Month: December 2022

Back in August, I read Lizzy Goodman’s oral history about the 2000s New York music scene, Meet Me In The Bathroom and I loved every second of it. Made up of interviews with some of the best-known names in modern American music; The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, and more, Meet Me In The Bathroom introduced me to a whole new culture of music and style.

So when the documentary based on the book also titled Meet Me In The Bathroom came out, I had to watch it. In a serendipitous moment, I happened to catch it on cable TV Tuesday night, and let me say, it was pretty good. Although severely limited by runtime and footage from the 2000s, Meet Me In The Bathroom does its best to retell the stories told in the book, mostly through voiceovers. But I think the movie is the best at really showing you what these venues and clubs looked like and felt like. After reading about all these iconic shows and venues, it was so exciting for me to be able to see recordings of Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Julian Casablancas from the Strokes.

Another highlight of the documentary is its portrayal of 9/11. Since I was born in 2003, I understand the immense impact and tragedy that 9/11 holds, but I don’t have the memories to quite grasp the extent of the pain people felt. Meet Me In The Bathroom has heartbreaking footage of these bands struggling with 9/11’s aftermath. Seeing footage of people on the street during the bombing or Paul Banks of Interpol sorting through ashes really gave me an image of what people felt.

And so overall I think the Meet Me In The Bathroom documentary was great, and maybe because I love these bands and that book, or maybe just because it was good. I don’t know.

I am not a sports fan normally. I don’t go to football games or watch basketball. It has just never been my thing, except for the World Cup. I think the magic of the World Cup rests in its scale and in its internationalism. Obviously, the Olympics have the same international factor, and I do enjoy the Olympics, but the scale is far too big for everyone around the world to be watching and cheering for the same game at the same time. When it comes to the World Cup, people across the world tune into one game with two teams, and that is all, massive parts of the world are connected through the experience of this soccer game. You can see this by a simple scroll through Twitter, look at a trending World Cup tag and you will see people of all nationalities, cultures, and backgrounds connecting over the same brief moment.

Here in America, it is assumed everyone in the room knows the latest football news, which is often the case, but only for Americans. Soccer is so much more international, leaving so much more room for people to connect. The World Cup is the perfect outlet for Americans to become more interested in the rest of the world and soccer, and create more international connections.

Either way, let’s go England! It’s coming home! (Home as in their home, not my home, even though I wrote this post I don’t care about American soccer)

Two weeks ago I was listening to my Spotify Discover Weekly, not thinking much of it, when Spotify played me a 2000s indie rock song similar to much of the music I already listen to, that I enjoyed, so I added it to a playlist and left it alone. I honestly forgot the song even existed until later that week when I was listening to that playlist and it came up again. Once I remembered how good that song was I listened to a bunch of the other songs Spotify recommended to me based on it, and I discovered a new genre; 2000s Swedish Punk Rock.

I did not even realize this band was Swedish until I was listening to the other songs recommended to me and they weren’t in English, something that really confused me for about thirty seconds. But the music overall was very good, and there seemed to be a lot of these 2000s indie punk rock bands in Sweden making great music, but they all had very little amounts of monthly listeners. Since then, I’ve been exploring the discographies of bands like The (International) Noise Conspiracy (~25,000 monthly listeners), Fireside (~8000 monthly listeners), Bob Hund (~72,000 monthly listeners), and The Bear Quartet (~3000 monthly listeners). So I guess the point of this post is to get out there and listen to music from other countries, especially those seemingly without big music scenes because you never know when you are going to find the next 2000s Swedish Punk Rock.