So Right is so weird. I think Julian said he thought it had an early R E M vibe. It sounds like suicide to me.

• 3:14:21Speaker 04

  Really?

• 3:14:28Yasi Salek?

  I like Taken for a Fool. It's like, it's like a classic catchy sad Julian Casablanca's moment. Um, Call Me Back is really pretty and sad.

• 3:14:36Speaker 04

  This comes out in two thousand

• 3:14:37Yasi Salek?

  Two thousand and eleven.

• 3:14:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:14:40Yasi Salek?

  Interesting time for music.

• 3:14:42Speaker 05

  This is the same, so they do M S G the same week as, or they do it the weekend after the, um, L C D takeover?

• 3:14:54Speaker 04

  Really?

• 3:14:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think so. Aren't they, and I, and I didn't go to L C D. I went to the Strokes at Madison Square Garden.

• 3:14:59Speaker 04

  Do you regret it?

• 3:15:01Speaker 05

  A little bit, but also then L C D came back and so did the Strokes and nothing is over and everything.

• 3:15:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I went to the first

• 3:15:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:15:08Yasi Salek?

  L C D.

• 3:15:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, but they

• 3:15:10Yasi Salek?

  Retirement tour as well, pretty much at the same time.

• 3:15:13Speaker 04

  Right. I don't remember any narrative around this record, other than the other guys are writing songs now and everybody being like, turns out Julian, it should be Julian.

• 3:15:22Yasi Salek?

  You're kind of our man on the streets, though, in terms of music media. Like, what's happening?

• 3:15:28Speaker 04

  There is no music media, really. I mean, like, I don't know. I mean, like, I think eleven is when I started working for Grantland.

• 3:15:33Yasi Salek?

  Eleven is like, peak Pitchfork, maybe, right?

• 3:15:36Speaker 05

  Ryan Dombel gave it a five point nine.

• 3:15:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, and they, they moved on to Arcade Fire or whatever.

• 3:15:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like, it's not Strokes, it's like Toon Yards. Like, we're in like a totally like weird no man's land. Like, it's about to be, I guess we are, I mean, we kind of, Bon Iver comes out this year. Like, it's a whole, and then in like mainstream rock, you're still Foo Fighters, Coldplay, Black Keys.

• 3:16:01Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 3:16:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. I just remember a feeling of like, what do we do with these guys now?

• 3:16:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:06Speaker 04

  You know, like, there's, there's been probably a craving over the last ten years, fifteen years to be like, designate an album of The Strokes are fucking back. And I think that's probably New Abnormal.

• 3:16:18Speaker 05

  That's the one that has adults are talking?

• 3:16:20Speaker 04

  But, yeah.

• 3:16:20Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 3:16:21Speaker 05

  So this comes out early two thousand and eleven, and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is the end of two thousand and ten. So like, that's what was happening, right? Like that, and that's what I remember. And everyone trying to get to, like, it wasn't, did you go to the L C D at M S G show? It's, did you go to the secret show where they played?

• 3:16:38Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 3:16:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:16:39Speaker 04

  Who can say? John, probably.

• 3:16:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. John, clear, clear as a bell, remembers everything, kept a journal. Um, yeah, I, again, delighted to hear this album. Was, was just happy that they found something.

• 3:16:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:16:55Yasi Salek?

  Also, it's, it's different. It's different in not, like, I feel like First Impressions was like, okay, different to what end? You know, like, this is not, didn't make it any better. It's just like, well, this was like, okay, I could see like, some of your freak flag that was like hiding in a little bit of the first album was able to really fly.

• 3:17:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:17:16Yasi Salek?

  You know? Then we get into twenty thirteen, which is Come Down Machine.

• 3:17:25Yasi Salek?

  It's also worth pointing out that the Arctic Monkeys have already come out and sort of like absolutely annihilated The Strokes, in terms of like

• 3:17:32Speaker 04

  They're on like Humbug by now?

• 3:17:33Yasi Salek?

  In two thousand and thirteen, they're on A M.

• 3:17:35Speaker 04

  See, this is the thing, is that that's a perfect example of a band that speedruns the kind of career that the N M E and, and all these musician, music press places like adore, because it's like, ah, now they've slowed things down and become kind of lounge, you know?

• 3:17:50Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely evolve. I mean, they're a band that was always interested in

• 3:17:53Speaker 04

  The Strokes kind of evolve in this like happenstance way

• 3:17:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:17:57Speaker 04

  later in their career.

• 3:17:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but, I mean, they're just such different bands. Arctic Monkeys wrote together. You know, they weren't like, they're just kind of a more classical example of a rock band. I still have to Google every single time to remember which ones they are and whether Keira Knightley married an Arctic Monkey or a Klaxon. She married a Klaxon.

• 3:18:16Speaker 04

  Alexa Chung married

• 3:18:17Yasi Salek?

  With love and respect in my heart. They didn't get married, but yeah.

• 3:18:20Speaker 05

  Well, see, but this is, this is, but this is what they operate in my

• 3:18:24Yasi Salek?

  Gun in my mouth. I couldn't name a Klaxon song, could you?

• 3:18:26Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:18:27Speaker 04

  There's like a big one. It's like, a Time for Heroes or something.

• 3:18:30Yasi Salek?

  Okay. If you say so.

• 3:18:32Speaker 04

  But that also might be a different band.

• 3:18:35Yasi Salek?

  The Libertines.

• 3:18:37Speaker 04

  That's Time for Heroes?

• 3:18:37Yasi Salek?

  That's right.

• 3:18:38Speaker 04

  What's the biggest Klaxon song?

• 3:18:40Yasi Salek?

  Golden Scans, Magic with a K.

• 3:18:44Speaker 04

  Anyway, yeah.

• 3:18:45Yasi Salek?

  Whether it happened

• 3:18:46Speaker 04

  Your, your point is really well taken, though, that Arctic Monkeys are, like, the, this new Strokes today.

