Meet Me in the Bathroom

As a fan of The Strokes from Day 1, this was a must watch for me. Of course, I absolutely loved it.

I never knew Albert's struggles went that deep. I learned so much about more about the band and appreciate them so much more now.

As a native New Yorker, I remember the time period when this was all going on. The city still had a special vibe to it. There was something special in the air. All of it is gone now. You basically have to almost be a millionaire to live really nice and rents are out of this world.

But for that period in time The Strokes had revived the NYC rock scene, and were on top of the world. At one point they were labeled, "the new kings of rock." Some people have even suggested that they saved Rock N Roll. Bold statement, but in my eyes, very true.

The pressure they faced after "Is This It" dropped is enough to drive anyone crazy. Julian was really tough on the guys, especially Albert it seems.

I have some love for the Yea Yea Yeahs, but mostly cause of the energy that Karen O brings. I didn't know much about how they came up, but it was very interesting to find out in the documentary.

All the other bands shown were of no interest to me, so I won't bother mentioning them.

This is a very informative watch, and pure nostalgia. The time breezes on by, no drag whatsoever. Sit back, relax and enjoy.

Apologies for this write up. Wasn't really a review, just some random thoughts about the doc.

This gets a LennyReviewz Score of: 9/10.

This was a hard documentary to rate. On the one hand the amount of video they have of these bands at the start is gold. And I felt like I was back experiencing a youth I never knew. But the documentary flow and direction is hard to pick up on and the constant dancing between bands is hard, they're all interesting in their own way however and I watched this for the Strokes but I didn't skip or lose interest for any part of the doc.

It's so good seeing bands like the Strokes and Interpol live right at the start of their careers, musically they had it right away. Also interesting to see bands like Yeah Yeahs, the rapture, Moldy Peaches and LCD soundsytem early who Didn't have it to start with... but learnt quickly and started to make good sounding music for their already present coolness. Except for that LCD soundsytem guy, he doesn't look like a rock star at all so even more props to him-workmanlike.

I dreamt of being a rockstar and playing music to get the attention and acclaim I never got from my peer groups and opposite sex when I was growing up. Watching this I'm glad I didn't get it - would've ended up more of a narcissist than I was then. It's actually incredible many of these equally screwed up folks turned out pretty okay.

Interestingly, to me this is proof that survivorship bias and luck is a thing in music as well, and like success in many arts and creative endeavours, having rich parents helps...

If you like one or more of these Bands I definitely recommend you watch.

I have been anxiously awaiting this film, and it really let me down. I wanted to feel the excitement of this time and place and as soon as I would start to, it walked it back and jumped subjects, losing any momentum. These bands defined my early adulthood, at a time when things were really chaotic. But this film was chaotic in a different and uninspired way. I couldn't tap into the nostalgia I was hoping for, and it left me really sad and almost angry because there was so much potential and it could have been so much more.

I'm also disappointed that they gave Ryan Adams any kind of screen time, while giving next to nothing to TV on the Radio. They deserve their own movie. And so does Karen O, who was a bright spot in a really lackluster movie.

Not that it's exactly comparable, but I grew up very much amidst a folk music scene with loads of extremely mediocre working-class musicians - ballad singers, guitarists, fiddlers etc., who all thought they would go on to some sort of musical greatness. Watching this, it's good to know that those ridiculous pipe dreams were not just confined to Glasgow in the 1970s. Spool on to the early naughties and we are presented with a collection of "musicians" living in Yew York City with aspirations that in the vast majority of cases way outstripped their talents. The one exceptions is probably Julian Casablancas, who managed with "The Strokes" to get his head above the parapet of bland noisemaking, and here the documentary is quite potent at illustrating that the stresses of achieving and building on success are actually just as tough as those involved in getting noticed in the first place. On a more generic level, it does point out how tough this industry is, how hard people work to achieve little better than a subsistence existence and at just how transitory and fickle it all can be, but I did tire a little of the also-rans who whined on about sexploitation and objectification as if they'd had been living under a rock for most of their lives. They dreamt of success and acknowledgement in an industry that was/is riddled with sexualisation and somehow it came as a shock to them - pissed and stoned as they invariably were. Real talent is the best fast-track to initiate meaningful and lasting change. It's an interesting fly-on-the-wall style of production with loads of archive, busily edited to leave us with an authentic-looking view on the lives of these people, but I felt most of them really had no idea what they were doing and the fact that 9/11 occurred midway through the chronology of the narrative seemed merely designed to attempt to bedrock this otherwise flighty and shallow assessment of a music industry that took me back to those nights in the pub, with the folk singers who sounded great after eight pints, but who had no shelf-life beyond that!

I grew up watching those bands and I remember what the media used to say about them, that they were going to save rock music.

But now after 2 decades... Yeah, they were just kids. We were just kids. Really, I was literally a kid. And I'm from Brazil and could relate to them so I thought I would be all emotional and so on.

It was nice to see the bands but there's a lot of unnecessary drama and white-rocker-men-from-new-york-problems'.

Maybe we're not just grown up but grew out of all of this so niched and dated scene from the past.

Anyway, maybe with a short edit and a more developed story from Karen O, for instance it would be better to watch.

Overrall, it was 6/10 and worth for the nostalgia.