Last spring, I had my wisdom teeth removed. My oral surgeon was young-ish, and he was playing a Vampire Weekend album in the operating room. As the anesthesiologist did her thing, we began to discuss I launched into a monologue on my very complicated feelings about that band, and the next thing I knew I was waking up, no surgeon in sight, completely, fully, even ragingly, ready to complete my train of thought. It was definitely a mental coitus interruptus situation and I'm still mad about it. I

Last spring, I had my wisdom teeth removed. My oral surgeon was young-ish, and he was playing a Vampire Weekend album in the operating room. As the anesthesiologist did her thing, we began to discuss I launched into a monologue on my very complicated feelings about that band, and the next thing I knew I was waking up, no surgeon in sight, completely, fully, even ragingly, ready to complete my train of thought. It was definitely a mental coitus interruptus situation and I'm still mad about it. I am also still mad that the surgeon told me wisdom teeth removal is a "young person's game."



A few weeks ago, I caught Henry Rollins on his latest tour. Before that night, I had no idea how wild the story of how he became Black Flag's frontman is. He had driven from D.C. to New York for one of their shows, and they invited him onstage to sing one song. A few days later, he got a call from the band asking him to audition, and the rest is musical and spoken word history.



Meet Me in the Bathroom is about SO many things. The author herself claims it's really about New York City, and that's not wrong, but so are thousands of other novels, records, films, paintings, lives—it's New York, you can't turn over a cobblestone without finding 37 riveting stories beneath it. The reason I related those seemingly unrelated anecdotes above is because to me, the main characters are the incredibly complicated dynamics of one's personal musical taste and Lady Luck. Some of these bands were just at the right place, at the right time.



I am the target demographic of this book, and I'm not sure if I've ever experienced being such a...bullseye. I remember being a stuck in the backseat of a car. A friend of mine was going on and on about the Strokes and how they were so fucking cool and how he was going to dress just like them. Then he smoked weed out of a bowl using an actual button as a filter, like a plastic button from a coat, so his opinion didn't really hold a lot of weight. Another friend of mine latched onto the Karen O persona like a barnacle. You guys, I witnessed so many terrible haircuts that Karen herself could barely pull off. I've always been a little "oh it's more about the music, not the look" (which I realize has its own issues), so I didn't really get sucked into that vibe at the time. However, something that has always been a potent drug to me is the allure of a "scene." (FOMO is real you guys.) So I wanted to read this book.



(Sidenote on FOMO: this book gave it to me. Hard. I lived a mere 2.5 hours north of this scene and missed it completely. Oh, I listened to the music and did my own thing, but you know what I mean.)



Anyway, back to this music scene, in this place, at this time. One of the most interesting aspects of Meet Me in the Bathroom is how Lizzy Goodman introduces contributing factors I had never considered. For example, it was right on the cusp of the internet takeover. That sentence alone encapsulates: the onset of Napster and the eventual complete reconfiguration of the entire music industry; a new spotlight on the opinions of bloggers, who would become the top tastemakers; and the dismantling of established journalistic structures (including factoring in who was prescient enough to jump on the bandwagon re: online content). The theme of internet as catalyst is huge. We're all cozily set in our current media consumption ways, so it's easy to forget just how fucking different it was! If you even remember a time pre-internet! I mean, I watched a movie from 5 years ago and I noticed they were using Facebook wrong. The way we get information changes drastically and quickly these days—we're used to it. But the early 2000s were a time of enormous change in this regard. Enormous. Some people like change and roll with it; some people don't. Aside from the internet, this was a pre, during, AND post-911 New York. It was a New York dealing with a lot of political and economic change: gentrification, getting "cleaned up." Even small things like stringent new cabaret laws added spice to the stew. One claim I have a hard time getting behind though is that there was no real New York music scene for years before this one. I'm sure there was, it just wasn't yours.



Ok, so there's those huge themes. Huge themes like that are invariably accompanied by dozens of smaller themes. And what I LOVED loved loved about Meet Me in the Bathroom is the way Goodman structured the interviews to unveil everything she wanted to include. Seriously, it is a monstrous editing feat. Major Russian nesting doll status. Props to Lizzy and her team. You get the story of the Strokes and how they revitalized the scene, plus the contrast of the whole DFA/LCD thing. Those are the two major story arcs, and they are red-carpet-unrolled against the backdrop of the aforementioned climate of 2000s New York. Once that trunk is established, the other branches blossom: the tales of the YYYs, Interpol, TV on the Radio, and many others. The whole thing is so incestuous that it has to be this way. And THEN, within that context, the tidbits of hedonism, relationships, good feelings, bad feelings, praise, jealousy, ego-tripping—that all comes out. People fucked each other over just as often as they helped skyrocket careers. I read somewhere that Julian Casablancas said he didn't love this book because there were too many non-insider opinions. But I appreciated the takes of journalists, managers, publicists, bloggers, and Gideon Yago. They added a fullness I would've missed had their voices been omitted. Even the descriptions of drugs and general hedonism opened up space to read between the lines, letting you form your own opinion on what constituted cool, what made a rock star, what made a scene.



Which brings me to Vampire Weekend. I have complicated feelings! There's probably a band you feel a type of way about too. When I first heard them, I definitely scoffed. Like, what are they even. Now I kind of love them? That whole discussion with the hipster oral surgeon was about holding a mirror to your musical tastes. Of dissecting the roots of what makes you love music, letting yourself like something that doesn't necessarily fall into the established wheelhouse of what you THINK you should like, and everything that stems from that thought process. I remember being like, "it forced me to admit to myself that...I could be wrong about cool things, you know?" (Yoooo, nitrous though.) Towards the end of the book, specifically during the Vampire Weekend sections, something super interesting is brought up: that millenials, unlike those from the generations right before, don't hold such a die-hard loyalty to a specific style. They (THE INTERNET) had access to a huge variety of music, and no one told them only these one or two things were cool. And by this point, they knew how to use it to their advantage. Ezra Koenig is no joke.



Which brings me to Ezra Koenig. My other favorite thing about this book was cobbling together character profiles from the interviews. Ezra was one of my faves. Cerebral, fresh, and just...Ezra is going to do what he is going to do, and very cleanly and successfully at that. Tunde and Jaleel from TV on the Radio were my other faves. They were so real and funny. I left this book with a whole new opinion of Julian Casablancas, too (in a good way). Oh, and I loved Paul Banks from Interpol. Most of these characters are eloquent and funny. The stories ABOUT Carlos from Interpol were also pretty great. OH and I did laugh a lot at what the Kings of Leons guys had to say. And James Murphy, omg. I love LCD and could write several paragraphs on him after reading this but I'll spare you guys. He is one of those assholes I could easily be really good friends with.



That's the other thing about Meet Me in the Bathroom. It's super fun to read. I wanted to include all of the above overanalytical bullshit to counteract some of the claims that it's just about sex and drugs and being cool. It's not. But that stuff is in there, and fuck yeah it's fun to read about. Each chapter ends on on a mini-cliffhanger, and it just keeps you flipping pages. Pretty soon you're lugging around a 500-page hardcover, and gladly.

