Meet Me in the Bathroom

Posted on 26 March 2018 by Lizzy Goodman

Joining the ranks of the classics Please Kill Me, Our Band Could Be Your Life, and Can t Stop Won t Stop, an intriguing oral history of the post 9 11 decline of the old guard music industry and rebirth of the New York rock scene, led by a group of iconoclastic rock bands.In the second half of the twentieth century New York was the source of new sounds, including the Greenwich Village folk scene, punk and new wave, and hip hop But as the end of the millennium neared, cutting edge bands began emerging from Seattle, Austin, and London, pushing New York further from the epicenter The behemoth music industry, too, found itself in free fall, under siege from technology Then 9 11 2001 plunged the country into a state of uncertainty and war and a dozen New York City bands that had been honing their sound and style in relative obscurity suddenly became symbols of glamour for a young, web savvy, forward looking generation in need of an anthem.Meet Me in the Bathroom charts the transformation of the New York music scene in the first decade of the 2000s, the bands behind it including The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, and Vampire Weekend and the cultural forces that shaped it, from the Internet to a booming real estate market that forced artists out of the Lower East Side to Williamsburg Drawing on 200 original interviews with James Murphy, Julian Casablancas, Karen O, Ezra Koenig, and many others musicians, artists, journalists, bloggers, photographers, managers, music executives, groupies, models, movie stars, and DJs who lived through this explosive time, journalist Lizzy Goodman offers a fascinating portrait of a time and a place that gave birth to a new era in modern rock and roll. Read Meet Me in the Bathroom – kino-fada.fr Will there ever be another scene like the one that Lizzy Goodman describes in MMITB Whether it was Seattle for grunge, the Sunset Strip for hair metal, Boston for 80s era college music, Laurel Canyon in the early 70s, Motown in the 60s, or any other number of scenes, so much of music history can be traced back to a bunch of bands emanating from one central location playing stylistically similar jams MMITB does a tremendous job of capturing the dynamic LES rock scene of the early Aughts, Will there ever be another scene like the one that Lizzy Goodman describes in MMITB Whether it was Seattle for grunge, the Sunset Strip for hair metal, Boston for 80s era college music, Laurel Canyon in the early 70s, Motown in the 60s, or any oth...Literally everyone didcoke than me in the early aughts.The musical era biography subgenre may be my favorite type of reading material That and or artist memoirs autobiographies Our Band Could Be Your Life remains a seminal experience for how much music it led me to discover and how the ideals espoused by the 80s punks whose careers the book chronicled, and how their lives and work were all intertwined, deeply affected me, inspired me, and or served as fodder for appropriation regurgitation Pr...This book is fine It is also a complete existential nightmare.Look oral histories tend to be very readable, especially if the people being interviewed have big personalities Sure enough, this book is very readable because it s full of a bunch of successful inspired crazy people saying interesting things.But while reading Meet Me In The Bathroom is a pleasant enough experience it is also a stone cold bummer because damn, man, I don t want my generation to descend up its own butthole the same This book is fine It is also a complete existential nightmare.Look oral histories tend to be very readable, especially if the people being interviewed have big personalities Sure enough, this book is very readable because it s full of a bunch of successful inspired crazy people saying interesting things.But while reading Meet Me In The Bathroom is a pleasant enough experience it is also a stone cold bummer because damn, man, I don t want my generation to descend up its own butthole the same way that the Boomers did.Look I was in college when a lot of these bands released their first records I remember the Strokes being played at house parties I fell in love with Interpol during 2005, which was the first year that I was living completely ...We always thought that the misfits were the stars, journalist author Rob Sheffield waxes early on in Lizzy Goodman s exhilarating and comprehensive oral history Meet Me in the Bathroom It s one of many great quotes from an exhaustive catalog of these misfits the rockers, writers and artists who helped shape one of the most iconic and important eras of rock music Or so is the opinion of this particular reviewer To be fair I am of a similar age to many of those documented in Goodman s nov We always thought that the misfits were the stars, journalist author Rob Sheffield waxes early on in Lizzy Goodman s exhilarating and comprehensive oral history Meet Me in the Bathroom It s one of many great quotes from an exhaustive catalog of these misfits the rockers, writers and artists who helped shape one of the most iconic and important eras of rock music Or so is the opinion of this particular reviewer To be fair I am of a similar age to many of those documented in Goodman s novel and found much solace in the music created during that time, so consider me a touch biased It s doubtful Meet Me in the Bathroom will have the same profound effect on others as it did me, but I suppose that depends on one s relationship with the music produced in NYC during the weird, wild aughts and even the few years preceding them That being said it s also doubtful one would take on a 600 page behemoth unless they w... 3.5 starsI m a huge Strokes fan, so when I heard this book was coming out, I knew I had to read it I also really like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The White Stripes, and TV on the Radio, while being a casual fan of most of the other bands featured in this book.I enjoyed it for the most part, but I did have some issues, the format ...The low rating is based on two factors 1 I love oral histories but the actual structure used in this book is extremely hard to follow People pop in and out without any reintroduction or explanation for why they are there Some anecdotes are placed right in the middle of longer overarching stories with no point or connection.2 The people covered in this story are just not that compelling As opposed to say Please Kill Me, or Other Hollywood, a lot of the stories told are thorough snore feats The low rating is based on two factors 1 I love oral histories but the actual structure used in this book is extremely hard to follow People pop in and out without any reintroduction or explanation for why they are there Some anecdotes are placed right in the middle of longer overarching stories with no point or connection.2 The people covered in this story are just not that compelling As op...Oral history in the style of Please Kill Me hyping up arecent New York music scene Not nearly as iconic or fun to read about as the 70s punk scene in Please Kill Me, but still an entertaining and nostalgic look back on a time not that long ago when rock music still mattered Right from the beginning I was not feeling the over the top glorification of New York City THE ONLY PLACE IN THE WORLD that matters for cool people apparently , nor did I think the long page count was justified I Oral history in the style of Please Kill Me hyping up arecent New York music scene Not nearly as iconic or fun to read about as the 70s punk scene in Please Kill Me, but still an entertaining and nostalgic look back on a time not that long ago when rock music still mattered Right from the b...Message to Julian Casablancas and Ryan Adams set a date somewhere chill, roll countless joints, smoke them, kiss and make up.Now, the bookMeet Me in the Bathroom Or How to Be Hypocrites and Pick on Ryan Adams, by Lizzy Goodman has everything an oral history needs to be spectacular but instead it falls for the gossip, the drugs, the sex, the weirdness, the hipster bickering And it does this while ignoring any valuable information on the music these mostly great bands made If you re Message to Julian Casablancas and Ryan Adams set a date somewhere chill, roll countless joints, smoke them, kiss and make up.No...I feel exhausted after reading Lizzy Goodman s compelling oral history of the aught s music scene in New York City, Meet Me in the Bathroom I read the book in mostly one sitting, and it took me, I d estimate, a littlethan 10 hours to get through There s 640 pages in the book, according to the publisher s information my copy was downloaded on the Kindle , and, man, do you feel it Practically no stone is left u...

English
26 March 2018

Lizzy Goodman