Julian’s CD

A Memoir Archive : 1

I keep thinking about this CD that Julian Casablancas gave me when I was in high school. Tenth grade I believe. Around 1997, before The Strokes even existed as a band. Julian had dropped out of the Dwight School and was attending Adelphi University to get his GED. He was experimenting with music, trying to figure himself out, making these strange early songs at home with simple electronic equipment. He handed me a burned CD of demos and outtakes he’d made himself. I treasured that damn thing. I was fifteen years old, lying in bed at night listening to it obsessively through my disc-man headphones. Even then I could hear all the influences swirling around in it, Lou Reed, Bob Marley, Jim Morrison. I studied the CD like it contained seriously deep clues. I was searching for some sign that maybe he was singing about me. Some tiny lyric or emotional clue that could be interpreted that way. That very teenage longing, wanting to exist inside the mythology of someone else’s art.