UNCONFIRMED RUMOR: The Strokes’ next album will attempt to reach Bro Humor/Tween Markets

The Lonely Island is widely known as the modernized bro-ified version of Weird Al Yankovich adapted for the modern world bc they make zany viral videos. Their brand of humor is the ‘it’ style of humor for teens on the internet across the USA. Julian Casablancas, lead singer of the Strokes ‘collab-ed’ with the Lonely Island on a song called ‘Boom box.’ I am not sure if this video is supposed to ‘be funny’ or if it is supposed to be a ‘real song.’ Probs just the opportunity to make a zany video.

The Strokes were widely considered the #1 band of the 2000s, so it will be interesting to see if this viral video promotion hurts or helps the Strokes + JCasablancas solo project. Maybe this was some sort of strategic attempt to be part of the new ‘Dick in a Box’, getting over 100 million viral video views. Wonder if modern tweens who never heard the hit album ‘Is This It’ are becoming familiar with the Strokes brand, or if they will just think they are some weird old band like The Cars.

It’s not for the cock, it’s for a review of the decade

The Recession, 9/11, The Internet, Terrorism, George Bush, July 7th 2005, Big Brother, Reality Television, Social Networking, Celebrity, Tony Blair, Online Shopping, The First Black President, The Smoking Ban, I-Pods, Borat, Banksy, Chavs…

In no chronological or logical order, these are just some of the things that the decade dubbed “the noughties” may be remembered for.

Screaming Females interview

They have just been personally asked to support The Dead Weather on their first US tour, meaning they will get to share the stage with one of their heroes. I talked to Screaming Females drummer Jarrett D about the band’s own burdening guitar hero, New Brunswick basement shows and his admiration for The White Stripes.

New Brunswick is a strange town, one of almost a dozen large towns that make up the state of New Jersey; one of the only states in America without a major city. In its favour is that it is a university town, so every year a whole new generation of young people stock the town with fresh thoughts and new ideas. While the music scene in New Brunswick may remain small and always on the fringes of university culture, it’s kept alive by a dedicated group of musicians and fans who run shows from their basements. It was at a basement show that Jarrett first saw his Screaming Females band mates Marissa Paternoster and Mike Abbate in action, playing with their previous band named Surgery On TV.

A few months later, Jarrett and Marrisa crossed paths when Jarrett was working on a compilation CD at the local university campus. “I met Marissa because I was doing a club in college that my friends had started, where we figured out how to get money from the university to put out CDs. Our first CD was a compilation… She contributed two songs to the compilation which were my two favourite songs on it and when we were handing out CDs someone told me that she was the same girl and I couldn’t believe it. I was running a zine at the time and I was like, ‘I really like your band, you should come over and play music sometime’.” Jarrett remembers the day Marissa first came over to jam, “The thing that Marissa did that really blew my mind was, that the first time we ever played together we started playing and we were jamming out or whatever and she played this really awesome riff and she just stopped, and I was like, ‘why are you stopping, we just played something real cool’ and she said ‘well that’s the a-section’ and I was like ‘OK’ and she’s like ‘now we need something to go in to’ and she just started writing a song, like regardless of whether we were going to be in a band or had any future together as musicians. For her it was about writing a song and getting all her thoughts put together and that was what impressed me so much.”