Aren't the Strokes et. al just sort of doing what Lenny Kravitz has always been accused of?

Allowed by whom? He got a ton of shit for "trying to sound like Prince" on Midnite Vultures (personally I thought he sounded more like Mick Jagger when going for the falsetto but whatever).

Also, I think less people would get on Lenny's case if he could write lyrics that weren't completely laughable.

Why do the Strokes get heaps of praise while Lenny gets the shaft? I don't know either, so I'll be interested in seeing what others have to say.

Oh, come on, these guys are incredibly fashionable-looking. I shudder to think what an exactly-right scuzzy denim jacket and a miller lite 3/4 tee will run you in Manhattan. No, it's not Prada, but it damn sure is fashion. They're a boy-band for 26yr old city girls. This is exactly what I like about the band. That and the chimey guitars.

"Derivative" is shorthand for "getting it wrong." Or in Lenny's case, for "blistering stupidity."

Beware any whose music/look/thang attempts to inhabit some hermetically-sealed compartment of the past. The present is far more difficult, terrifying, and rewarding, and the only place where accolades and punishments are given. If there's one pop tendency that always gets my fucking goat, it's fetishistic, necrophiliac retroism. Kravitz, Gillian Welch, garageists, all guilty (and perfectly pop-pleasurable, it must be said). Sly and Jimi and Curtis all had to answer their own questions in their own time. Kravitz is a prat because we already know those answers, and so does he. What a waste. And an insult.

And yes, considering that about one out of every four or five guys in my classes now have that studded denim look and newly curled hair, I would say that the Strokes are definitely fashion horses for a new generation enthralled with the 1970s.

oh come on - discipline? look, they're catchy and i like them as much as the next IRS (indie rock snob), but let's not give them too much credit. it's not like they've spent years studying chord progressions with a fine toothed comb, they're just some well-connected rich kids with a knack for writing decent hooks.

but each instrument plays on each other carefully, like television there's not to many barre chords to get in the way of everything else.

? there are power chords all over the place!

yes, lenny kravitz is only more respected than the strokes because he has no hipster cachet and he can't write lyrics (and/or doesn't distort his vocals enough that we can't make them out), but the real issue i think is that his references are even more obvious than the strokes. i mean, listening to their record, you can definitely hear the lou reed stuff etc., but there are far fewer 'oh that's so-and- so' moments. for instance, i just listened to 'again', and you can spot the moments were he attempts to metamorphose into Prince, and it's mighty obvious. the strokes, on the other hand, appear to have some modicum of personality that is their own, though i would be loath to attribute this to dilligent research.

So he blows it coming and going...

Ok, that's it, I'm done spending thought on mssr Kravvits. Fini.

well the certainly seem to have studied their era carefully, with those disinterested velvets poses, correct tshirts and so on. and that's found in the music too. yeah, they might not have studied fucking Yes or anything, but they know their school. ? there are power chords all over the place!

all seem to be high end or low end to me though, compensated by loud bass playing what the chord would be.

Oh, it's not *that* bad.

there?

Lenny plays overblown and unnecessary rock'n'roll that is far from easy listening. His timing and celebrity cloud the product and make it all very unlikeable.

Maybe VU and Television are easier to use as an influence than Jimi, Sly, Curtis et al.

You don't imagine that you will be listening to either band in 30 years time

Hmmm. There's a bit of a nasty, quasi-agist spin to that comment, but it does ring a bit true, I suppose. While I'd agree that *WE* 30somethings who like the Strokes like them *BECAUSE* they might remind us of bands we already have in our record collections, I don't think we're labouring under the misapprehension that we're hearing anything genuinely "new."

Who are you alluding to beyond the oft-cited Tom Petty pilfirage (the chiming one-note-riff in "Last Night" from Petty's "American Girl.")? The Feelies? Otherwise, the Strokes sound STRICTLY 70's!

You just answered your own question. I really don't care if Lenny rips people off, or if he is retro. It's the hoary, turgid fashion in which he resurrects these influences that makes him such a hate figure.

Mind you, when the press slate Lenny's music for being retro (rather than for just being joyless cock-rock) you can but point to the countless acclaimed artists who wear their influences on their sleeves (not just the Strokes, there are absolutely millions of them). It should be made clear - Lenny's lack of creativity is not his weakness, it is his countless musical crimes (awful lyrics, gurning machismo, occasional sick-making sentimentality, grotesque guitar solos.)