• 3:18:54Yasi Salek?

  Of all the seed that The Strokes spread, uh, this went the furthest and is now, I mean, I think the biggest version, right? Would you not say of, even, they're bigger than The Killers, right?

• 3:19:06Speaker 04

  Arctic Monkeys?

• 3:19:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:19:07Speaker 04

  No.

• 3:19:08Speaker 05

  No.

• 3:19:08Yasi Salek?

  The, the Arctic Monkeys have more than eight

• 3:19:10Speaker 05

  Are we human? Or when is, are we human or are we dancer?

• 3:19:13Yasi Salek?

  More than eight billion

• 3:19:14Speaker 05

  When is that? That was, you remember it?

• 3:19:20Speaker 05

  That was human. What, when was that? That's two thousand and eight.

• 3:19:23Yasi Salek?

  It's a terrible song.

• 3:19:24Speaker 05

  Sure, of course it is. And but he's got like the feather epaulettes, like, you know?

• 3:19:28Yasi Salek?

  We can, I can, we can settle this debate right now.

• 3:19:31Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:19:32Yasi Salek?

  Arctic Monkeys have fifty five point eight million monthly listeners.

• 3:19:38Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:19:39Yasi Salek?

  The Killers have thirty six.

• 3:19:41Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 3:19:42Yasi Salek?

  Arctic Monkeys are massive. They sell like three nights of stadiums.

• 3:19:47Speaker 05

  But is this like, is this a big in the U K? Is this like a Robbie Williams thing?

• 3:19:51Yasi Salek?

  You can be huge in the U K and doesn't, it's not going to move the fucking needle to our point. It's an island of eight hundred people.

• 3:19:57Speaker 04

  I yield. You're, you're, you're

• 3:19:58Speaker 05

  Okay, you're right.

• 3:20:00Yasi Salek?

  That's just

• 3:20:01Speaker 05

  But Alexa Chung has moved on.

• 3:20:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Alexa Chung has moved on. She married, uh, Sandman.

• 3:20:06Speaker 04

  Adam Sandler?

• 3:20:07Yasi Salek?

  No, the man who played the titular role in the Netflix television series, The Sandman, which I loved quite a bit, that nobody else watched.

• 3:20:16Speaker 04

  You don't know The Strokes are basically going into like a

• 3:20:19Speaker 05

  Tom Sturridge, of course.

• 3:20:20Yasi Salek?

  Tom Sturridge, thank you.

• 3:20:21Speaker 04

  Of like, album tour hiatus.

• 3:20:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, which is what every band has to do. Doesn't have to, but eventually falls into the cadence of if you want to have a career, right? Like, you want to go on tour to make money. You, I don't know why they told people this. Do you think it's true? Like, you couldn't just tour.

• 3:20:40Speaker 04

  Maybe it's like they're, they're a little like, we don't just want to be a vintage act that goes around. I mean, like, would you rather be The Strokes and put out Reality Awaits? And then you go out and you tour and like a third of your set might be newer stuff, but then everybody gets the, the classics. Or L C D, who haven't put out anything since they retired, but tour all the time.

• 3:21:06Yasi Salek?

  I, I think bands should continue to put out music till they die, because I think that's like what an artist does.

• 3:21:12Yasi Salek?

  How, how I experience that as a fan, that's a different fucking story, but I, I believe in my heart that they should keep doing it.

• 3:21:19Speaker 04

  Do you have an opinion?

• 3:21:20Speaker 05

  I don't disagree with Yasi. I mean,

• 3:21:22Yasi Salek?

  We're gonna be podcasting from the grave.

• 3:21:25Speaker 05

  But I mean, you know, it does. If you're not making new stuff, then you do start to feel like the old mannequins that just like get ported around from place to place.

• 3:21:34Yasi Salek?

  It can hit. Like, we talked about this on the Interpol episode. The new Interpol album's good.

• 3:21:38Speaker 04

  Well, also, the new Abnormal winds up being, at least in terms of its streaming numbers, quite big.

• 3:21:44Yasi Salek?

  I mean, they captured a whole new generation, which we're gonna talk about when we get there. Come Down Machine, however, this is what Ian Cohen said in the Pitchfork review at the time, and I want to get your guys' take on it. He said, Come Down Machine accomplishes in thirty eight minutes what nearly a decade and a half of backlash and schadenfreude could not. Make The Strokes look like total nerds. At times, it feels like a mixtape The Strokes made for themselves. Eleven songs, eleven different genre experiments.

• 3:22:09Speaker 04

  It's incoherent to me.

• 3:22:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:22:12Speaker 04

  Do you like this record at all?

• 3:22:13Speaker 05

  I couldn't even make it through the, the re-listen.

• 3:22:16Speaker 04

  Weirdly, like, the bad songs are, are like tumors. Like, I'm just like, get this off.

• 3:22:22Yasi Salek?

  It's real Tolstoy hours, right? It's every happy family is the same, but every unhappy family is just different in an increasingly egregious and terrible way. Um, yeah, my first note, because I write my notes in real time while I'm listening, is, was definitely not expecting this to sound like this.

• 3:22:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:22:40Yasi Salek?

  It's not good.

• 3:22:42Speaker 05

  I don't mind One Way Trigger.

• 3:22:43Yasi Salek?

  And that's also the Bach. That's like where, like, I studied Bach for a million, because that's the Right?

• 3:22:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, and that's the one where he does falsetto.

• 3:22:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:22:52Speaker 05

  Which I'm like, okay, change it up, you know? Abraham and wrote this and after rehab.

• 3:23:06Yasi Salek?

  First acoustic guitar appearance on a Strokes.

• 3:23:09Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:23:10Yasi Salek?

  That's all I got for you. No one liked it. Uh, poorly reviewed.

• 3:23:16Yasi Salek?

  Not great sales.

• 3:23:17Speaker 05

  Just kinda like went away.

