THE STROKES
The Strokes are an American band formed in New York City in 1998. Upon the release of their debut album Is This It in 2001, the group met wide critical acclaim. They are one of the many indie rock bands to hail from the US at the dawn of the 21st century and helped augment the garage rock revival movement. Their debut album, Is This It, was ranked number 199 on Rolling Stone’ s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, number 4 on NME’s 500 greatest albums of all time, number 8 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Debut Albums of All Time, and number 2 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Albums of the 2000’s. (More from Wikipedia)
Back when MTV and VH1 used to play music videos, and when I wasn’t watching anything else, I would often have one of those channels on, with my videocassette recorder at the ready, in case a video came on of a song that I really liked. Particularly when there was a song in “heavy rotation” that I really wanted, I would often have the VCR already cued up, on “hold”, so that I would miss as little of the video as possible. Sometimes I would get lucky, and I would already be recording a song when another one came on that I wanted as well.
That happened one time with “No One Knows” by Queens of the Stone Age. The time was back in the Garage Rock Revival period of the early 2000’s, when the White Stripes, the Hives, the Strokes, and several other great retro bands were really getting established. I hadn’t heard the song before, but the beat sounded good, so I left the recorder running. That song got to be a real favorite of mine, and I was particularly thrilled when I later recognized Dave Grohl – former drummer for Nirvana and front man for Foo Fighters – on drums in the video (that’s a video cap from the “No One Knows” music video above).
(December 2012)
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Karen O (lead vocals, piano) met Nick Zinner (guitar, keyboards) at a bar in New York and made an instant connection. As the band evolved, Brian Chase (drums) joined the lineup; he and Karen O had known each other as students at Oberlin College, where they were heavily influenced by the “avant-punk” bands in Ohio during that time period. Yeah Yeah Yeahs became the opening act for hot bands of the period like Sleater-Kinney, the Strokes, and the White Stripes.
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Among the rock bands that have arisen since the Garage Rock Revival began in the early 2000’s, the Black Keys has attained a prominence in the American consciousness that Queens of the Stone Age, the Hives, the Strokes, and even the White Stripes never quite managed. As an example, I have noticed the band mentioned in our local paper twice in the past two or three months. Suzy Shaw of Bomp! Records told me that she was eating lunch in Los Angeles once and overheard several suit-clad businessmen talking about the Black Keys a few tables over.
(June 2017)
