#hipsters!

קצת כיף על הבוקר. נקווה שיהיה יום נחמד.

150 Favorite Songs: #71, "Someday," The Strokes (2001)

It's funny; I have a lot of things to say about The Strokes in 2013, which wasn't the case at all in 2001. Back then, it was just an album that I was told to hotly anticipate, which I did, because at that age I always anticipated the things that the magazines told me to even though I pretended I was exactly the opposite sort of person from those who did that. But you have to remember what a bleak time it was for rock and roll back then. The consolidation of radio meant that the dreams of the 90's were dead, and MTV still showed videos, but it was all TRL and boy-bands and pop starlets, if it wasn't Puddle of Mudd and Creed and Staind and those bands that mercilessly flogged what was left of grunge. There were not yet thriving Internet communities around music -- Pitchfork was still in its early days, and the closest someone with left-of-the-dial interests was likely to come in finding his or her own tastes represented in the mainstream culture was maybe hearing Jeff Buckley sing "Hallelujah" over a 9/11 montage. 

All of that has changed dramatically over the last dozen years, of course. You can't throw a rock without beaning some American Idol cast member belting out "Hallelujah" now, and Scott Stapp works at a carwash in Paducah, Kentucky. The Strokes, meanwhile, played a free show for families and children at Auditorium Shores in Austin during SXSW two years ago, and people tore down fences to get a glimpse of the boys. 

With that perspective comes the realization that The Strokes (along with, I suppose, The White Stripes and maybe Ryan Adams, to some extent) represent a tipping point in music- and youth-culture. It doesn't seem to me to be a coincidence that the word "hipster" entered the lexicon at precisely the same moment that these guys in tight t-shirts and leather jackets, with artful hair, ever-present sunglasses, and a shameless interest in assembling something new via a pastiche of things from the past, became major cultural figures. 

If you want to distill trends in rock music down to major albums, then you'd have to put Is This It on the list of turning-point records; it kickstarted the hipster era the same way that Nevermind in '91 did alt-rock (and what it became), or Van Halen for 80's guitar rock. There was a sizable shift in the culture after Is This It, and it's gone on to define the way we talk about and think about rock music ever since. 

That doesn't mean that it's a perfect album, though, or that it has the best songs. In fact, even in 2001, I didn't so much love Is This It as I was fascinated by it, and the mood of it. I recognized it as cool and I'd been so sick of uncool music at that point that I decided to like it, almost as much as I liked it because it appealed to my taste. I listened to it a lot in my car in 2001, and put the occasional song -- "Last Nite," or "Take It Or Leave It," or "Someday" -- on a mixtape over the next year, then kind of let it fade out of my mind.

But then a funny thing happened: I was on tour in 2004, which felt like a lifetime from the point at which Is This It came out, which speaks to how big the years between 21 and 24 can be, and I was doing a coffee shop show in Albuquerque at a venue that had an open mic before the feature. And this kid, with an acoustic guitar and blonde hair, he used his time to sing "Someday." But it wasn't a straight cover -- he played it like he was Jack Johnson or something. And it sounded amazing to me.

I think that was the moment when I realized just how important The Strokes were -- that this hippie kid in an Albuquerque loved the song enough to sing it, to recognize the greatness of the melody and the power of singing the words, "I ain't wasting no more time." They were much more important than they seemed at the time, in terms of how they both changed the culture of what young people with guitars did, and what kind of music they felt belonged to them.

I JUST REALIZED

A million things I should be doing, but guess what I'm writing?

An encore for Girl In The Beret, complete with a mix.

I blame Alex Goot and Justin Robinett and Michael Henry. Youtube them and you'll understand. Funny enough, I found them just as I was finishing up the last part of Girl In The Beret, then I kept looking and realized this was totally how Ike and Soren would end up. Then I figured I could write up a headcanon post, or I could write it with the last mix I had planned.

Writing always wins out in the end with me.

Know what else is totally happening?

Heather/Nephenee hipster sequel. Or side story, if you will. These days I can't finish out a big project without doing a lesbian sequel. This Modern Love has a Heather/Nephenee sequel in the works for ages, A Sorta Fairytale has a Heather/Elincia one.