• 3:23:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, commercially much quieter. I mean, Come Down Machine is very nominative determinism.

• 3:23:23Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:23:24Yasi Salek?

  Like, don't name your album Come Down Machine.

• 3:23:27Yasi Salek?

  Okay, we'll just shoot right past that. Um, in 2014, The Strokes performed their first United States show in three years at the Capitol Theater in Portchester, New York. And then they did Governor's Ball and FYF in LA. Um, I saw them at that FYF.

• 3:23:45Speaker 05

  This is also when Julian started a feud with my husband, Zach Baron.

• 3:23:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, this is when I remember seeing, okay, in fairness, I was quite drunk, but I remember seeing Julian backstage, like, and it was really sad. He was just sitting alone. Like, in like, remember he went through this like a stranger vest?

• 3:24:02Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:24:03Yasi Salek?

  Like, like biker vest.

• 3:24:04Speaker 05

  I do remember. I remember the vest. Yeah.

• 3:24:06Yasi Salek?

  And he just like, you know, it was a little big lasagna hours and I was just like, saw him, a sad, broken, alone man. And I was like, the mighty have fallen.

• 3:24:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. And what was like the sort of kernel of their beef?

• 3:24:19Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah. What did they beef about?

• 3:24:21Speaker 05

  So I believe that Zach did a GQ piece for him as an, an avoids album, which I,

• 3:24:27Speaker 04

  I remember that.

• 3:24:28Speaker 05

  I don't recognize.

• 3:24:29Yasi Salek?

  You're gonna have to.

• 3:24:30Speaker 05

  And.

• 3:24:31Yasi Salek?

  When we get further in this.

• 3:24:32Speaker 05

  And like, we still lived in New York, but they came to LA to hang out and they like, had to play soccer together or something. And Julian said to him, do you sport? Anyway, that's like, that, that was the phrase. Yeah. And like Zach also knew, I was a huge Strokes fan and a huge Julian fan. Um, and we weren't married yet. So in the GQ piece, he says something about, how, why Julian says he left New York. Here's the quote, "I don't know how many people like, what, I don't know how many like white people having brunch I can deal with on a Saturday afternoon."

• 3:25:05Speaker 04

  Came to the right place in Los Angeles.

• 3:25:06Speaker 05

  And then this gets aggregated. And so then Julian gets asked about that in a Daily Beast interview about a month later. And he says, "God, that quote, people are mad about it. It's so true, but I guess you can't say it." "That GQ reporter was bogus anyway. He was a total part of the problem yuppie guy." "He was a very nice guy, but I was talking about when I dropped out of high school and I went to study music and he had this weird, scary, shallow grin thing going on and then said, oh, I didn't realize that until my last year at Harvard." "And we were talking about current political stuff. It went over his head." Julian really came for Zach. And then,

• 3:25:49Speaker 05

  this got aggregated some more by Stereo Gum, who happened to be friends with Zach. And then Julian hasn't done anything yet, left since. So.

• 3:25:58Yasi Salek?

  It's your move, Julian, is what you mean.

• 3:26:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:26:01Speaker 04

  I think he's gotta go on.

• 3:26:03Speaker 05

  I actually really want him to, and I want him to, yeah.

• 3:26:06Speaker 04

  Smoke the peace pipe. Yeah.

• 3:26:08Yasi Salek?

  Sounds like a tough interview.

• 3:26:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. But what I remember is that I saw this and I email, I, it was still when you like emailed the person you were dating at work, while you were at work.

• 3:26:17Yasi Salek?

  You guys didn't have G chat?

• 3:26:18Speaker 05

  Zach never G chatted. An interesting thing about him. Did he G chat with you?

• 3:26:22Speaker 04

  No.

• 3:26:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, he, he was above that. He's sort of like, I had to bring him to, he wanted to call you on the phone. It was very upsetting.

• 3:26:28Yasi Salek?

  It's a great sign. I love that. It's a dream.

• 3:26:31Speaker 05

  But, but then.

• 3:26:32Yasi Salek?

  I raw dog call Chris Ryan all the time. Does he pick up?

• 3:26:35Speaker 05

  That's.

• 3:26:35Yasi Salek?

  50%.

• 3:26:36Speaker 05

  Okay. This, this podcast is, this is generational and I think this is what we're learning. Uh, but I remember emailing him being like, oh, like this is hilarious. This is so funny. And he was like, I honestly didn't know whether you were gonna pick me or Julian in this. And, and I picked Zach.

• 3:26:52Speaker 04

  For life.

• 3:26:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, maybe if the voids record had been better, but it wasn't. It sucked. I don't want anything to do with that. Do we have to talk about it?

• 3:26:58Yasi Salek?

  No, just, we're gonna talk about it abstractly as it, as it applies to further Strokes albums.

• 3:27:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:27:04Yasi Salek?

  Um, if you were gonna pick 2014 Julian over Zach, that's like a real wellness check, cry for help situation.

• 3:27:11Speaker 05

  Listen, but that just speaks to.

• 3:27:12Yasi Salek?

  I, we know, we stand Zach Baron here. My birthday, that's my guy.

• 3:27:16Speaker 05

  I was into the Strokes, but I was more into Zach. So that worked out.

• 3:27:20Yasi Salek?

  It's romantic.

• 3:27:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:27:21Yasi Salek?

  All right.

• 3:27:22Speaker 04

  2014 FYF, Julian's wearing vests.

• 3:27:25Yasi Salek?

  His dad had died, by the way. That's kind of important, probably for his personal trajectory in, I think, 2013. Okay, so 2016 is the next Strokes release. It's future, present, past. It's simply an EP. Do you remember this?

• 3:27:39Speaker 04

  I do remember this.

• 3:27:40Yasi Salek?

  On Cult, he started his label Cult Records.

• 3:27:42Speaker 04

  And also I think if I remember correctly, although lots of stuff is happening in 2016.

