The Strokes
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xxxPrincessxxx
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i have my ticket i'm seeing them play in doncaster....i don't even know where that is................soooooooooo excited!!!
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Taper-Jean Girl
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Nataliaa said:
oh geez im really stupid and misread that, i thought you were talking about nick's GF, and i was like
ew! But yeah Al's girl is pretty. Is she a model, or something?She's in a band with her sister, can't remember their name, and EW!! Nick's GF reminds me of my old science teacher, crazy b*tch used to drag her nails down the chalk bored and talk about God like she new him personally *Shudders at the memory*
I wonder If they'll be touring Australia properly next year? Hope so....
I wonder If they'll be touring Australia properly next year? Hope so....
SanSalvadorGirl
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Albert's girlfriend is pretty, but there's something in her look that I can't stand...I don't know what it is, but it ruins her prettiness.
Nick!!! on the other Hand.... aaaaw
!!!
Nick!!! on the other Hand.... aaaaw
!!!Taper-Jean Girl
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SanSalvadorGirl said:Albert's girlfriend is pretty, but there's something in her look that I can't stand...I don't know what it is, but it ruins her prettiness.
Nick!!! on the other Hand.... aaaaw
maybe its the fact that shes lucky enough to be dating a Stroke,
I dont care if one of them started dating...Gemma Ward..Id start to see her as a big-headed troll. Oh dear, 
Taper-Jean Girl
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GAH! I cant stand amanda. Its like shes clutching on to her youth by being with him (yeah sure they may 'luuuuuurve' eachother yada yada yada) but its like you had your moment as a hipster of Manhattan...15 years ago. Now shes just really....sketchy. (Disclaimer: If you were offended please, disregard the previous rant as the jealous ramblings of a Strokes fan...
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xxxPrincessxxx
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...the fact is nick would be much better off with a girl like me.....
Taper-Jean Girl
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ah! the thread is dying! :takes out defibrillator: clear! I've got an article on the guys. Do enjoy! 
Same folks, different Strokes
Iain Shedden
December 10, 2005
JULIAN Casablancas is a new man. The last time he was in Australia, when his band the Strokes played the Big Day Out in January last year, he was a bit messy, albeit in a rock'n'roll kind of way. He drank, he threw mic stands, he dived into the audience, he drank, he fell over. The crowd went nuts.
To the casual observer it may have appeared that the Strokes were just pushing the boundaries of rock'n'roll debauchery a bit further than before, but one got a sense after watching a few performances that it wasn't all showmanship. The singer didn't look happy and his characteristic wail had a bitterness about it. Something was not going to plan.
The petulance was, partly, because the tide was turning on the New York band that only two years before had been hailed as the saviours of rock'n'roll. The Strokes' second album, Room on Fire, had received mixed reviews; the heavy touring schedule that followed their graduation to the big league was taking its toll.
The Casablancas sitting in front of me can afford a wry smile as he looks back on that period. Dressed in a pseudo-military jacket, the 26-year-old is slimmer than he was in 2004, healthier-looking too, and more forthcoming about his lot than his sometimes prickly media persona usually allows. Amazing what getting married - to the band's assistant manager, Juliet Jostin - and giving up the grog can do.
"I don't feel damaged," he says in his slow, meandering New York drawl, "but I felt definitely roughed up at times." Getting home after long periods on the road was when it dawned on him that he was punishing himself. "That's when you really feel like you're going to die," he says.
Fortunately, that didn't happen, and after a short lay-off last year the Strokes embarked on their most ambitious album so far, one that took nine months and a lot of soul-searching to make. They replaced producer Gordon Raphael with David Khane, a man more accustomed to tweaking the controls for less cutting edge singers such as Tony Bennett and Cher. He changed the Strokes' overall sound. First Impressions of Earth is a more layered, less frenetic album than either of its predecessors. Its 14 songs were given time to germinate in the studio, something that didn't happen during the rapid sessions for Is This It? and Room on Fire.
"We've been chasing a bigger sound since the beginning," Casablancas says. "We didn't find anyone who could help us do it right. Every time we did it, when we tried someone new, it sucked the soul out of it and it just sounded bad. David was the first kind of guy who could get beyond the sound and could appreciate some of the stuff we were doing and make it a little more accessible. Instead of cutting it together quickly like we did the first time, with a lot of it we'd sit around for a while and stew on it. Songs definitely changed direction a few times.
