The Modern Age Came and Went with a Bang: The Strokes & Their Legacy

It was wild being twenty one in the fall of 2001. We exploded into autumn with a new found sense of false-power, lifted from the doldrums of a drunken summer, and propelled into the unknown realms of pseudo-adulthood. We sensed change coming, but didn’t know what that meant. We just wanted to take on the whole world.

The candy pop of preening boy bands, the sexualized teen idols we’d been forced to watch during lazy college TRL afternoons of non-productivity were dying. Rock and Roll loomed on the horizon, and we embraced it as the change we craved. The Strokes emerged as the forward cavalry, rising from the New York City scene via hip British magazines and lashing out at all attackers with the promise that we’d never listen to candy-coated nonsense again. We’d heard ABOUT them in the media, and we were already subconsciously imitating their styles, but we hadn’t actually HEARD them.

My friend brought home a copy of the Modern Age EP, slipping the CD out of the cardboard sleeve, mocked-up to resemble a record, black with a red and white middle that would swirl around if it was on a turntable.  Today, I imagine him putting it on and playing it like a record, but in reality, he popped the CD into my computer’s CD player and fired it up.

It was raw and GLORIOUS.

To a bunch of college students discovering the world of “college music,” aka: The Smiths, The Velvet Underground, Modern Lovers, and all the college standards, it was fresh ammunition. The drumming and guitars on ‘The Modern Age,’ along with Julian Casablancas’ lazy lyrics, brimming with casual pomp and attitude, pounded with reckless youth and ambition, capturing the “take on the world” energy we yearned for.

It made us feel invincible and cool.

The Twin Towers fell a week later and 9/11 destroyed and altered our national psyche. The news told us we’d die in horrific chemical attacks, our professors proclaiming an end to the glory days. We internalized our pains and ignored them. Worrying about tomorrow became something for the old to do, and we rallied against the notion of our youth and world being taken from us.

“Is This It,” their first LP, was a record for clinging to our youth and casually telling the newly revised world around us to “fuck off.” Things had changed, but the Strokes help us remain ignorant in a world where rock and roll was still important, because forgetting was in fashion.

The Strokes made their Boulder, Colorado debut on October 9^th, 2001, the exact date of their revised LP release, delayed by the removal of “New York City Cops” from the album due to its sensitive topic in our newly rebooted world.

Four of us sat around before the show, my then-girlfriend, her love of Mike Ness betraying her rebellious Texan spirit, her redheaded friend, smoking weed for the first time and continuously worrying about her heart exploding, my Brit-rock-obsessed friend who’d dropped the EP on me, and I. We drank and substance-abused, inflating expectations and playing the EP until we’d convinced ourselves of the second coming of the Rolling Stones.

Their lead singer, Julian Casablancas, roamed the stage that night as a delirious dervish, knocking into drum kits, bouncing off walls, yet somehow hitting every note, nailing every word. They played with a sense of urgency that had me convinced we’d hear about his death the next morning. It was a Jim Morrison-esque train wreck, but without the mangled words, stage walk-offs, and alleged penis flashing. In that moment, he felt like the embodiment of our minds and attitudes.

A year or two later I caught them again. Being twenty one had passed, and the growing concerns of adulthood were slowly creeping into my head.  They were in a bigger venue, and they put on a similar show, but it lacked the urgency I’d seen that night. It dawned on me that we’d used  the Strokes as a mirror for our own lives at that moment, the reality being just as coordinated and produced as the candy-pop before it…

The moment had passed, the world had changed. By that next show, friends were already going off to war and we were living in a more complicated world. 9/11′s tonal shift had changed the music landscape. The Strokes, with all their bombast and attitude, seem less relevant, and as we grew older and faced real adulthood, their modus operandi just didn’t ring true anymore.

But we’ll always have “Is This It” and that night at the Fox…

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Craig is currently a freelance writer whose works appear on his two blogs (here and here), as well as occasional pieces on Japan and ESL for Language House. He a budding humorist with a passion for social media, technology, beer, Asia, New Jersey, the Pacific Northwest, and both Footballs, and can be found ranting about all of the above and more via Google+ and Twitter.

Dai Hachi: The Art of the Modern Food Hunt

The hunt is a precise game. The man next to me eyes my fishing skills, confident in his own prowess and judgment. I disregard him and press on, peering into the square, metal vat of murky brown broth, wooden skewers poking out of each of the vat’s eight gridded sections. I grasp a handful of skewers, lifting them from the shadowy depths, checking each, and then gently returning them. I move on to try another group of sticks. The man chuckles, thinking I’ve made an error. Picking up the next group reveals my jackpot, a browned fish cake that’s been potentially floating in the soupy liquid for years. I smile, tossing it on my plate with a large dollop of miso paste and hot mustard, and I walk away the victor. The man looks dejected, settling for a skewered daikon radish that’s only been bathing in the fishy liquid for an hour.

