Table of Contents
Cast of Characters ix
Introduction: "Youth and Abandon" xiv
Part I Nostalgia for an Hour Ago
1 "The Place Where Anything Can Happen" 3
2 New York Bands Aren't Cool 7
3 "A Sad Day for the Parents" 13
4 "They Looked Like These Preppy Kids on Acid" 23
5 "Alcohol, Blow, Crack, Death" 29
6 "A Bunch of Little Bands Starting to Creep Up" 39
7 "Ain't Nobody Here for Bottle Service" 43
8 Dance Music Will Save Us All? 47
9 "That Was Really the Birth of DFA" 51
10 "Tomorrow Never Knows" 63
11 "Nobody Was Going to Get Paid. Nobody Was Getting Any Cash." 67
12 "What's the Value of Being a Band?" 75
13 This Whole Web Thing 81
14 "I Mean, We Were Just Stoned" 85
15 Cabs Won't Even Go There 93
18 "They Got Signed for How Much Money?!" 101
Part II The Class of 2001
17 "Those Guys All Go So Far Back" 109
18 Some Pretty Good Musical Chemistry 119
19 Like a Gang 123
20 A Girl That Sings Quiet Folk Songs 137
21 The Freak-Folk Fringe 141
22 "The Return of the Rock Stars" 147
23 "Shit, I'll Be in That Band" 155
24 Anarchy in the UK 159
25 "Party in a Bag" 165
26 "I Don't Know Who Was Paying for the Drugs. It Wasn't Me." 169
27 "Just Trust Me" 175
28 "British People Are Crazy" 183
29 All Eyes on NYC 191
30 September 11, 2001 197
31 "That Now-Legendary Halloween Strokes Show at Hammerstein" 209
32 "Is Anybody Outside of New York Talking About This?" 213
33 "Cats Started to Get Out of the Bag" 219
34 "It's Our Time…" 229
35 "Troubled Souls" 239
36 La Zona Rosa 245
37 "That $2 Bid Show… Oof" 251
38 "My New York Is Interpol" 259
39 "We Successfully Managed to Make Our Business 100 Percent Impractical" 263
40 "We Got Away with Murder" 271
41 "House of Jealous Lovers" 275
42 "Losing My Edge" 285
43 "Maps" 293
44 "A Thing That Doesn't Work but Does" 299
45 The Uncool Kids 307
46 "You Could Say We Had No Rules" 317
47 Strokes Versus Stripes 325
48 "I Like This Internet Thing" 335
49 Rock Is Sack? 345
50 "Taking All Our Britpop Tricks and Selling Them Back to Us" 353
51 "These Guys Are Going to Be Bigger than Everybody" 361
Part III The New Global Underground
52 The End of One Era, the Beginning of Another 373
53 "The Famous-as-Fuck Strokes" 377
54 "A Hi-Hat Is Like Working with a Cellar of Exotic Wines" 385
55 "Heroin Just Kind of… Crosses a Line" 389
58 "If You Believed What You Read, Williamsburg Was the New Village" 397
57 Soviet Kitsch 403
58 The Southern Strokes 405
59 The Columbia Hotel 415
60 "I'm Only Sixteen and I've Already Had Crabs Three Times" 419
61 The James Murphy Show 427
62 Room on Fire 433
63 "There's Definitely Some Bad Feelings There" 439
64 The Wrestler 443
65 "So People in Their Forties in Boston Are Listening to Interpol!" 447
86 "The Internet Rules, Fuck It" 453
67 Disneyfication 459
68 "When the President Talks to God" 465
89 "We Were All Starring in Our Own Nightlife Type of Reality TV" 471
Part IV Birth of Brooklyn
70 "Record Collection Rock" 483
71 "There Is a Lot of Confrontation but I Think It Does Come Back to Faith" 487
72 "The Creative Process, While It Can Definitely Reward the Ego, It Can Fucking Bruise It, Too" 495
73 Selling Out Is So Passé 501
74 "We Could Be That Big" 513
75 "Breezier and Lighter and Quicker" 527
76 "Erudite as Fuck" 533
77 "They Came from the Ashes of Jonathan Fire*Eater" 539
78 "It Doesn't Actually Make Any Sense to Describe Music as Preppy" 543
79 "It Wasn't Like We Were a Party Band" 547
80 Halsey House 551
81 The Speed of Buzz 559
82 "I Wanted to Get in There Like a Motherfucker and That's What I Did" 563
83 Consider Yourself Served 567
84 "When My Mojo Phase Has Passed, I Don't Think That I'll Stop Making Music and Start Gardening" 571
85 "We Warmed It Up for You Fuckers" 577
Part V "New York, I love you but you're bringing me down"
86 "I Mean, What's More Rock and Roll than Madison Square Garden and a Mic Drop?'" 587
87 The Last Rock Stars 589
Acknowledgments 592
Index 597