But You're Still The One Pool Where I'd Happily Drown
On New York and the New York Sound.
In the summer of 1973, punk progenitor Malcolm McClaren visited New York City. His visit was borne out of boredom as much as anything else and New York was the perfect antidote. The city offered him everything he felt was lacking on the other side of the Atlantic. It was a dirty, boundless paradise. It helped, of course, that he met The New York Dolls, who, with their drag fashion and rock and roll core, alongside a general sense of chaos, really were the sound of New York. McClaren returned to London enamoured with the Dolls and captured by New York. He experienced, I imagine, what many others do when they leave New York. Or really, I should say, when you never really leave. It’s a strange phenomenon, but there isn’t a city that lodges itself in your brain quite as much as New York. Malcolm McClaren returned to New York only a year later, just if you needed any further proof. Ultimately, he would try and emulate the Dolls in England but it would never quite work out in the same way. The Sex Pistols are great, don’t get me wrong, but they are very different from The New York Dolls. Why? It’s quite simple. The Sex Pistols aren’t from New York City.
I’ve grown up on stories of New York. Some told, some found. It’s where my parents met, so for a place i’ve only ever been to once, its played a large part in my life. It’s remained in my life too. Family and friends might only fly in and stay fleetingly, but they’d say things like “I haven’t seen you in years” before launching into tales from the city. And if it wasn’t from them, tales from my parents youth would have to suffice. As a child they would fascinate me, and to be honest there’s a part of me that’s remained fascinated. I’ve never watched Sex and the City, so I can’t attest to New York being the fifth character of that show. But I can attest to it being one in my life. New York was a constant, and it became more mythical figure than city.
The other constant growing up was music. And New York was invariably there too. Much like Malcolm McClaren, I’ve found some bands just embody NYC. The Dolls do, of course, but they were neither first nor last. It’s why, with discussions of New York bands, you have to make a distinction: do you simply mean bands that happen to be from the five boroughs, or do you mean a “New York Band”, because the latter is a lot more complicated than the former.
If there are “New York Bands” is there, then, a “New York Sound”? To me there is. I’m going to confine this to indie/alternative/underground rock (other umbrella terms are available), because I do not have the time or the knowledge to get into the world of New York rap/hiphop or Jazz. I think to understand this sound in the indie world, and its progression and continuation, there’s a crucial aspect alongside it, one that might just be more important than the music itself - myth-making. New York is built on its own myths (although, I guess that’s what happens when you’re on stolen land). And New York is very good at it. Especially when it comes to the myths that surround its music. The Velvet Underground, CBGB’s, Sonic Youth, ‘Indie Sleaze’. There may be a sonic line that runs through them all, but they represent different eras of the city, and yet the individual myths that surround them are built up to become one. It all adds to the sound.
But what is the sound? When so much of it is devoted to myths and myth-making, it’s hard to say. But there are a few key components. It’s dirty. It’s loud. It’s different. If it doesn’t sound like the subway, or the Chelsea Hotel or the once-dirty streets of the Lower East Side, then it’s just not it. And you’ll know it when you hear it:
When The Velvet Underground toured the West Coast, their sound didn’t translate. It was the same country, of course, but it didn’t feel like it. With their abrasive, experimental sounds, and lyrics about hard drugs and sexual deviance as well as an accompaniment of whips and leather-clad dancers, it wasn’t exactly the sound of the acid loving, sun-soaked contemporary culture of California or the Bay. But it was dirty, it was loud and it was different. It was New York.
About a decade later, there’d be another emerging sound, but much like the Velvets, this was one that could also have only come from one place. With Marquee Moon, Television created the first post-punk record - before Punk had even begun. To my mind it might be the perfect encapsulation of the “New York Sound”. It doesn’t matter that it’s basically their only album. Or at least the only one they’re remembered for - it singlehandedly started the scene at CBGB’s so nothing else matters, or so the story goes. Should a band with only one (proper) album be remembered as fondly as Television? Would it have been enough for Television to release Marquee Moon and let it speak for itself. Maybe. But it’s all one - the music and the myth. Everything else that emerged around and after it, CBGB’s, punk, new wave, only helps cement its place as a New York-specific record - the sound needs the myth. Otherwise it’s just a record.
