Cover Story: The Strokes - Elegantly Wasted

The Strokes are more than just a band. Whether they like it or not, they stand for something. Just as Nirvana became the face of grunge in the early Nineties, the Strokes have become the face of the so-called new garage-rock scene. And, like Nirvana, the Strokes have been embraced by the designers of runway fashion, the death knell of anything sincere.

Of course, the Strokes don't technically belong to a scene, because they were never even acquaintances with their compatriots. According to Fabrizio Moretti, the band's drummer, artist and deep thinker, the Strokes originally tried to form a scene of New York bands that would hang out, drink and go to one another's shows, but "at the time in New York, it was so competitive that bands were not open to it."