The last scene: New York in the early 2000s

Meet Me In The Bathroom is documentary based on the book by Lizzy Goldman, which in turn took its title from a song by The Strokes. It is documentary about the New York scene of the early 21st century, focussed on the Strokes themselves and on other bands of that era: the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, LCD Soundsystem, The Moldy Peaches, etc. When I first saw posters for the film my initial thought was that those bands were not actually good enough to justify a documentary about their scene. Then I though back to how exciting it was when the existence of the New York scene was announced to the world, because scenes are exciting in a way that individual bands are not. Also, having been told all my life that New York is an amazingly cool place, the prospect of there being actually cool music emerging from it was something that was easy to lap up. With the passage of time, my sense was that most of these bands had rather underdelivered, which raised the prospect that a film about them would be a bit of a trudge, leading to more discerning viewers being irritated by an endless parade of mediocre music juxtaposed against a commentary about how great the whole thing was. Nevertheless, I decided to take one for the team and booked myself in to see the film.

And it's actually very enjoyable. It does not necessarily shake me out of my belief that most of these acts were quite good rather than truly great, but it does communicate a sense of how exciting it must have been when the bands all burst onto the scene together. Formally it combines a lot of archival footage of the artists with recordings (possibly for interviews made for the book) of people talking about the scene. It is a very time-bound artefact, looking at a scene that emerged in the period when mobile video technology had become sufficiently cheap that it was possible for there to be loads of footage of the bands playing live and goofing around offstage, but from before the rise of people not paying for music precluded the emergence of such a scene.

The Strokes are the film's main focus, which is fair enough: they were the first of the bands to break big, and they also broke very big indeed, going almost overnight from playing toilet venues in New York to being superstars in the UK. It's easy to see why they were so successful, with catchy tunes and good lucks being a perennially winning combo. I'm still undecided as to how actually good they were, but they are definitely at least quite good, and the film has certainly made me interested in listening to their first album again.

One thing the film definitely did was confirm me in my view that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were the most essential band to emerge from that scene. A lot of that is down to Karen O, but not everything. She is a very charismatic frontwoman, but there is an energy to how Nick Zinner's guitars and Brian Chase's drums play off her yelps that adds to more the sum of its parts. It's also striking that in a scene defined by its good lookers (e.g. The Strokes and Interpol), Karen O is surprisingly plain-looking (controversial), probably not even being the best looker in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (doubly controversial); yet for all, that throw her onstage and she transforms into a super-charismatic rock goddess. The film was also interesting on the pressure heaped on Karen O as the most visible woman in a pretty blokey scene.

My view on the other key band of that scene was also reinforced. The Moldy Peaches may have been a bunch of underachieving wasters who never followed up on their early success (quirky artistic success, not commercial success) but I still feel they had something, and hearing their tunes in the cinema alongside the others did not make me feel that I was wrong. Their underachievement is in some ways kind of surprising. There is a bit in the film where Kimya Dawson of The Moldy Peaches is talking about supporting The Strokes on their first tour of the UK, where the latter were living the rock star dream as they discovered that on our side of the Atlantic they had become superstars. Dawson mentions being a bit older than The Strokes and saying to them, "Dudes, do you maybe not want to get completely wasted all the time so that you will be able to remember all this?" (to which The Strokes collectively responded, "SHUT UP KIMYA AND GIMME THE DRØGS! WHERE ARE THE SEXY GIRLS?").

Beyond that we're into first wave also-ran territory: Interpol (good looking, not obviously essential in the music department), Liars (tuneless), TV On The Radio (not sure I've ever heard anything by them), etc. Then the second wave, which is essentially James Murphy & Tim Goldsworthy's DFA Records and the acts associated with it. For the purposes of the film that was basically The Rapture (who were on DFA for a bit but then left because some kind of mysterious prickology was delaying the release of their album) and Murphy's own LCD Soundsystem, a band summoned into existence by the success of the "Losing My Edge" single. Obviously, you know the tune; in fact it is about you (and not because you are one of the kids who is coming up from behind). The situating of the tune in the film was interesting, as it came up in the context of how the rise of Napster and file-sharing was suddenly making everything available to everyone, killing off the cachet that came from having hunted down obscure old records. The film also mentioned how file sharing strangled bands' incomes, playing a large part in the decline of band-based music, which may well mean that the early 2000s New York scene is the last of its kind.

images:

The Strokes (Pitchfork: "Vintage Photos of the Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, James Murphy, and More From Meet Me in the Bathroom")

Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Wikipedia)

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs "It's Blitz"

This is the third album from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It is highly praised, though I suspect that those subjecting it to such praise may be suffering from cloth ear syndrom. On a first couple of listenings I found myself thinking that this was not really that good at all. More recently it has started growing on me (particularly tracks like 'Heads Will Roll') but I am still not convinced it is anything like as great as certain people were saying. Fundamentally, it does not sound like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and does not deliver what you want from a record by that band. The new electro-pop direction has its charms, but I miss the guitar-heavy sound of yore.

An inuit panda production

Trapped In The Chalet: part two

So now to Saturday - curated by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. On this day people got really into saying “yeah, yeah, yeah” at each other. It wasn’t even funny if you were there.