• 3:27:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Busy, busy year for us.

• 3:27:49Speaker 04

  But this is like, ooh, are the Strokes gonna go back to this kind of like grassroots? Like, we're putting our own shit out. We're, we're the boys.

• 3:27:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:27:58Speaker 04

  And it didn't really, there's like two songs or three songs and a fab remix of a song.

• 3:28:02Yasi Salek?

  Oblivious Moretti remix.

• 3:28:04Speaker 04

  And it feels like there's like this tension of like Julian spelling words wrong.

• 3:28:09Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 3:28:09Speaker 04

  You know, but what is, what is a two guitar band do and a synthy group and all this stuff?

• 3:28:14Yasi Salek?

  It's also like, I mean, we're 15 years out.

• 3:28:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, these guys have, have been married, gone to rehab.

• 3:28:24Yasi Salek?

  Checking for a band that is trying to come back. I don't remember this even coming, coming out.

• 3:28:30Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 3:28:31Yasi Salek?

  Zero memory of this. Um, the next album is The New Abnormal in 2020. It's cra- it's crazy how it just snuck up on us. It's just all of a sudden.

• 3:28:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:28:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:28:42Speaker 05

  They, they tend to coordinate their album releases with really important world events.

• 3:28:48Yasi Salek?

  Directory and global pandemic.

• 3:28:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:28:50Yasi Salek?

  Um, they also didn't do a ton of press, is, which is why I didn't have a lot to read in between. I want to ask before we get into this, cause I was just curious.

• 3:28:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:28:59Yasi Salek?

  What is your guys' most like memorable or impactful COVID album? Cause we were up in the house a lot listening to music and I remember there were several releases during that time.

• 3:29:12Speaker 04

  I don't know that I have one off the top of my head. I have styles of music that I got back into. Like, I just started really watching a lot of like hardcore videos on YouTube. Cause I missed people.

• 3:29:23Yasi Salek?

  Sure. You wanted to be up in the pit.

• 3:29:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:29:24Yasi Salek?

  Um, I have two. Phoebe Bridgers put out, uh, Punisher, like right around here. I listen to it all the time. Yeah. And Charlie's pandemic era album, How I'm Feeling Now, was like my favorite Charlie album up until that point. Like, had Detonate on it, has Party For You.

• 3:29:43Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:29:44Yasi Salek?

  Um, I remember them really well, cause, and also, didn't the Heim album come out right around that time too? That The Women in LA or Three or whatever, Part Three? Um, that's not what it's called, but you know, you know what I'm talking about?

• 3:29:56Speaker 04

  I do know that.

• 3:29:56Speaker 05

  Yes. But I don't.

• 3:29:59Speaker 04

  But that's not.

• 3:30:00Yasi Salek?

  I just had, I felt like I really remember the, every other time I was too outside to remember particularly new releases, but

• 3:30:07Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 3:30:07Yasi Salek?

  I was just so up in the house that I remember listening to these albums over and over and over again. Okay. Well, the new album, Normal, came out about three and a half smooth weeks after lockdown.

• 3:30:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:30:18Speaker 05

  Great.

• 3:30:18Yasi Salek?

  It's April 10th, 2020.

• 3:30:20Speaker 04

  And this is a, lockdown was something that Julian Casablanca's had a lot of opinions about.

• 3:30:27Yasi Salek?

  Sure did. Sure did. Him and, uh, the guy from The Stone Roses.

• 3:30:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:30:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:30:35Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 3:30:36Yasi Salek?

  This was produced by Rick Rubin.

• 3:30:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:30:38Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:30:39Speaker 04

  And recorded in like, it's like Maui, Malibu.

• 3:30:43Yasi Salek?

  And.

• 3:30:43Speaker 04

  And all over LA.

• 3:30:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Do you feel like all roads lead to Rick Rubin if you're in a rock band?

• 3:30:51Speaker 04

  I think it's probably a rite of passage. I really, I really can't speak to what he brings to the projects though.

• 3:30:57Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I don't, I don't have an opinion. It's just, it is funny that like, I do this so much that like, it's like.

• 3:31:02Speaker 05

  At some point.

• 3:31:03Speaker 04

  It's weird. Like, what does he do for Johnny Cash and The Strokes and the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

• 3:31:08Speaker 05

  I mean, you reach a certain point in your.

• 3:31:10Speaker 04

  Create a vibe.

• 3:31:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. In your career and you need to reset with someone in, in Malibu and in Hawaii. Maybe, maybe it's, it's a real estate issue. Access to.

• 3:31:24Yasi Salek?

  Shangri-La does seem very beautiful. I thought The New Abnormal was a pretty prescient title, given.

• 3:31:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:31:31Yasi Salek?

  What, what transpired. Um, this is a divorce album. Can we agree?

• 3:31:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:31:37Yasi Salek?

  Cause this is basically the first album that comes out post divorce.

• 3:31:40Speaker 05

  Post Julian's divorce.

• 3:31:42Yasi Salek?

  Julian's divorce.

• 3:31:42Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:31:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:31:44Speaker 05

  It's definitely a, a dad, like an old person album.

• 3:31:48Yasi Salek?

  You, do you love this album?

• 3:31:49Speaker 05

  I like it.

• 3:31:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:31:51Speaker 05

  Um, I mean, The Adults Are Talking is a great song, the perfect song title. And also like why we're all here today, because Chris had never heard it.

• 3:31:59Yasi Salek?

  I had never heard it. I had no idea what color, color me surprised when I went over here to the Spotify application.

• 3:32:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:32:07Yasi Salek?

  Pulled up The Strokes and what is the number one most streamed Strokes songs?

• 3:32:11Speaker 04

  Uh, Adults Are Talking.

• 3:32:12Yasi Salek?

  Adults Are Talking.

• 3:32:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:32:13Speaker 05

  Why is that? Was it used in something?

• 3:32:15Yasi Salek?

