The Strokes is an American rock band from New York. Formed in 1998, it has been gaining fame since the early 2000s as one of the flagship groups of garage rock revival and post-punk revival. They are often referred to as the heirs of the Velvet Underground and Television, from which the group is mainly inspired>.
It was in 1984 that two of the members of the future group met. In fact, Julian Casablancas meets Nikolai Fraiture at the school, with whom he befriends quickly and who will later become his bassist. The two comrades are then only six years old, it will be necessary a few more years before this relation is transformed into musical collaboration. Seven years later, in 1991, Julian Casablancas sympathizes with drummer Fabrizio Moretti and guitarist Nick Valensi (who had played in the same group a few months earlier) at the Dwight School, a high school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But it was only the following year that he met Albert Hammond Jr. at the prestigious Le Rosey Institute in Switzerland, the guitarist who completed the training a few years later. Crossing it then in Manhattan quite by chance, Casablancas invites Albert Hammond Jr to join his newly formed group, and is in charge of naming the quintet now in full; it will be The Strokes. The name "The Strokes" is in itself, like their music, a contradiction: "a stroke" means both a caress and a stroke. The music of Strokes is rough, with the use of electric guitars with saturated sounds as in hard rock, but also very melodious, with pure blues sounds.
In June 2001, the Strokes (who dreamed at one point of becoming a group as inevitable as Guided by Voices, formation of the American underground) quickly become a real phenomenon. Their popularity grew quickly in New York shortly after their formation, especially in the Lower East Side and they began to perform at the Mercury Lounge. Ryan Gentles is responsible for booking; impressed by the sound of the group, he decides to leave his job to become their manager.
Contacted after a show by Gordon Raphael, a producer of the New York underground scene, the Strokes begin to rehearse several days a week with the intention of recording an EP. Their repertoire includes at this time at most ten to twelve titles including Last Nite, The Modern Age, This Life (now Trying Your Luck), New York City Cops, Soma and Someday. (Last Nite's music video is recorded completely live, including Albert Hammond Jr accidentally hanging a microphone from Fabrizio Moretti's drums, both trying to put it back correctly, and at the end the drummer crumbling. two microphones with a wand.) Most of these titles have evolved their lyrics. Some still unpublished titles have been written during this period, including Sagganuts, In Her Prime, Rhythm Song, A Minor 4-4, Babies and Clear Skies.
