By the time I entered high school, I was already months into the greatest love affair of my lifetime. His name was Fabrizio and he was beautiful and sensitive and… the drummer for The Strokes. Fab and co. were supposed to save rock ’n’ roll.
And they didn’t. But they did introduce me to skinny jean-clad rocker boys and UK music mag NME. And it was NME that told me, week after week after week, about The Libertines. Because before Pete Doherty was involved with Cokate Moss, he was just a boy in a modestly successful British rock band.
The Libertines’ debut album Up the Bracket was everything I wanted from the so-called garage rock revival and more. I kept tracks like “The Good Old Days” and “I Get Along” on repeat for days on end, reveling in the intoxicatingly dirty/sexy sound that makes the album so very addictive, even long after the days when Julian Casablancas (briefly) ruled the world.