"We were figuring stuff out, but after three or four songs I was thinking in my mind that 'I can't believe we're finally sounding the way I want us to sound'."
Six hundred souls get the chance to sample some of the new songs when, later on the day of our interview, the Strokes do a one-off Australian performance at Sydney's Gaelic Club. On stage, Casablancas's menace simmers rather than spits in your face. He drinks water. His four colleagues - Fab Moretti (drums), Albert Hammond Jr (guitar), Nikolai Fraiture (bass) and Nick Valensi (guitar) - are suitably animated, enough to whip the privileged throng into a sea of waving limbs, particularly when they launch into crowd favourites New York City Cops and Last Night.
It's a powerful performance, one of only a few they have done around the world in the lead-up to their album's release next month.
I make the point that a batch of new songs can help reinvigorate the old ones, but Casablancas is not entirely convinced by that. They have been playing some of the songs in the set regularly for five years and he, for one, could do with resting a few of them.
"I'd be lying to you if I said ..." He tails off to gather his thoughts. "The songs used to always feel new to me, but now, at this stage, some of the ones we've been playing since the beginning, are definitely ... the intro to Last Night ... I'm sorry, excuse me ... [he says with a hand gesture to the skies] doesn't move me."
It moves audiences, though.
"It makes me sad, but I find myself going through the motions, while the crowd is going crazy," he says. "At least you have that to go on, but secretly you want the music to move you."
If this translates into a degree of apathy on stage, Casablancas still looks the part. He can get away with it and, he says, he can justify it. "I don't want to be phony about it," he says. "Strike that MTV 'I want to rock' pose. I want to do it with some kind of purpose."
* * *
THE Strokes began purposefully in late 1999, when they played their first gig to a handful of people in a New York club. Their fortunes changed a year later when they played the city's Mercury Lounge and the booker there (later their manager), Ryan Gentle, sent their demo tape to Rough Trade Records in London. Their EP, The Modern Age was released in Britain, the media frenzy began and the five former private school boys were on their way.
Is This It?, which includes the hits Last Night, Take It or Leave It and Hard to Explain, was released first in Australia, where the band played a handful of memorable shows with local rockers You Am I in July 2001. The reaction here echoed the frenzy that was happening in Europe.
Their brand of punk/pop was innovative and exciting. The album clocked in at less than 35 minutes, all of the tracks bristling with an energy, a chemistry and an ear for a good tune that had been sadly lacking in the post-grunge rock era. Very quickly the five easy-on-the-eye young musicians were media darlings and were selling out shows from Manchester to Melbourne. They were hot.
And so they remained, touring the world, headlining festivals and with one or two of them acquiring celebrity girlfriends along the way. Moretti has been in a relationship with actor Drew Barrymore for three years, Valensi for the same time with former British actor, television presenter and now photographer Amanda de Cadenet.
Their star status has put some of them in the paparazzi firing line, particularly Moretti and Barrymore, although Casablancas, the focal point of the group, says he doesn't have any difficulty staying out of the limelight. "I don't have many paparazzi problems," he says. "It's not like I can't walk down the street."
The streets of New York are still home to all five Strokes. The city is at the heart of much of their material, particularly the first album, and Casablancas says that it will remain home and an inspiration. It's the kind of place, he says, that no one wants to leave.
"It's an urban thing. Even if you want to smell grass once in a while, at the same time you kind of miss it because it's such an apex of everything. It's hard to walk away from that. You know, if you want to be a farmer or live in a log cabin or just in the country, then basically you move, but you don't move to some other city to get away from New York."
What many people may find surprising about Casablancas is that he rarely listens to music. While critics have compared him with Lou Reed, Tom Verlaine and just about every other serious New York crooner, the Strokes' frontman says he doesn't model himself on anyone and has only a few CDs in his collection at any one time. "There are things that I will like and I'll absorb it and love it and play it and be it," he says. "I'll have maybe 10 CDs with me and switch them around. It's always been that way. And I'll listen to a bit of radio."
This extremely selective process benefits his career, he says. "It has helped me in how I do things. To immerse yourself in something you think is great ... you don't mess around with anything you think is mediocre."
Being average has not always been a hindrance to enduring success in the music industry, and talent has never been a guarantee of longevity. The Strokes have talent, not just as a band but as individual musicians and as songwriters, but Casablancas is aware that it could all fall in a heap just as quickly as it took for them to emerge four years ago.