Such is the dining experience at Dai Hachi ramen shop, where acquiring the skills of a seasoned appetizer hunter is half the fun.  Located off of Route 11, heading east out of Takamatsu City, in the Matsushima neighborhood, Dai Hachi is easily hidden by the jarring glow of neon pachinko parlors and 100 yen shop signs. It’s a small, dilapidated metal shack, rusting away in semi-darkness, surrounded by encroaching suburban strip mall restaurants and gambling institutions of ill-repute.

The mainstay at Dai Hachi is Japanese-style ramen, and these noodles, while a massive leap beyond your college fare, remains little more than a serviceable, slightly above-average rendition of the Japanese style. It’s comfort food, best eaten with a sixteen ounce mug (or five) of draft beer, while shaking out a fine layer of white pepper onto the noodles from a monstrous, cafeteria-sized can, perfect for keeping your mind racing while the beer sinks in. A side of Chinese gyoza dumplings offers a nice complement to the simmering bowl of noodles.

…But we’re not here for those. There are noodles on every corner and alleyway…

Dai Hachi remains a unique institution in a land hopelessly obsessed with the new and modern. Friends casually refer to year-old restaurants as ancient, and it’s rare to see a shop with over five or ten years under its belt. That’s what makes Dai Hachi special. It’s been around beyond what anyone seems able to remember, and the rusted metal exterior, smoke-yellowed counters, 1970s bikini girl beer posters, outdoor toilets, and an ancient TV flashing the night’s sumo match or baseball game, all give the place a feeling of time-earned legitimacy that’s often lacking in Japan.

It’s grubby and not anything approaching first-date material, but it’s filled with a vibrancy that only comes from aging. Dropping by at 4am after a night on the town, you’ll be rubbing arms with slurring young Japanese businessmen, wobbling, sake-drunk old men in pajamas and flip flops, spending their money on nourishment between booze and slots, and assorted men in sunglasses, either involved in organized crime or pretending to be. The owner and his son, constantly wage battles with their Chinese staff, attempting in vain to politely convince them to stop chatting with customers, all adding to the  entertainment value. It becomes as much a visual experience as it is an eating experience, from the first signs of dusk, on until the last satisfied drunk slowly stumbles out as the sun peeks through the windows at dawn.

However, the crowning achievement of Dai Hachi is the hunt for oden, a food best described as nearly anything skewered, tossed into a heated vat of fish broth and left to simmer. It’s a ‘kitchen sink’ food, and the key is letting those skewers stew and tenderize themselves. Many an amateur has returned to his table with an idiot’s array of sticks, unfortunate delicacies only recently placed into the broth and still yet to reach proper maturity. To successfully return to your table, holding a plate stacked high with choice skewers of fish cakes, potatoes, eggs, daikon radishes, beef cartilage, and perhaps a few octopus heads is an exulting feeling. To the professional hunter, watching the guy before you pull a prime piece is akin to losing a sports bet, with the added insult of either waiting for the other skewers or going hungry.

In a country that often tries to repackage nostalgia as something flashy and new, finding  Dai Hachi’s  timeworn ramen shop in the neon swirl is a delight, but the real pleasure lays in rubbing elbows with the entire spectrum of Japanese society and walking away with the best plate of food-on-a-stick. Everything else is just the gravy on top that makes Dai Hachi shine even brighter, allowing some forgetfulness when the topic of average ramen comes up.

(As a brief aside, the wife will kill me if I don’t mention the tofu. Dai Hachi gets their tofu from extremely small neighborhood tofu maker whose quality is known throughout the city. They let it soak in that same delicious, murky broth, but I omitted the dish, as you’re required to allow the staff to fish the tofu out for you. I feel slighted at the rejection of my hunting ability, so the wife orders it for my stubborn self. I begrudgingly eat about three of them whenever we go. It IS pretty amazing.)

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Craig is currently a freelance writer whose works appear on his two blogs (here and here), as well as occasional pieces on Japan and ESL for Language House. He a budding humorist with a passion for social media, technology, beer, Asia, New Jersey, the Pacific Northwest, and both Footballs, and can be found ranting about all of the above and more via Google+ and Twitter.