  Oh, TikTok. Yeah.

• 3:32:16Speaker 05

  I don't.

• 3:32:17Speaker 04

  I think, I mean, like.

• 3:32:18Speaker 05

  I think it does also.

• 3:32:19Speaker 04

  This album did very well though.

• 3:32:20Speaker 05

  When you add it on Instagram to a story, you know, it, it has The Strokes, The Adults Are Talking, which is just like a very funny visual joke. That can be, you know, like you don't even need.

• 3:32:31Yasi Salek?

  You think it had like sort of like a mobility thing?

• 3:32:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, I do, I do. Um, but like, I think Jack Sanders, who's a huge, our big pick producer and a huge fan of this album.

• 3:32:41Yasi Salek?

  Shout out Jack.

• 3:32:41Speaker 05

  Has done that.

• 3:32:42Yasi Salek?

  Who is also 27 years old or something.

• 3:32:45Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, but he has like done that on our social media. So that's kinda how I know. And it's funny. It's good.

• 3:32:50Yasi Salek?

  I, I read something Stephen Hayden wrote, reporting live from the trenches of like 2026 Strokes show. And he was like, more than half the crowd was like under the age of 30.

• 3:33:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:33:02Yasi Salek?

  Is that not a little shocking?

• 3:33:04Speaker 04

  Well, it's to your point about the weirdness of doing a band's plane about something that you've experienced firsthand.

• 3:33:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:33:10Speaker 04

  This stuff cyclically is coming all back around. They just put a record out.

• 3:33:13Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 3:33:14Speaker 04

  And we're starting to get like 20, 25 year anniversaries of some of this stuff. So that would be kids of people who might've been around for The Strokes.

• 3:33:25Yasi Salek?

  So you think someone's dad was like, sit down, son, here's, is this it?

• 3:33:28Speaker 04

  I think that's possible. I also think just algorithmically, it's just gotten like back into the mix, you know?

• 3:33:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:33:34Speaker 05

  Okay. I guess it, it's 25 years. I didn't realize that until right now that you programmed this for 25 years of is this it?

• 3:33:40Yasi Salek?

  Didn't do that on purpose?

• 3:33:42Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:33:42Yasi Salek?

  Simply don't work that way, but.

• 3:33:44Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 3:33:44Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it's this month?

• 3:33:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, because it finally, it got delayed. Oh, we're in September right now.

• 3:33:49Speaker 04

  It's actually two days ago, three days ago.

• 3:33:51Speaker 05

  Yeah. Wow, look at that. Look at you.

• 3:33:55Yasi Salek?

  It's all being tapped in. Twenty-five years ago.

• 3:33:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:34:00Yasi Salek?

  Wow. They asked Julian.

• 3:34:02Speaker 04

  So if you would've gotten Prego right after that.

• 3:34:05Yasi Salek?

  Prego. Yeah. Yeah.

• 3:34:07Speaker 04

  Your kid would be like, Mom.

• 3:34:09Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 3:34:09Speaker 04

  Is this it? Like, right now? He'd probably be like, I'm into rock.

• 3:34:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. He still is I'm Into Rock by piece four. Yeah. I said this on another one of the episodes, but I still think it's kind of insane. I'm sorry that I keep saying it. It's just to make myself feel old, but that if this was 1991 and we had just heard Nirvana, 25 years ago was The Beatles. Is that not crazy? Yeah.

• 3:34:39Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:34:39Yasi Salek?

  That 25 years ago is now The Strokes.

• 3:34:41Speaker 04

  This is the slow cancellation.

• 3:34:43Yasi Salek?

  Of time. Yeah. Although, someone brought up to me that what's that physics theory about how time is actually getting, is it slower or faster?

• 3:34:53Speaker 04

  It's faster, right? Probably faster.

• 3:34:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:34:54Speaker 04

  Doesn't feel slower.

• 3:34:58Yasi Salek?

  What? Why is it getting faster? Physics. I can't. Is it like string theory?

• 3:35:06Speaker 04

  Oh, I didn't know that. I thought it would be the ways in which we interpret reality.

• 3:35:10Yasi Salek?

  No, no. It's apparently something, is time really speeding up? I'm on r backslash ask physics. Um, in summary, the claim is that there's been an increase in the Earth's pulse or Schumann resonance.

• 3:35:22Speaker 04

  Schumann's resonance. There's like a whole theory about that.

• 3:35:24Yasi Salek?

  Time perception on Earth, making time speed up. And now 24 hours is now 16 hours? I mean.

• 3:35:32Speaker 04

  That's crazy, dog.

• 3:35:33Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if it's true. I'm just, I'm positing theories. Okay, then they're saying that it's the reason why time appears past faster is a direct result of your age. This is a subjective effect.

• 3:35:45Speaker 04

  Cause when you're 10.

• 3:35:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Yeah. I get it. You've lived more. Okay.

• 3:35:50Speaker 04

  Any other tracks on?

• 3:35:51Yasi Salek?

  But then there's some, like, then Emergency Bad 8920 says, actually, no, Earth is spinning faster now. Six minutes faster since March, actually. And actually, it's capitalized. Until I have time.

• 3:36:03Speaker 04

  You do technically, yes. Yes.

• 3:36:05Yasi Salek?

  The LA Times asked Julian if he likes this album, and he said, you know, yes. And then they were like, how do you think of this record in relation to The Strokes' other albums? And he was like, I don't. And the guy was like, listen, I'm not asking you to rank The Strokes' album. He's like, no, okay, I will. It's my fourth favorite.

• 3:36:19Speaker 04

  Okay. Yeah.

• 3:36:20Yasi Salek?

  And the guy was like, behind which three? And he goes, come on, indulge me. And Julian says, first two Strokes records, Strokes records, and then let's leave it a mystery. So he has a secret third album that he loves. Um.

• 3:36:33Speaker 04

  I wonder if he would picking, well, I wonder if he's like a weirdo and would say like, Come Down Machine is actually my third favorite.