I spent much of the afternoon with some people from ILX. The theory was advanced that I Love Comics has the best rofflers, and I was fascinated by exposition of the recent nonsensical developments in the DC Universe. Superman punching through the barriers between separate parallel worlds was a particular favourite. There was something else about some guy who had this machine with giant hands with which he was going to separate the universe out into separate sub-universes and then push them back together in a slightly different way. Hearing all this I did find myself wondering why certain members of this APA are still wasting their time with us when clearly they have what it takes to become DC’s ideas person.

One of the fellows from ILX also regaled us with an account of a video game he had played in Japan. Called Booga Booga Rampage, it provides you with a giant arse that you spank with a special hand. Japanese letters then appeared on the screen, but he wasn’t sure what they meant. I’m trying to think of some way that Booga Booga Rampage could become the focus of the next DC Universe crossover. Maybe there could be… OK, let’s leave it there, shall we?

I did not spend all day with these good folk and eventually left The Camber Castle to go and see some music. My notes for this time are a bit thin, so you may find yourself doubting I was actually there at all. First up seem to have been Imaginary Folk. I think they were folky improvisers or something. My memory is a bit vague.

I do remember seeing Services. They were one of those he-sings-he-doesn’t synthesiser bands. I was fond of the guy a who played the keyboards – smartly dresses in a short-sleeved shirt and tie, sporting a nice moustache, and taking occasional sips from a mug of tea, he looked for all the world like a computer programmer in the 1970s. The music he made was pretty enjoyable too. Sadly, the other guy did not have a very good singing voice but nevertheless was so completely full of himself that in certain rough bars his type end up face down in a dustbin at the end of the night.

I think I left Services early and may well have nipped upstairs to see Hundred Eyes. My notes are unclear and nothing in the programme jogs my memory, so my attendance remains apocryphal. I did see Celebration. They were another somewhat arty New York band. The programme goes a bit overboard in describing them, but I reckoned they were trying to do a kind of knowing art-pop thing, with the Celebration lady presenting herself as some kind of full-on pop strumpet. I remember thinking they were pretty good but maybe took themselves a bit seriously.

At this point we broke for Dr Who and pizza. It was part one of the Cybermen episode. Work Hard Play Hard! I liked how sulky Mickey’s character has become at only being a comedic minor character, and it was nice generally to see the Cybermen being presented as scarily implacable (and not as rubbishly vulnerable as in the later period of old Dr Who).

Watching Dr Who meant that we missed some of the music, but we made it back in time to catch a bit of Oneida. As I arrived, the guy from Oneida announced “Thanks – we hope you enjoyed that song, which was written by Oneida. And now we are going to play another song – by Oneida”. This joke never stopped being funny, it’s the way he tells them. Oneida play a kind of wiggly stoner rock (featuring lots of songs by Oneida), with a nice line of deadpan in-between song patter. There was, fortunately, a lack of people standing around with their arms folded having a great time, but one guy did look at me funny when I shouted “Stooges!”.

After that I saw some of TV On The Radio. My notes suggest they were “boring”. So I went downstairs and caught the trail end of Liars, who were “shite”. Not just ordinary shite, mind, but the kind of tunelessly boring shite you get when talentless bimbos go avant garde.

No worries, there were still the amusements to loaf around in until it was time to catch the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They have proper star quality and the kind of tunes that sound right played out of a big sound system to the crowded upstairs room at Pontins. We had been expecting young Chocolate Socialist to explode during their set, yet he seemed surprisingly restrained. I may however have become rather excited.

I’ve been hearing certain anti-YYY comments recently, from people claiming not to really see the point of them or not understanding why anyone would see them as being that ground-breaking. Now, anyone can not see the point of a good band, and a long spell in a re-education camp is usually of some help here, but the latter point is more interesting. I’m not convinced that it is always the job of bands to always be breaking new ground and pushing back the sonic frontiers, and I would never criticise any musicians for failing to do so. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs may indeed not be exploring new continents of sound, but they do what they do exceptionally well, playing to their musical strengths in a manner worthy of great praise. Few other bands have so successfully married strikingly charismatic vocals to such suavely persuasive music. I contend that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs delivered one of the very greatest performances the festival has yet seen.

Anyway, while I am on the subject of these un-named people who go on about how important musical development is, it was interesting to note how taken they were by the kind of derivative retro nonsense served up the following night by Devendra Banhart (of whom, unfortunately, more later).

There was a lot of going from one chalet to another after the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Eventually we ended up in the one that Donal and Emma were sharing with their charming friends Rachel and Liz. We played frisbee for a bit, badly, joined by a couple of random punters including some dude who was actually good at it. Eventually we repaired to the chalet and danced to Scooter, which led to an attack by rave zombies. In an unusual turn-up for the books, I found myself back in the Queen Vic (horrible Camber Sands “pub”), dancing away to whatever tunes the DJ was playing to us. This eventually finished, leaving me loafing around the playground while the sun came up. Dude. So I went for a walk around the perimeter and followed a rabbit home, being menaced by large dog on the way. Back in the chalet, my chalet mates were all asleep.

Pictures from Chocolate Socialist's picture collection... the broadband fairy has still not reached Carwash Mansions.