I mean we can sit here all day and debate the ins and outs of what is and isn't shamelessly ripping off, and whether the Strokes did it or Lenny Kravitz did it but at the end of the day

I don't like any of the other garagey bands either for what it's worth. It's all so subject to opinion you might as well have done taking sides the strokes versus lenny.

Hmmmmmm. Don't hear that at all.

this is also a possible explanation for why people can't decide whether the strokes' songs remind them of the '70s or the '80s; whatever decade said slobberer's idealized youth occurred is probably the decade that the strokes' songs most heavily cribbed from, in the mind of the 'oh wow look it's made just for me!' reflex.

Yup. But I wasn't so demographically specific, so cheers to that person for the focus. :-)

And I'm quite with Tom on the varying qualities of the "new rock" -- i.e., it's a lot more interesting when it isn't actually rock. Hence I can enjoy the Strokes and the Hives quite a bit more than I can enjoy, say, the Vines, who are in fact honestly and uncalculatedly and sort of damnably just a rock band.

of course not, because all their songs sound like "Lust for Life"! Is This It is like 11 versions of that song--it's like a Greensleeves riddim compilation or something. nothing wrong w/that at all, imho.

But to me, the singing on the Strokes alb really DOES sound a lot like Loaded-era Velvets - compare 'Head Held High', say, w/ 'The Modern Age'. And I think there's another similarity too, ie this whole pop/funk thing - Lou was a big 'soul man', he stole riffs from Smokey Robinson songs rather than an old blues recs - and 'the blues' is also a really submerged style/sound/'attitude' in Strokes recs too. That's partly why BRMC stink so much - it really is just more of the same old sludged up old blues riff stuff - hurrah, a really lameo Blue Cheer impersonation....

On a vaguely related note I saw an old TV performance of Black Sabbath doing "Iron Man" circa I dunno '71 or so and Ozzy (with the exception of his face) looked EXACTLY like Julian. Same hair, same jeans, same jacket, the works. It was creepy.

Fantastic way of putting it.

I don't much disagree with nabisco.

Strokes vox often = pastiche of Lou Reed, though, and not just LATE Velvets, early too

(Surprising) Strokes virtue = melody

Strokes weakness = lyrics

Something tells me they couldn't really play 'Atomic' and get away with it. I mean: it doesn't sound like one of theirs at all.

clever, but i don't really think it's true. sure, 'last night' and 'new york city cops' have that lusty bouncy thing going, but what about 'Is this it', or 'Hard To Explain', or 'The Modern Age'?

Yeah but it's the old journalists pushing this music on yer

Of course a younger audience has bought into it. It bloody good stuff. Like I already said it is easy listening for anyone with a record collection that has rock/pop in it. Plus they look fine too.

Lenny is overblown and performance based to even want to get near. The Strokes - regardless of real wealth/contrived inception etc - look like your buddies.

Have Guided By Voices gone ballistic yet because the Strokes have been touting their name about a lot. No and it is because..... I run out of thoughts

No other band for a long time has made people doubt or argue their ears so much

Enjoy them while they last it's only pop

For you, maybe.

catty reply... and your reason for contributing to the thread is the good of your health and not because the Strokes are debatable

kind of like ABBA...

Natch. But no more so than yer sweeping statement deserved...

and your reason for contributing to the thread is the good of your health and not because the Strokes are debatable

That the Strokes are a particular flashpoint for discussion is obvious. That they are the all-encompassing center of things for 'doubt' or 'arguing their ears' I don't agree with, and I don't see exactly how or why you are claiming that.

sweeping statement I agree, but please.....

then tell me who in recent years has emerged, been hyped (versus criticised for sounding like music from another time) and then debated as to why you like them.

Cheers

It did not surprise me because his name is Leonard Kravitz. That is one of the most Jewish names I've evah heard.

the Spice Girls were huge and hardly compare with the hype of the Strokes via the pages of NME, Q and Rolling Stone about their music.... the Spice Girls never really bothered about the music. Whereas I think the Strokes would appreciate you liking them for their music first vs simply making them famous

Give me something more akin to the Strokes. Where the trashy cool of indie is mixed wonderfully with numerous obvious references and topped off with an ear for pop too

I'd love to know

Yes, but since when does the wishes of a band come into exactly how they are received? As a consumer, why should I have to care what they think?

or maybe i just shouldn't have started this thread, looking back on it, it wasn't a good question anyway. i didn't even read all of it, and it's missing markettes