In search of 2001 (seriously)

5 years ago I was turning twenty--sigh.  Now, I know that some of my "older" readers will say something like "twenty.  Sigh.  What the fuck.  I'm one of those older readers.  Fuck that dude jeff."  But let me finish.  I'm not waxing emotional about being 20 years old.  I'm merely giving some ground to start off on.  Okay?  Let's continue.

5 years ago I was turning twenty.  5 years ago, there were about 2% the amount of iPods around everywhere.  5 years ago, I didn't know that my lovely girlfriend Karen existed.  In fact, 5 years ago (I'm sorry for this Karen) I was dating someone else altogether.  In college, no less.  5 years ago.

Some other things that happened (not so that dude jeff-centric) 5 years ago: the Harry Potter movies debut, everyone's afraid of Arabs, the Yankees lost the world series, Bush was inaugurated, the towers fell down, Will Smith was Ali, Dale Earnhardt crashed hard, Vanilla Sky blew, Lord of the Rings destroyed, Joey Ramone died, the concert for New York was a better telethon than even Jerry Lewis could imagine, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.  Oh, and "the New York scene" is reborn.

The Strokes.  Interpol.  Yeah Yeah Yeahs.  The Walkmen.  French Kicks.  And the hundreds of bands-to-be brainstorm the next big hit while sitting in Williamsburg or the Lower East Side.  And here's where the point of this blog really kicks in.  5 years ago, no one could deny the power, prowess and artistic "turbulence" of popular music from New York City in 2001.  And neither could I.  I was a fan.  I bought all the records.  I went to as many shows as would have me.  I preached to my non-enlightened friends about how they were "missing out" and "you'll totally dig this", etc.  And they listened.  And then they bought all of the records.  And they went to some shows, too.  It was beautiful.  And I knew it couldn't last forever.

And this is the crux of my typing.  All of the bands I just listed up there have a special place in my musical mind.  They all brought me something that I could see.  Concretely.  I could go to a basement party off Lorimer and run into Carlos D. From Interpol spinning talking heads records.  I had the ability to see Nick Zinner chat up Vincent Gallo and Chloe Sevigny over a Pabst blue ribbon at Manitoba's, North Six, Sea, or 117A.  Anywhere.  I felt like that fucking kid in Almost Famous saying "it's all happening".  Because it was "all happening".

And then the year ended and I couldn't stay with just 1 record from these bands.  I figured that they owed me more.  More songs.  More anthems.  More emotion.  More.  And they didn't provide.  Deadbeats, I thought.  They don't care about that dude jeff.  I'm just another face in the concert-going crowd to them.  But I’m not.  I'm fucking not.  2002.  2003.  2004.  2005.  2006.  Take that in.  That's a lot of fucking time going by.

I want to go back to 2001 for the sole purpose of not being disappointed with how these bands have not lived up to anything they put out 5 years ago.  And you could make a case like "it was a certain time and place".  A certain something.  Anything.  But it's not just gone by in a flash.  It took the Yeah Yeah Yeahs 3 years to follow up 2003's "Fever to Tell".  And while you can read plenty of interviews about how Karen, Nick and Brian didn't want to make "Fever to Tell 2” for their next record, they were right.  They didn't make anything close to it.  The Walkmen's "Bows & Arrows" was good.  It was good.  It was not "everyone who pretended to like me is gone".

The only band (in my opinion, at least) that made more of an impression artistically and architecturally speaking was Interpol.  Yes, Interpol.  And while you can only read so far into Paul Banks sounding like Ian Curtis over and over again, nowhere can you find much about how big a leap "Antics" was from "Turn on the Bright Lights".  And it was a giant leap.  Paul Banks sounded a lot less like Ian Curtis and a lot more like Paul Banks.  Their sound evolved.  It didn't change, really.  It became their sound even more than was evident on their first release.

So, what am I really getting at here, huh?  Is it something more deep than my disapproval of the "New York scene" bands not sticking to the program of making shit-kicking-ly good music over and over again?  Yes.  Is it more than that?  Maybe.  I don't really know.  I wanted to write this after listening to the new YYYs record on the subway.  It kind of dawned on me that Brian, Karen and Nick maybe focused a little too much on three years of sheen and not 40 minutes of genius.  Maybe I’m wrong.  It's happened before.  But I don't think so.  Not now at least.

You tell me.  Is it better to progress and augment your sound to prove that you can make something different or should you just do what the strokes did from album 1 to album 2 and from album 2 to album 3?  They didn't change anything.  Not even my opinion of them.  And that's what's really important to me.  If a band makes me feel proud to listen to them for reasons other than it being deemed "cool" to do so, than I’m impressed and content with my decision.  God knows I’ve gone through enough albums that sucked ass to really know which ones I want to keep pressing play to.

Godspeed!