I just watched The Strokes on TV, playing the Isle of Wight Festival. They were pretty good but I have a problem with them. Here it is. They are not a band that can really pull off being 30. It just feels wrong. It's nine years since Last Nite. Nine years since Is This It? At the time they were fantastic. The music was exciting and groovy and they looked like a proper band. People even forgave them their privileged backgrounds and Swiss finishing school educations.
But really it should have ended after the first album. A drug death (I don't wish death on anyone obviously, but you know what I mean), a massive internecine war within the band. Someone running off and rejecting music in favour of becoming a monk. Anything to stop them traipsing on as just another band - marrying supermodels, releasing less and less interesting albums until they eventually drift into irrelevance and retirement in their mid-30s.
Some bands swell slowly - Kings of Leon are a current example. But the Strokes exploded onto the scene. Perhaps the first vital band of the century. Had they burned twice as bright and half as long they would have been legendary. Now - they're just another heritage act.
But really it should have ended after the first album. A drug death (I don't wish death on anyone obviously, but you know what I mean), a massive internecine war within the band. Someone running off and rejecting music in favour of becoming a monk. Anything to stop them traipsing on as just another band - marrying supermodels, releasing less and less interesting albums until they eventually drift into irrelevance and retirement in their mid-30s.
Some bands swell slowly - Kings of Leon are a current example. But the Strokes exploded onto the scene. Perhaps the first vital band of the century. Had they burned twice as bright and half as long they would have been legendary. Now - they're just another heritage act.
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