"It's not the most stable of professions," he says. "People can wake up and want nothing to do with you. There's nothing you can do in the face of that. You can't worry about things you can't control. All you can do is work as hard as you can and hope people will respond to it positively. We want to keep making music for people who enjoy it."
The new album and world tour will take care of that for most of next year. The Strokes plan to be back in Australia in June. By then the new songs will be well run in: Casablancas should be firing on all cylinders.
"I learned to figure it out," he says of his hazy period. "You make mistakes along the way. Basically, what I seek is the balance between writing songs and performing them. You don't want one to take away from the other. In the past, because we were scheduled not as wisely as possible, one would suffer. Now that we are regrouped enough, and are strong enough, we can make both work."
Same folks, different Strokes
Iain Shedden
December 10, 2005
JULIAN Casablancas is a new man. The last time he was in Australia, when his band the Strokes played the Big Day Out in January last year, he was a bit messy, albeit in a rock'n'roll kind of way. He drank, he threw mic stands, he dived into the audience, he drank, he fell over. The crowd went nuts.
To the casual observer it may have appeared that the Strokes were just pushing the boundaries of rock'n'roll debauchery a bit further than before, but one got a sense after watching a few performances that it wasn't all showmanship. The singer didn't look happy and his characteristic wail had a bitterness about it. Something was not going to plan.
The petulance was, partly, because the tide was turning on the New York band that only two years before had been hailed as the saviours of rock'n'roll. The Strokes' second album, Room on Fire, had received mixed reviews; the heavy touring schedule that followed their graduation to the big league was taking its toll.
The Casablancas sitting in front of me can afford a wry smile as he looks back on that period. Dressed in a pseudo-military jacket, the 26-year-old is slimmer than he was in 2004, healthier-looking too, and more forthcoming about his lot than his sometimes prickly media persona usually allows. Amazing what getting married - to the band's assistant manager, Juliet Jostin - and giving up the grog can do.
"I don't feel damaged," he says in his slow, meandering New York drawl, "but I felt definitely roughed up at times." Getting home after long periods on the road was when it dawned on him that he was punishing himself. "That's when you really feel like you're going to die," he says.
Fortunately, that didn't happen, and after a short lay-off last year the Strokes embarked on their most ambitious album so far, one that took nine months and a lot of soul-searching to make. They replaced producer Gordon Raphael with David Khane, a man more accustomed to tweaking the controls for less cutting edge singers such as Tony Bennett and Cher. He changed the Strokes' overall sound. First Impressions of Earth is a more layered, less frenetic album than either of its predecessors. Its 14 songs were given time to germinate in the studio, something that didn't happen during the rapid sessions for Is This It? and Room on Fire.
"We've been chasing a bigger sound since the beginning," Casablancas says. "We didn't find anyone who could help us do it right. Every time we did it, when we tried someone new, it sucked the soul out of it and it just sounded bad. David was the first kind of guy who could get beyond the sound and could appreciate some of the stuff we were doing and make it a little more accessible. Instead of cutting it together quickly like we did the first time, with a lot of it we'd sit around for a while and stew on it. Songs definitely changed direction a few times.
"We were figuring stuff out, but after three or four songs I was thinking in my mind that 'I can't believe we're finally sounding the way I want us to sound'."
Six hundred souls get the chance to sample some of the new songs when, later on the day of our interview, the Strokes do a one-off Australian performance at Sydney's Gaelic Club. On stage, Casablancas's menace simmers rather than spits in your face. He drinks water. His four colleagues - Fab Moretti (drums), Albert Hammond Jr (guitar), Nikolai Fraiture (bass) and Nick Valensi (guitar) - are suitably animated, enough to whip the privileged throng into a sea of waving limbs, particularly when they launch into crowd favourites New York City Cops and Last Night.
It's a powerful performance, one of only a few they have done around the world in the lead-up to their album's release next month.
I make the point that a batch of new songs can help reinvigorate the old ones, but Casablancas is not entirely convinced by that. They have been playing some of the songs in the set regularly for five years and he, for one, could do with resting a few of them.
"I'd be lying to you if I said ..." He tails off to gather his thoughts. "The songs used to always feel new to me, but now, at this stage, some of the ones we've been playing since the beginning, are definitely ... the intro to Last Night ... I'm sorry, excuse me ... [he says with a hand gesture to the skies] doesn't move me."
It moves audiences, though.
