In November 2001 my rock band left Brooklyn for a 5 week US tour. The terrorist attack that took down the World Trade Center is still on our minds, having witnessed it firsthand two months earlier. Everywhere we went we had the same conversation. “Hey, are you from New York? May I ask you something?” it would begin. With some trepidation we would assume that they wanted to talk about 9/11 and let us relive that horrific day. To our surprise, the question was always the same: “What’s wrong with this band The Strokes?”
Both the band and the attack play a big role meet me in the bathroom, the new music documentary based on Lizzy Goodman’s eponymous oral history, which chronicled the New York rock scene in the early 2000s. Streaming continues at the moment show timeIt was directed by filmmakers Will Lovelace and Dylan Murphy, who also directed the LCD Soundsystem concert film Shut up and play the hits. Affectionate and funny, if perhaps a little too long, it covers the basics of the era and the great musicians, or at least those who actually sold a significant number of records.
The story begins 23 years ago, at the beginning of the new millennium. In the rock era, 23 years are bands, scenes and styles of at least four generations. The ongoing apocalyptic mindset of the 21st century was about to take off when the insurgent media fear machine warned of a global computer shutdown in 2000 that never happened. Within two years, other unforeseen events would change the city and the world forever.
A montage of the Big Apple’s rock past flashes by – drag queens and skinheads, Blondie and the Beasties, Wu-Tang and Lou Reed. While the book gives a broader overview of the era, the film focuses on The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol and LCD Soundsystem. Most walked the beaten path of outcasts and artists coming to town to reinvent themselves. Their music often looked to the past, with late ’70s post-punk being a particular fetish, but made something new out of it.
The characters we encounter occupy a range of narrative clichés; the tragic hero (Julian Casablancas from The Strokes), the iconoclastic pioneer (Karen O from The Yeah Yeah Yeahs), the misunderstood genius (James Murphy from LCD), along with various villains (mainly Courtney Love) and fellow travelers (The Moldy Peaches, TV on the radio, The Rapture). That’s not a disparagement, it actually makes the whole story more exciting.
Anyone familiar with the life cycle of music scenes knows that they all follow a similar pattern. Hip young musicians arrive with a unique look or sound, their innocence and enthusiasm already infected with the pride and ambition that will one day consume them. Local sensations rise to prominence on Main Street as the pernicious influence of drugs, money and sex takes their course. Death goes to the winners. The losers go on a reunion tour.
According to the documentary, a small clique of misfits played shows together in downtown Manhattan before being propelled by the September 11 attacks across the Williamsbridge Bridge, where they found “potential and freedom,” like Brian Chase, drummer of Yeah Yeah Yeah, said. Like Jimi Hendrix, punk rock and grunge before them, the first to find fame in trend-savvy Britain which they then turned into lucrative record deals, hailed as the best new thing since the last novel. And then it all went wrong, beautifully implied in the film through the use of Frank Sinatra’s lost classic It Was A Very Good Year.
Issues of creative scrutiny and industry expectations took their toll on The Strokes, as alt-country troubadour and canceled groomer Ryan Adams was accused of getting them onto heroin. Karen O blanched under the “predatory gaze” of the press, and the physicality of her performances led to injury and exhaustion. Interpol complains about her album being leaked on Napster, which seems a strange hill to die in 2022, but also reveals how record sales for artists of all backgrounds would soon decline. Like the tortoise beating the hare, only James Murphy seems to be making progress, leaving the recording studio to step into the limelight as a bandleader.
Gentrification would be the final nail in the coffin. Just as rising rents in Manhattan were sending cool rock bands into the bowels of Brooklyn, they would soon be supplanted there too. Some, like Karen O, fled the city. Other less fortunate souls have been forced to move to Queens. It’s a nice bookend, even if it gives the false impression that the scene is dead. In fact, the city is still teeming with exciting new musicians, while the high profile bands have entered the fertile “legacy act” phase of their careers.
As a New York native and local…excuse the expression…scene, I have a hard time being entirely objective meet me in the bathroom and do not begin to criticize its various omissions and inaccuracies. That said, it’s good and entertaining, and gives a good overview of a specific part of the city’s music scene at a given point in time. Using archival footage, audio interviews and augmented footage of performances, the filmmakers create a dreamscape of remembrance that is sweet and sentimental, yet serious and moving.
Benjamin H. Smith is a New York-based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter: @BHSmithNYC.