It’s also why, when asked if Television were a big influence, The Strokes would claim to not know who they were. Anyone who’s listened to a Strokes record will be able to call bullshit. Not least because Julian Casablancas has detailed how he used to search the city’s record shops in order to find a copy of Marquee Moon. You could put it down to simply just a young band joking around in a barrage of press. And, yeah, maybe it is. But I don’t doubt The Strokes knew what they were doing. Creating their own myth - at once distancing themselves from, and yet in doing so, associating themselves with Television (and others who’ve come before), and more importantly with the specific sounds of New York. And The Strokes really were the sound of New York. They encapsulated it all. There’s a reason you couldn’t escape them in the noughties. A lot of that had to do with how good they were (and they were very good), but the hype they built up wasn’t just about the quality of their music. Yes, they had the sound. But. They were also making New York rock cool again. The two go hand-in-hand. If it was different, if they strayed from the New York sound, it simply wouldn’t have worked, it wouldn’t have been making New York cool again. And if they didn’t play up to the myth, would the New York sound have returned, would it have been cool again?
There have been dry periods for New York, of course. It’s one of the reasons The Strokes were so heralded. But it is a testament to its sound that it has never quite died. Sonic Youth were there to carry on their particularly loud take on it as New York pivoted to hiphop and house, and American alternative rock moved to Seattle. Parquet Courts were there, carrying on the tradition, after the death of the “garage rock revival” that The Strokes had spearheaded. Scenes come and go, but there’s something about New York that lends itself to bands trying a particular angle, and this particular sound. More often than not, it seems to work. Maybe it’s because the bands themselves believe in the myth of New York. Would TV on the Radio, for instance, sound like that if they hadn’t met across two Brooklyn rooftops, in what has to be one of the most quintessentially New York stories ever? In all honesty, probably. BUT, and this is they key - they met in New York. Would Patti Smith be Patti Smith if she never left New Jersey? We won’t ever know. But that’s because she moved to New York. And this is where the myth becomes oh-so-important, because it draws you in and then drags you to New York. Because the myth of New York isn’t really about the music, it’s about people. And the reason for the New York sound is the people who make it. And New York attracts those people.
Is it any surprise, then, that there’s such a specific sound that’s been progressing in one city since the 60s. The real myth of New York, to quote Alicia Keys, is of that concrete jungle where dreams are made of. And it always has been. Whilst Alicia Keys and Jay-Z may have put it best, it’s an idea that’s permeated long before ‘Empire State of Mind’. It’s what compels people to move there, and not just move there, but to move there and do things, to make something happen. And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy too - making things happen only encourages more of the same.
It’s happening again, too. I mentioned Parquet Courts earlier, but for a while they were only the thing resembling a proper New York Band. Of course, there’s never not music from New York. But some bands just happen to be from New York, it doesn’t make them a “New York band”. It’s why when you think of 2000’s New York, for instance, you think of The Strokes or Interpol or LCD Soundsystem and not Vampire Weekend. But there does seem to be something of a resurgence of “New York Bands” in the current NYC indie scene. Bands like Bodega and Gustaf are doing more of the art-punk stuff, Model/Actriz are going down the noise/no-wave route, and there seems to be a whole scene around bands like Been Stellar and Geese. I could be getting this all wrong. I don’t know, I’m not there. But this is the stuff that’s been making its way to this side of the Atlantic, and that usually means there’s more hiding under the surface. And they all seem to understand the same things, the same ideas and similar sounds. In doing so, they’re ingratiating themselves into the New York sound.
But y’know, maybe I have got this whole thing wrong. And this has all just been an excuse to indulge in fantasies from my childhood and in doing so, been an attempt at trying to find patterns that don’t exist. New York was an important but distant part of my life (and still is) and music has always been a crucial and immediate constant and maybe this was just a failed attempt to reconcile the two.
But.
This isn’t just about music. It’s also about the idea of New York. And it’s about the people who create it. So maybe there isn’t one definable sound, (and maybe there is). Maybe the bands I've thought of as New York bands aren’t, (and maybe they are). But the people do exist. And I think if I’m right on one thing, its this: you may disagree with my examples, or the idea of a specific “New York Sound”, but there is something about New York that draws people to it (or stops them from leaving) and from that alone, the art and the music that those people make is entirely influenced by the city of New York. And no matter what you listen to, you will have felt that influence.