Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011

by Lizzy Goodman

Soundgarden had broken up. Oasis had not delivered on their potential. Blur weren’t even sounding Britpop anymore, they were sounding like Pavement. There was always going to be Dave Matthews Band. You can’t even criticize them, they’re just there. It’d be like criticizing pigeons. You can’t get rid of them. You just hope they don’t shit on you. But the bottom line is there was money and we needed new rock stars.

ALBERT HAMMOND JR.: We’re huge Mr. Show fans; like 99 percent of our inside jokes are Ace Ventura or Mr. Show or Tommy Boy. Mr. Show was like our bible of communication.

Failure is the best. After you fail, you’re free.

The first time I heard James Murphy DJ was opening for Black Dice. The singer Vince Martin, who was a Greenwich Village folkie from the early sixties, was also playing. I remember James played Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” into Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine” and I was like, “Holy shit! That is some visionary shit!” Really, that sums up the whole DFA style right there, a DJ badass enough to play those two songs back-to-back, and you know what? Nobody stopped moving. Everyone was totally into both those songs, like they were both from the same freaky place.