• 3:36:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, maybe. Just to be like a contrarian. This album won a Grammy. Their first best rock album. Did they attend? I don't know.

• 3:36:47Speaker 04

  Cause during the bit, probably not.

• 3:36:50Yasi Salek?

  It was to the opinions. Everyone loved this review-wise, except for Pitchfork, who gave it a 5.7. Okay. They said it was sluggish and slight. I didn't think so. I think the one, I like this album. I do think the one thing you could potentially ding them for is that two of the songs are literally direct rip-offs of other songs.

• 3:37:11Speaker 04

  So Bad Decisions, Dancing With Myself.

• 3:37:14Yasi Salek?

  Dancing With Myself, and then Eternal Summer is The Ghost In You, Psychedelic Furs. Not the whole thing, but the vocal melody and the chorus. He even says, uses the word, not the entire thing, just part of it. Also, the songs are like, four minutes, five minutes plus.

• 3:37:29Speaker 04

  And when you get to minute three and a half and you're like, surely a blinding bridge or new melody will come along? It's just like, no, they just are repeating this for two more minutes? They say that's how Joe Rogan gets his pod numbers up. Just make the longest pod possible, you know?

• 3:37:43Yasi Salek?

  What are you saying?

• 3:37:43Speaker 04

  Like minutes spent? Oh, yeah, you also.

• 3:37:46Yasi Salek?

  What are you saying?

• 3:37:47Speaker 04

  No, everybody knows yours is an act of scholarship.

• 3:37:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Wow.

• 3:37:51Speaker 04

  If you came in here and you were just like, you know, Sarah, pull up The Strokes for me. Let me see that. That's what Joe Rogan likes, you know?

• 3:38:00Yasi Salek?

  I say, Amanda, pull up that song thing here. Yeah, this is great. I think I see why people like adults are talking. It's good. New wave. It's a new wave song.

• 3:38:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:38:19Yasi Salek?

  Selfless is nice. I like a lot of this album because finally Julian's vocals are like actually quite upfront in the mixes.

• 3:38:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, I think this is probably like an extension of his solo stuff, maybe a little bit.

• 3:38:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:38:33Speaker 04

  Maybe the band is a little bit more like, we're just happy to be a part of it.

• 3:38:37Yasi Salek?

  Sure. Like, we made it this far.

• 3:38:39Speaker 04

  We all know.

• 3:38:39Yasi Salek?

  Right. Looks like we made it. That's what this is. I like At The Door a lot, too. I think it's very beautiful, very, uh,

• 3:38:49Yasi Salek?

  vulnerable.

• 3:38:50Speaker 04

  I'm sorry they didn't get to celebrate their Grammy.

• 3:38:52Yasi Salek?

  Do you think they would've cared to go?

• 3:38:55Speaker 04

  I don't know. I mean, for this band, it might've been a nice, like, capstone to be like, we actually did, like, we legged it out.

• 3:39:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but aren't you supposed to be like, we're too cool for the Grammys? Like, if it's in their whole.

• 3:39:07Speaker 04

  I've heard lots of stories of bands that you think would be too cool, being like, what our priority is to win the Grammy.

• 3:39:12Yasi Salek?

  To win a Grammy. Yeah. I mean, let's not, it all comes back to Jennifer Lopez being like, tearful that she didn't win a Golden Globe, you know? They care. Also, let's not forget that to win a Grammy, you have to try very hard.

• 3:39:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:39:24Yasi Salek?

  Like, you have to submit and pay money. And it's not just like, they chose us out of nowhere, you know? Right. Um, okay, so that, it's a big comeback, the new abnormal, would you say?

• 3:39:35Speaker 04

  I think statistically, it's a big comeback.

• 3:39:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but it does also go into the void of 2020 COVID, right? I don't remember it happening. Yeah. So, yeah. There you go.

• 3:39:45Speaker 04

  I will say that it does feel like, anecdotally, in the years since then.

• 3:39:49Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 3:39:49Speaker 04

  When you see, like, when you see them play, like, a big festival, there's a lot of like, oh, my God, The Strokes are, like, I get to see The Strokes.

• 3:39:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, as a great comparison point, you asked if I saw them at FYF in 2014, and I did. And I don't remember people having that reaction around it. As I saw them like two years, two, three years ago at Just Like Heaven, and it was like, they were the headliner and it was packed.

• 3:40:14Speaker 04

  Yes. This is kind of like what happened to Oasis. We're like, I remember seeing Oasis, like, played the theater at the Garden once, like, really at the end of the line.

• 3:40:24Yasi Salek?

  Like 2007 or something?

• 3:40:25Speaker 04

  And I was like, this is, these guys hate each other.

• 3:40:28Yasi Salek?

  Do you mean, do you mean the emphasis theater where Taylor Swift had her rehearsal dinner?

• 3:40:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:40:33Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 3:40:33Speaker 04

  And this is just like, this is not that great, you know? And now 20 years later, it's like, God is back.

• 3:40:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, and that is.

• 3:40:40Speaker 04

  But it does even.

• 3:40:40Yasi Salek?

  Time works. It does feel like, cause what's the Pasadena, what's the Rose Bowl Festival? So they, didn't they headline again this year?

• 3:40:48Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:40:49Yasi Salek?

  Right. And that was with LCD and.

• 3:40:52Speaker 04

  That was, yeah, I wasn't here, so I don't know, but.

• 3:40:55Yasi Salek?

  I think so. I do know the Rapture played. Yeah. Block Party played last year, and they were amazing. Well, this is what I'm saying, but it does, I mean, it does feel like it is nostalgia act. And it's like, I hear from my, you know, 40-year-old fellow mom friends being like, hey, should we go to this? And it's like, hello, old people. Here is your festival. But then they're touring these shows and playing for 30-year-olds. So like, I guess they kind of hacked it.

