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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
The father of frontman Julian Casablancas, John Casablancas, is the owner of a successful modeling agency and a chain of modeling schools; some say the elder Casablancas gave his son entré into the fast lane. Guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. has a famous relation, too: his father, a singer-songwriter who had a run of schlock hits in the 1970s (notably "It Never Rains in Southern California") before becoming a dependable MOR songwriter. (Among other things, Hammond Sr. is the co-writer of "To All the Girls I've Loved Before.") The band had a predictably moneyed upbringing -- three of the members met at a private prep school in Manhattan called the Dwight School, and Casablancas and Hammond Jr. met at a Swiss boarding school.
England picked up on the band first. While bands that have been gigging for years dream of someday making it overseas, the Strokes sold out tours across England after playing in New York for a year and a half, in part because one of England's biggest music magazines, NME, made it clear that it felt the band will bring a revolution to rock 'n' roll. When the single "Hard to Explain" was released in England, NME reviewer Victoria Segal wrote, "This second single from the Strokes is almost ludicrously great, a record that generates genuine scalp-crackling excitement, a comet-rare synthesis of form, content, attitude and hair." NME.com ran almost weekly news items about the Strokes' minor medical problems, celebrity fans and choices for singles and album covers. U.K. culture magazine the Face ran a large spread on the Strokes back in the spring, when the band's three-song EP was only available to British readers as an import.
In response to the media hype, Strokes followers gathered in two opposing camps. On one side are people who think the Strokes are a refreshing alternative to the hard rock/sugar pop dichotomy currently offered by the major labels, people who want their music tougher than Britney Spears but a little less sociopathic than Limp Bizkit.
Then there are those who accuse the band of earning too much talk from too little talent, taking the spotlight away from bands who've worked longer and harder at making music. The New York Press recently called the Strokes "the best overhyped local band ... There are plenty of other bands in New York who are more deserving of hype, and many more who have paid their dues."
One of the most entertaining places for the Strokes' detractors has undoubtedly been industry gossip site the Velvet Rope. The posts about the Strokes started innocently enough back in February, with simple statements praising the band's music.
By March, though, watching the band get flown up the rock 'n' roll flagpole started getting too irritating for some Velvet Ropers, who, instead of simply ignoring the band, attempted to call out their every perceived fault. Velvet Rope posters have repeatedly accused the Strokes of being "too polished," "too calculating," "starting from third base" and being rip-off artists who should never be spoken about in the same sentence as the great New York acts of the '60s and '70s. New Strokes postings still appear on the site daily, a mix of intelligent debate, grade-school name calling and downright cattiness about predicting when the band's good fortune will fall from the Billboard charts.
The Velvet Rope isn't the only place where critics are sharpening their claws. Do a search on the words "hate the Strokes" and "the Strokes suck" and, aside from the porn and motorbike sites, you'll find people using the fact that they "hate the Strokes" as part of their personal profiles on sites like makeoutclub.com; others admit they haven't even heard the Strokes but hate them just on principle.
