Five years ago this month, on Oct. 9 2001, The Strokes released “Is This It?”

The first year of the millennium marked a change in the popular musical landscape.

Though the early 1990s witnessed a revolution on par with the British Invasion of the 1960s and punk explosion of the late 1970, the polarizing downtrodden nu-metalers and sugary-sick boy bands and their teen queen counterparts dominated the second half of the decade.

But bad times produce the best art. And by all conventional standards 2001 was bad. If it was a time of questions, that fact was still certain.

The music industry was scrounging to figure out the Internet and in a panicked attempt to halt it, it began suing users for getting… go figure… music. Staple corporations such as Time Warner and Universal began to merge, merge and merge again with other conglomerates while putting independent retailers out of business at a ramped pace. And most notably, the government’s questionable foreign policy resulted in the single greatest attack on U.S. soil – which left everyone else questioning what “terror” actually means.

It was, if nothing else, a country in flux. And people looking for something concrete to believe in – something solid to jolt them from the lethargic daze or shellshock in which they had spent the last few years – couldn’t turn to the cookie-cutter pap of N’Sync and Britney Spear. Nor could they turn to the forced minutia of Staind and Kid Rock.

The late 90s were an exercise in the shallow. Art with depth was a lot harder to sell and music executives didn’t have time to indulge passion or heart – and for a long time consumers didn’t care.

But 2001 changed all that.

Radiohead had reinvented itself earlier in the year with “Amnesiac,” and took its largest and most challenging leap toward electronic music. Weezer resurfaced after an extended hiatus with its second self-titled release and a whole new army of cardigan sweaters and black-rimmed glasses. Jimmy Eat World’s “Bleed American” was an album recorded without a label that went on to be one of the largest selling in years. Rap was no longer the angry East/West rivalry. Now its face was Eminem, a skinny, Detroit guy with blond hair. The “white rapper” would have been the most surprising appearance of the year, had it not been for Gorillaz debut album that hid the band’s identities behind cartoon fronts.

Yes, 2001 was a year that saw the musical landscape change. Yet none was more noticeable than when five affluent kids from New York City released their debut in America.

Though the album came out a month prior in the United Kingdom, it wasn’t until it hit shelves in the States that The Strokes’ “Is This It?” became just that – it.

It was the concrete thing people wanted on the heels of the 9/11 attacks. Hearing Julian Casablancas – a guy who looked more like a kid who rents the basement apartment next door, in Converse All-Stars, vintage rock’n’roll T-shirt, noticeable acne and skinny jeans – croon out the lyric “I’m just way too tired/ Is this it” was something people could relate to.

Sure it didn’t hurt that the band was from NYC. And it also didn’t hurt that each member’s high-society background bank-rolled the group’s early days. But the thing that set “Is This It?” apart from the other chart-topping acts of the era, was that the band felt real.

All those people who didn’t care what the Backstreet Boys had to say, and who didn’t believe what Korn had to say, found their voice in Casablancas. The Strokes were what was missing from the late 1990s, and it took the attack on the World Trade Center for people to realize it.

The half-hour record was just delicate enough to be comforting, just hard enough to feel dangerous and just perfect enough to strike a chord with a music industry in need of a revival.

All great moments result from being great and having great timing. Abe Lincoln couldn’t have delivered the “Gettysburg Address” if there wasn’t a Gettysburg. Neil Armstrong wouldn’t have been the first man on the moon had Buzz Aldrin not agree to be second. And The Strokes wouldn’t have saved contemporary music had the public not admitted it needed saving.

But as soon as it did, “Is This It?” was there for the rescue.

It wasn’t as if the band knew what it was doing. Casablancas sounds far from the confidant, swaggering frontman we’ve come to associate with rock revolutionaries like Elvis Presley, Bono and Johnny Rotten. In fact, all 11 songs find his croon timidly tucked behind a wave of distortion. That in itself is part of the band’s charisma, like “Is This It?” subtly told people it was ok to embrace their insecurities, without coming out and shouting it in some trite chorus. It let us figure it out on our own, and that made us feel good.

It stands alongside Elvis Pressley, The Beatles, Sex Pistols and Nirvana as one of the five most revolutionary moments in rock’n’roll’s 50-year history. These acts inspired people to form bands, and those who were already in bands rethought and changed everything they knew about being in a band. When “Last Night” became a staple on radio, it was the same kind of blueprint “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Anarchy In The U.K.” was.

Everyone wanted to be sound like The Strokes. Everyone wanted to dress like The Strokes. Everyone wanted to be a fan of The Strokes. Even if they had only heard one song one time. But really, everyone just wanted to hangout with The Strokes.

While some would argue carrying on the lineage of New York bands like The Velvet Underground, The Ramones and Television is more difficult than being dubbed the “Saviors of rock’n’roll” by every media outlet from MTV to Rolling Stone Magazine, the quintet took the praise of their lo-fi, circular guitars and cautiously optimistic rock’n’roll in stride.

So the band of teenagers – and the album – that unknowingly became a shoulder for a city to lean on became the guide the music industry relied on. Or rather, still relies on. While it opened the door for hundreds of acts ranging from Interpol, The Hives, The Vines and the Mooney Suzuki to The Walkmen, The Star Spangles and the Datsuns; it also closed the door on an era with music as generic as President’s Choice Soda.

And that is all “Is This It?” really is. Who could ask for more?

Daily Herald BEEP, Oct. 22, 2006