Join the St. George Library staff as we talk with author Lizzy Goodman about her latest book “Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011.”
An intriguing oral history of the post-9/11 decline of the old-guard music industry and rebirth of the New York rock scene, led by a group of iconoclastic rock bands.
In the second half of the twentieth-century New York was the source of new sounds, including the Greenwich Village folk scene, punk and new wave, and hip-hop. But as the end of the millennium neared, cutting-edge bands began emerging from Seattle, Austin, and London, pushing New York further from the epicenter. The behemoth music industry, too, found itself in free fall, under siege from technology. Then 9/11/2001 plunged the country into a state of uncertainty and war—and a dozen New York City bands that had been honing their sound and style in relative obscurity suddenly became symbols of glamour for a young, web-savvy, forward-looking generation in need of an anthem.
Meet Me in the Bathroom charts the transformation of the New York music scene in the first decade of the 2000s, the bands behind it—including The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, and Vampire Weekend—and the cultural forces that shaped it, from the Internet to a booming real estate market that forced artists out of the Lower East Side to Williamsburg. Drawing on 200 original interviews with James Murphy, Julian Casablancas, Karen O, Ezra Koenig, and many others musicians, artists, journalists, bloggers, photographers, managers, music executives, groupies, models, movie stars, and DJs who lived through this explosive time, journalist Lizzy Goodman offers a fascinating portrait of a time and a place that gave birth to a new era in modern rock-and-roll.
About the Author
Lizzy Goodman is the author of Meet Me in the Bathroom, the bestselling oral history of music in New York City from 2001-2011 and the subject of Pulse Films' 2023 documentary, now streaming on Showtime. Goodman's memoir, All My Friends: Love, Loss & Rock & Roll in New York City, will be published in 2024. Goodman is the host of the podcast Difficult Artist and a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine. She lives in New Mexico with her dogs, Lucinda and Bill.