"It makes me sad, but I find myself going through the motions, while the crowd is going crazy," he says. "At least you have that to go on, but secretly you want the music to move you."
If this translates into a degree of apathy on stage, Casablancas still looks the part. He can get away with it and, he says, he can justify it. "I don't want to be phony about it," he says. "Strike that MTV 'I want to rock' pose. I want to do it with some kind of purpose."
* * *
THE Strokes began purposefully in late 1999, when they played their first gig to a handful of people in a New York club. Their fortunes changed a year later when they played the city's Mercury Lounge and the booker there (later their manager), Ryan Gentle, sent their demo tape to Rough Trade Records in London. Their EP, The Modern Age was released in Britain, the media frenzy began and the five former private school boys were on their way.
Is This It?, which includes the hits Last Night, Take It or Leave It and Hard to Explain, was released first in Australia, where the band played a handful of memorable shows with local rockers You Am I in July 2001. The reaction here echoed the frenzy that was happening in Europe.
Their brand of punk/pop was innovative and exciting. The album clocked in at less than 35 minutes, all of the tracks bristling with an energy, a chemistry and an ear for a good tune that had been sadly lacking in the post-grunge rock era. Very quickly the five easy-on-the-eye young musicians were media darlings and were selling out shows from Manchester to Melbourne. They were hot.
And so they remained, touring the world, headlining festivals and with one or two of them acquiring celebrity girlfriends along the way. Moretti has been in a relationship with actor Drew Barrymore for three years, Valensi for the same time with former British actor, television presenter and now photographer Amanda de Cadenet.
Their star status has put some of them in the paparazzi firing line, particularly Moretti and Barrymore, although Casablancas, the focal point of the group, says he doesn't have any difficulty staying out of the limelight. "I don't have many paparazzi problems," he says. "It's not like I can't walk down the street."
The streets of New York are still home to all five Strokes. The city is at the heart of much of their material, particularly the first album, and Casablancas says that it will remain home and an inspiration. It's the kind of place, he says, that no one wants to leave.
"It's an urban thing. Even if you want to smell grass once in a while, at the same time you kind of miss it because it's such an apex of everything. It's hard to walk away from that. You know, if you want to be a farmer or live in a log cabin or just in the country, then basically you move, but you don't move to some other city to get away from New York."
What many people may find surprising about Casablancas is that he rarely listens to music. While critics have compared him with Lou Reed, Tom Verlaine and just about every other serious New York crooner, the Strokes' frontman says he doesn't model himself on anyone and has only a few CDs in his collection at any one time. "There are things that I will like and I'll absorb it and love it and play it and be it," he says. "I'll have maybe 10 CDs with me and switch them around. It's always been that way. And I'll listen to a bit of radio."
This extremely selective process benefits his career, he says. "It has helped me in how I do things. To immerse yourself in something you think is great ... you don't mess around with anything you think is mediocre."
Being average has not always been a hindrance to enduring success in the music industry, and talent has never been a guarantee of longevity. The Strokes have talent, not just as a band but as individual musicians and as songwriters, but Casablancas is aware that it could all fall in a heap just as quickly as it took for them to emerge four years ago.
"It's not the most stable of professions," he says. "People can wake up and want nothing to do with you. There's nothing you can do in the face of that. You can't worry about things you can't control. All you can do is work as hard as you can and hope people will respond to it positively. We want to keep making music for people who enjoy it."
The new album and world tour will take care of that for most of next year. The Strokes plan to be back in Australia in June. By then the new songs will be well run in: Casablancas should be firing on all cylinders.
"I learned to figure it out," he says of his hazy period. "You make mistakes along the way. Basically, what I seek is the balance between writing songs and performing them. You don't want one to take away from the other. In the past, because we were scheduled not as wisely as possible, one would suffer. Now that we are regrouped enough, and are strong enough, we can make both work."
Taper-Jean Girl
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i was in times square at the virgin record store today and they were playing the Juicebox vid, but I only saw a clip. I didnt even recognize Julian at first! I was like "Who's this foxy fella, and why haven't I ever laid eyes on him before???" Then I realized it was my dear Jules and was like "Daaaamn you lookin' fine!" Then I realized I was talking to the big screen in the middle of the store and some Swedish tourist were looking at me! 
haute femme
turn and face the strange
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aw well atleast we know that nick isn't 100% superficial... i'd like to see the strokes dating some normal looking people. 
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