The Strokes

The Strokes' performance at the Stafford leg of V2004 was so incredibly underwhelming that I nearly fell asleep halfway through the show. To be fair, my expectations of their gigs are generally very high because the first time I saw them perform, in a tiny little club months before the release of their debut album, ranks among the top 10 gigs I've ever seen. However, even though I know that they will never be the sort of band whose music translates well in a festival atmosphere - they just don't have those big, anthemic, sing-along tunes; they belong in a dingy, beer-soaked, smokey backroom - I was not prepared for the sheer mediocrity with which I was greeted.

For starters, I was expecting the tracks from their rather disappointing Room on Fire album to sound better live than on record, as is often the case with albums I find I don't like straightaway. This didn't happen. Furthermore, Julian was so obviously chemically enhanced that he kept rambling on between songs about nothing (and bragging about being "wasted"). What this meant is that the band never managed to gain any momentum because everytime they played something which started to get the crowd excited, they then stopped for several minutes while he wittered on about nothing in particular. By the midway point, I was more interested in the conversation going on behind me than in what the Strokes were doing on stage. While Julian will not be the first or the last musician to get a bit happy before coming onstage, it does seem rather unprofessional of him to spoil a show for 70,000 people by not being able to exercise that little bit of self-control so that he was actually capable of performing at optimum level. We'd paid £45 each to be there for the day, there were only 2 bands on we actually wanted to see, and had the Pixies taken the same lackadaisical attitude towards their performance then it really would have been a complete waste of a day and a lot of cash.

For anyone who still cares at this point, they pretty much played every song they have - all 65 minutes worth - alternating tracks between albums. I know they didn't play "Meet Me in the Bathroom" but I can't think of another one they did not do. They also played 2 covers, the remarkable "A Salty Salute" by the legendary Guided by Voices, and "Clampdown" by the Clash. Both covers were also unremarkable in the fact that they were indistingushable from the originals. But at least we got to hear a Guided by Voices song live again before that band finally split for good at the end of the year.

On the whole, if I'd known when I booked my V tickets that the Pixies were going to be playing Move Festival in Manchester, I wouldn't have bothered spending £90 for a day out for 2 people, because we only went thinking we wouldn't have another chance to see the Strokes or the Pixies this year if we didn't. And the Strokes were just utterly and completely uneventful on stage. It's a shame, because they could have, and should have been amazing.