• 3:41:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:41:21Yasi Salek?

  They figured it out.

• 3:41:22Speaker 04

  I was listening, Ian from Military Gun has a great podcast, um, Push Down Turn. And he was talking about the most recent Strokes record in reverent terms, in a way that like, was foreign to like, the way I would talk about The Strokes. You know, like, I think, looking at them more as like, from a songwriter's perspective, but like, I think they hit another generation of people.

• 3:41:42Yasi Salek?

  It's, I mean, it's just like, kind of like we were talking about, like, the way, the way I grouped together, like, the 90s bands, and then like, my friend who lived it is like, are you insane? Like, those were this, and these were like, something that came after. That's how we probably feel about The Strokes, whereas these kids are like, it's all one thing. Like, these cool old bands are all one kind of cool old band, you know? Um, well, in 2026, they announced their seventh album. Reality awaits. Yeah.

• 3:42:14Speaker 04

  I gotta admit, it's, I feel bad, cause we're, you know, this is the last new Strokes music we'll talk about on this episode, and I did not care for this record at all.

• 3:42:22Yasi Salek?

  Me neither. Oh, me either.

• 3:42:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:42:24Yasi Salek?

  I've only listened to it two times. I honestly, like, I had to try multiple times. Like, I found it, like, impenetrable. Maybe because the first track is so, like, chest-out vocoder voice, and you're just like, oh, okay. I mean, it's called psycho shit, and maybe it's a real, like, well, if you can't take me at my psycho shit, you don't belong in the rest of this album. But it's, it's assaulting. It's rough. It's a rough hang, that song.

• 3:43:03Speaker 04

  I guess, respect that they're not ever like, we put together 10 sort of facsimiles of the first two records, although I would love to hear it.

• 3:43:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:43:14Speaker 04

  If they want to try.

• 3:43:15Speaker 05

  Consider it, yeah. Yeah. You have my attention, as opposed to this album where I've really found it hard to, to like, actually sit there and listen. I, you know, the, I didn't have the same skip instinct because I was listening to it for the first time, but I was driving around, like, focusing on many other things.

• 3:43:30Speaker 04

  Like, why do I have a rage?

• 3:43:31Speaker 05

  And then when I was listening to it, I, I have such a vivid memory of this, because I, you guys go to shows all the time. You go to shows together. It's a beautiful part of your friendship and your life. I don't go to shows. Um, I, like, not even for kid reasons. I just don't really like doing it. And it's just never been a part of my thing. But I spent, like, an active five minutes during one of these songs, being like, so you go to this show and you're standing there in the, in the, in front of the stage and like, what are you doing while you listen to this? And I was like, trying to-

• 3:44:06Speaker 04

  For this specific music.

• 3:44:07Speaker 05

  For this specific music. I was like, sitting there, trying to imagine what one would do and what do you do at a rock show? And like, how are you moving your body? And what would be the point of going, driving all the way there and standing while these guys was kind of like, limply sat there, playing this weird shit?

• 3:44:25Yasi Salek?

  I wonder if the Strokes play in standing situations anymore, though.

• 3:44:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:44:32Yasi Salek?

  What, what level of room are they playing?

• 3:44:34Speaker 04

  Festivals.

• 3:44:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you're not, oh, okay, festivals. But I feel like, when they're touring, are they not playing seated, sort of?

• 3:44:40Speaker 04

  No, they would be playing, like, I don't know, the Kia Forum? Like, what would they play?

• 3:44:45Yasi Salek?

  The Kia Forum is seated.

• 3:44:46Speaker 04

  Parts of it are, but it's got a huge GA section.

• 3:44:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:44:49Speaker 04

  Do you think people are sitting, watching the Strokes, though?

• 3:44:52Yasi Salek?

  Maybe.

• 3:44:53Speaker 04

  In any case, your point is well taken.

• 3:44:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:44:55Speaker 04

  This is actually like, my, like, issue with modern festival culture is just the kind of like, we've decided that commercially and like, financially, this is the way that bands can make money, is for them all to hit all these festivals, but they just have no soul. Like, they, these things have no vibe whatsoever.

• 3:45:12Yasi Salek?

  It's not an ideal way to hear a band, for sure, because the, often the sound is-

• 3:45:17Speaker 04

  Going to watch a, a band with like, half the crowd is like, who are these guys? It's just so vibe, it's so awful.

• 3:45:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then, and then when it's not that instance, it's, you can't even barely breathe, because every single person at that festival is like, this is the headline or we all want to see it.

• 3:45:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:45:32Yasi Salek?

  You know? Yeah, this, this album's like, for me, a rough hang. Um, I don't mind Dine and Dash. A little surprised by the British accent that came in the-

• 3:45:41Speaker 05

  I knew I was in real trouble when the day after it was released, or maybe the week after, I, I went to Pilates and going shopping was in the Pilates mix. And I was like, oh, this is, this is not what you want.

• 3:45:56Speaker 04

  I'm not gonna achieve my personal best.

• 3:45:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:45:59Speaker 05

  And neither did the Strokes, you know? Like, the copy direct to Pilates playlist, unless you're the one Friday morning teacher who has good taste. It's not her.

• 3:46:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. That song is not good. That song is-

• 3:46:11Speaker 05

  And the, the music video is like, some weird meme video.

• 3:46:14Yasi Salek?

  Walton Goggins and their redoing You Can Call Me Out.

• 3:46:19Speaker 05

  No, it's a no for me.

• 3:46:20Yasi Salek?

  The song is, is like a takedown of consumerism.

• 3:46:23Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 3:46:23Yasi Salek?

  Which is misogynist.

• 3:46:27Yasi Salek?

  As far as I'm concerned.

• 3:46:27Speaker 04

  You think anti-consumerism is misogyny?

• 3:46:30Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I can't go to the mall anymore and buy my cute little things from Sephora?

• 3:46:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:46:34Speaker 04

  Why are you guys both looking at me like that? I didn't write that song.

