I have no idea if anyone in the U.S. knows about The Strokes, but these five guys from New York City have taken Europe's music fans by storm.

How do you conquer the world? Sometimes by chance.

Not with marketing campaigns that bore you after watching teasers for a year about a Japanese monster Americanised and digitised.

I first heard of The Strokes when I overheard two friends talking about going to Stockholm.

"Is that American band playing?"

"Yeah"

"We have to go."

I was oblivious as to what was going on. But soon I read that The Strokes is the most hyped-about band since the previous most hyped-about band. It was better than anything New York had to offer since the Velvet Underground, and since Sonic Youth are too alternative.

The very first article I read named them the most hyped-about group. I was shocked because I consider myself to be someone who follows music. Since then 80 per cent of the articles I've read about The Strokes begin the same way. I soon realised that 'most hyped-about' means that U.K. music tabloid NME had praised The Strokes, and was clearly fascinated by the rugged, pretty-scruff jeans and Converse-shoes look. And the music too, I guess.

It was described as Velvet Underground meets the Ramones meets The Stooges meets Supergrass.

London-based Rough Trade Records picked the band up—perhaps The Strokes were too New York for New York labels. Things snowballed; and snowballs travel light speed through the Internet.

If NME notices a hyped-about band, Swedish pop journalists get interested. And there, saying how great The Strokes were going to be, was Anders Lokko of feber.se (Lokko is Swede pop-journo No. 1).

So the band visited Sweden. I went to the one-day festival, Accelerator, in central Stockholm, but didn't see much of the gig, since it had been a long afternoon and they played too loud—at least for me. They didn't sound too special, I thought. Well, I was just wrong again.

For me the most interesting thing was the next day at the Stockholm Airport watching the five New Yorkers look very lost as if they were travelling for the first time and didn't know where to go.

Soon after the hype really reached Finland, which has never been a haven for excellent music writing. Nonetheless, there's a new breed of writers sniffing the latest things from the Swedish press.

And then came the Finnish columns about how hyped The Strokes are and how that extravagant hype is going to kill all enthusiasm toward the group's music. That was the first Finnish-language article I saw about the band. Again I was wondering where and why all the hype. It must be the most abstract thing or can just one English and one Swedish online zine create such a buzz. Guess it depends who reads those zines and forms a buzz from bits and pieces.

Then Is This It was finally published and leaped onto the Finnish charts.
Now people could finally hear the band.

So, since the band made it into the charts, even in Finland, I guess they've conquered Europe.

New York has been integral to their image and comparisons to Velvet Underground have at least partially risen from the connection to the city. I guess we believe they have credibility being from New York and looking the part.

All this hype and not even that famous in their hometown. First we take Europe then we take Manhattan.

Talk about a successful marketing strategy.

Copyright © 2001 Jonathan Mander. All Rights Reserved.

The writer covers Finland's music scene for Billboard and still hasn't listened to The Strokes album, which was released September 25th in the U.S.A.