TDK Chronicles The Strokes Interview 2010

it was an effort there was a beauty there was an art form about making mixtape earliest thing if I put on a tape was the Chipmunks Christmas the hula hoops on I can't mana my memory is so bad to be honest I remember going on vacation with friends of mine in in France and playing a mixtape with a lot of Nirvana's incest aside which had just come out they were like see coolin Nirvana it should be good I had a little boombox it was a CD player with a tape player a lot of mixtapes that I did were you know taping officina CDs were available at the time but you couldn't really it was before you could burn your own kind of CD this is before obviously you know you could go online and find one song grab that one song so you'd have mountains these pillars of CDs back then you'd buy either a tape or CD and you like one song to get them all in the same place and hear them consecutively it was the only way to do it kind of like the playlist the modern playlist is now I would record the vinyls onto tape taping off the radio listening for the song and and hoping they would play it I have songs where like I come in late cuz you know you get you waiting here to go to the bathroom then you hear it playing if the run back run for one this by the first time I ever taped out the radio hippie chick by so how'd you are that huh your time silly was it Wham Careless Whisper I think he was I think that's Wham it was my mom's favorite song and I just remember I was trying I was trying to record it for Pearl Jam came out the Vitalogy and better man was single I have a vivid memory of catching better man on a tape and being very excited about that like we were like alchemists we were in our bedroom and like that was our laboratory and like the CDs and records were like our our test tubes we would kind of surprise each other in making the not listening back to the mixtape but while we were making the mixtape you'd be like yo check out this next song I'm gonna put really and you'd have to listen to the song as it was recording on for the tape I remember making mixtapes and having to be really precise about you know how you write the songs and I'd have to get a good pen you know you can't do it with a Bic pen you got to get like the right pen to do it you'd want to draw on it that would be like your cover you know and I always felt like they didn't give you enough space you couldn't you couldn't always fit it there sometimes you had to just leave like a little dot dot but then sure enough by the time you got to the end of it that you would smudge the ink somehow and it's like man this thing up as a kid I mean you know you go through that teen angst know everything sucks and you're so depressed and you have your Walkman and you have your headphones on at the time it wasn't even like earbuds I had crazy big headphones you know that was the thing you had to have some big-ass headphones at the time I remember those big yellow walkman you remember those sport walkman I actually had the yellow one kind of water-resistant and they would click and I thought that was just like the pinnacle of technology oh my god that [ __ ] clicks that is fantastic I grew up in LA so the car was where you did everything a lot of times we were in someone else's car and they put on a bad radio station they just like you know musically you don't like him so you have a tape so you can let's just play this I get sick of whatever tape whatever mixtape it was and me and my sisters would break it open and throw throw the tapes off our balcony like hold on to one end of it and just watch it spool out and then land on the floor and we we do that with lots of tapes match keep on throwing it off our balcony until people started complaining it's a highlight in my childhood yeah man this is this is the worst you spent so many hours and then this happens and you can fix it but then you know then then once in a while at a table break and then then you're kind of screwed I start with poison fallen angel first on was Frank Sinatra of my way talk show host by Radiohead cult of personality by Living Color it's one of my favorite jams back then ac/dc let there be rock that was a rocker Motley Crue's dr. feelgood Def Leppard Skid Row Bon Jovi just a lot of Jane's Addiction I was a huge fan I made a mixtape to take on the road for us when we drove to Chicago once that had Richard Pryor and built spill they were just switch it may not had to be random song that I'd like you know like there's some Guns and Roses that I like anything off of Appetite for Destruction by Guns and Roses early u2 Leone war like warrant heaven isn't too far away Tesla signs a lot of Bob Marley you know you're when you're in your teens it's kind of when you discover that whole thing Aerosmith I actually learned about the Beatles through Aerosmith back then I don't know if I love Ice Ice Baby but it was always playing sort of a stage you watch the top like a candle did you know what Bon Jovi he was able to take a really like Italian name Bon Giovanni I think it was and split it up into a cool band name when we associated with that we tried to do it with our name and failed miserably we're like more Eddie and because it's like more of Eddie I put in a tape I guess I forgot to finish it when I got halfway through just hiss but we did only we notice it at first it was just our world changed just like really really loud with that with that tape hiss just blasted that in the room everything just got calm and beautiful the patterns on the carpet start moving around was amazing and then when it stopped it was it was shocking it just kind of like if you were in space you just fell so we'd flip the tape over and just play it just the whole trip listened to tape hiss we kind of grew up together three blocks away from each other so you know usually we take the six strand onto Astor Place they had a lot of like bootlegs that was like a pretty huge thing mixtapes work almost currency to us it was like I'll give you this for this so I got this new song check out this song that's a b-side on something that you can't get you know that's in the European import after that Guns and Roses phase you know Nirvana came out Pearl Jam came out I guess they called it grunge nickel I had a warbly version of yellow Ledbetter that was the song that kind of kind of tapped into something in my mind that got me going on the path towards yeah I guess becoming a serious musician The Strokes you know me and fab jewel all of us getting into those bands together and listening to that stuff together helped us really forge oh yeah I'm Jim T the new MGMT record grizzly bear with an called Crystal Castles yeah something long like moonlight sonata or something to artic monkey songs once call despair in the departure lounge and Marty bum I was pretty feeble partido a happiness is a warm gun I think that song is one of the best songs ever written Radiohead their last album was great a lot of Beatles stuff Beach Boys The Velvet Underground Talking Heads Sam Cooke Tim's gonna come tour endo by Puccini dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum that song always gives me chills no no no no I'm gonna dumb them down recording something even making a mixtape of it it's capturing taking a picture of that moment in time I think that people really love music and people just want to appreciate music in whatever way technology allows them to appreciate it in the process of making it you hear it I don't know how many times it allowed you to have a more intimate association with the music and the musicians to you listen to that [ __ ] man over and over and over again time capsule final answer you

Channel: Manny Sunny Sun

Views: 284,054

Keywords: Nick Valensi, Albert Hammond, Jr.

Id: TTnxtS9F0VE

Length: 8min 33sec (513 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 14 2010