• 3:46:39Speaker 04

  All I'm saying is, I don't like music festivals. You guys could go to Sephora all you want.

• 3:46:42Yasi Salek?

  What about the song where he comes for John Legend, Josh Groban, Anthony Fantano?

• 3:46:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:46:51Yasi Salek?

  Harry Styles?

• 3:46:51Speaker 04

  Those all seem like low hanging.

• 3:46:52Yasi Salek?

  I care about this one.

• 3:46:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:46:54Speaker 04

  Very strange targets.

• 3:46:55Speaker 05

  I mean, I did listen to it, but-

• 3:46:56Yasi Salek?

  Well, Harry Styles, I guess, famously copied, uh, the beat of Hard to Explain on his song As It Was.

• 3:47:01Speaker 04

  I don't think Julian should be casting his versions about anyone borrowing anything.

• 3:47:05Speaker 05

  Also, like, or also, it's just loser behavior. I don't really think that, that, he doesn't need to worry about As It Was.

• 3:47:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:47:14Speaker 05

  Like, I, like, I, I know both of those songs and Relax. I can't believe people listen to Harry Styles' music. I think he has quite the-

• 3:47:21Yasi Salek?

  I'm happy for him and Zoe Kravitz, but-

• 3:47:23Speaker 05

  Personal presence and it looks like a fun time that they're all having at the residency, but that is hotel lobby music.

• 3:47:32Yasi Salek?

  This whole, this album just sounds really neutered to me. It's just like, really a neutered sound that has none of like, it has none of like, the, the vibe of the first two, the warmth, like you were saying. It has none of the real, like, fun, weird experimentation of angles that actually has some, like, soul and looseness to it. It's just like, I'm like, I don't even know. I'll, I'll read two things about it and then we can just, like, wrap it up. But, because I thought they were really smart and better than anything I could say. So, Shad D'Souza, friend of the Pod, said in The Guardian, "Here's a sentence no old head Strokes fan wants to hear. To understand Reality Awaits, the stalwart NYC group's seventh album, you have to first understand the voids."

• 3:48:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:48:12Yasi Salek?

  And that's pretty perceptive. And I don't want to understand the voids, and therefore, I will just sit this one out.

• 3:48:19Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:48:20Yasi Salek?

  And I-

• 3:48:20Speaker 05

  Agree.

• 3:48:21Speaker 04

  Perhaps this is just where they've arrived, where it's like, Julian can't really get the voids on the level of the Strokes.

• 3:48:26Yasi Salek?

  So he's gonna make the Strokes into the voids. And then Eric Harvey said in Pitchfork, "Reality Awaits is both serious and weird, catchy and doomy. The sound of five guys in their 40s being TikTok rock stars while the world burns."

• 3:48:38Speaker 05

  Yeah. I guess that's true.

• 3:48:41Yasi Salek?

  The last bit, at least is.

• 3:48:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:48:44Yasi Salek?

  Quite spot on. And I guess we will, again, the last thing I'll say is, my last note here is, uh, liar's remorse. And I just put, sorry, what accent is this? What accent is this?

• 3:48:55Speaker 04

  That's your last note in the whole doc?

• 3:48:56Yasi Salek?

  Correct. Sorry, what accent is this? And we will leave it there.

• 3:49:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:49:01Yasi Salek?

  Um, you guys, thanks so much for doing this with me.

• 3:49:04Speaker 04

  Favorite Strokes record?

• 3:49:06Yasi Salek?

  Is this it?

• 3:49:07Speaker 05

  Is this it? Yeah.

• 3:49:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:49:09Speaker 05

  I mean, that's like, the, the lesson of this podcast and the tragedy of the Strokes is like, they hit it hard and fast and hot.

• 3:49:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:49:17Speaker 05

  33 minutes and like, already creating a nostalgia-

• 3:49:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:49:21Speaker 05

  -within it. And then, what else are you supposed to do? There's nothing else to do.

• 3:49:25Speaker 04

  Be on Tic Tac while the world burns.

• 3:49:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:49:27Yasi Salek?

  Favorite Strokes released piece of music?

• 3:49:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:49:31Yasi Salek?

  Julian Casablanca's All Try Anything Once Demo.

• 3:49:33Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 3:49:33Yasi Salek?

  Number one.

• 3:49:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:49:35Yasi Salek?

  Thanks again. Uh, thank you to Producer Rob, to Editor Adrian, to John Jones, to Sarah. Please come back next week for a new episode of Band Swing.

• 3:50:01Yasi Salek?

  Wow. I haven't really thought about my memory. And now it's...

• 3:50:12Speaker 06

  How to sell your car. First, go to carmax.com, then-

• 3:50:16Speaker 07

  Wow, this offer's great. But is this just an estimate?

• 3:50:19Speaker 06

  Nope. It's worth real money.

• 3:50:20Speaker 07

  Oh, I like that. Hold on. Is my phone gonna ring off the hook with sales calls now?

• 3:50:24Speaker 06

  Not at all. You have a week to think on it, pressure free.

• 3:50:27Speaker 07

  Okay, but then I have to drop it off?

• 3:50:29Speaker 06

  Or you can just schedule an at-home pickup.

• 3:50:32Speaker 07

  That is kind of amazing.

• 3:50:33Speaker 06

  Get a real offer today at carmax.com.

• 3:50:38Speaker 06

  Offers are good for seven days. At-home pickup not available in all locations. Distance restrictions and a fee may apply.

• 3:50:42Speaker 02

  In this life, you can't win.

• 3:50:44Speaker 07

  When the world gets you down.

• 3:50:45Speaker 02

  No!

• 3:50:46Speaker 07

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 3:50:47Speaker 02

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 3:50:49Speaker 07

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free. Shwing! Even our news is uplifting. You stay classy, San Diego. Watch School of Rock, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more. We're not worthy! The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.