Too Cool for School


I know you. You listen to your Cabaret Voltaire and your Beefheart, and you can't wait for your last check to clear so you can pick up the new Wolf Parade, post haste. Your pansexual busboy friend just burned you a copy of Nillson Schmillson, and you were really psyched about that Fela import you bought, even though you still haven't taken it out of the plastic. You are a cool, cool cat.

The Strokes? What about them? They blow, right? Yeah, I know. The Strokes! Ha!

I mean, at first they were cool. Back when nobody knew about them, you were a fan. Back in the days of skinny ties (before trucker caps even!), back during the summer of '01, when you would go and see their shows at the Mercury, or even before, when they were still playing dives like Arlene's.

Yeah, they were pretty good back then, right? But then they blew up, and it all went downhill after that. Their record came out, the teeny-boppers glommed on, you saw them out on Avenue A every other night--they just started to suck. And of course you found out about their silver-spoon backgrounds, about their parents (Jules's dad owns the Elite Modeling Agency, Albert's dad was a minor popstar in the '70s), and that just put it over the top. The Strokes were so over, so 2001. By the time your little sister put the Strokes poster up on her bedroom wall, it didn't even bother you. Am I right or am I right?

You are, as the French say, a douche.

I understand the concept of backlash and its inevitability (especially in the face of such blitzkrieg success), but come on! Aren't we all beyond that? Isn't it obvious that all backlashes are knee-jerk, mindless and dull? That anyone can look at a successful band and yawn dramatically and say, "Oh them? I'm soooo over them"?

Know what? I yawn at you. Yes, sir. I do yawn at you, sir. You are boring, and you are sheepish, and you can't deal with the fact that mainstream success does not have to be avoided. I know you've been brought up with this stupid indie mentality that popularity equals selling out, and that commercial failure equals artistic integrity, but that's crap. Commercial failure occasionally means your album just plain sucked, guy. Sorry, but it's the truth.

And the thing about their upbringing, about their rich parents and their adventures at Swiss boarding schools? Who cares? The debut is still the same thrilling one they put out before the circus began. It doesn't mean that "Someday" isn't one of the tightest, bounciest pieces of twitch-pop I’ve ever heard. It doesn't change the fact that when the chorus hits on "Hard To Explain," my chest swells to near-burst and I want to break a window with my forehead. Still! After four years of obsessive listening!

So the fact that Jules' dad owns a modeling agency really doesn't bother me, because Jules himself made a brilliant record. That's all that matters in the end. You've just got to be able to separate the work from its context. If it was a brilliant record, I don't care, I'd listen to "Uday and Qusay Sing The Hits": As long as it's a brilliant record, the context is meaningless.

Sure, people sell out all the time. They compromise their art for the sake of a record deal, or they gloss up their sound for the great Viacom-Universal-Bertelsmann-Clear Channel behemoth. Of course that happens, and of course it sucks, and when it does, those bands deserve all the righteous backlash we can muster.

But that didn't happen with The Strokes. They're the same band, but now they've sold a million records and they're international superstars. I think the only problem here, mon ami, is you, and your inability to think for yourself. Just because that design student you met at Max Fish tells you The Strokes suck, that doesn't make it so.

Their new record comes out next month; you should get over your hip self already and pick it up. And while you're at it, check out "My Funny Valentine," Uday's duet with Natalie Merchant. It's divine.

(Though of course it goes without saying that the "you" in this column is just a rhetorical device, and not actually you, my beloved reader. Wink, wink!)