Super Baseball 2020 and The Strokes seem like an odd pairing to those who may be familiar with one but not the other. But the band’s music video for The Adults Are Talking is an homage to the classic 16-bit video game. It’s hard to know just how intentional this is. And on the surface, it’s a pairing you would never expect.
A New York band adored by hipsters dabbling in both sports and video games goes together like a Snickers and a sock full of razor blades. If anything, it would seem to be alienating to the people who would openly admit to being fans of The Strokes. You know the types. Characters who wear beanies during the oppressive summer heat or think doing something ironically makes it cool.
Of course, The Strokes have always embraced who they are as people and musicians. Lead singer Julian Casablancas has spoken about following the New York Mets, the team has been caught playing pickup baseball games in the past and the music video for 12:51 was an homage to the movie Tron.
On the musical level, they are awesome. Perhaps overrated early on in their careers but now underrated. The thing I’ve always appreciated about them is a certain element of common sense and relatability in their songs along with some swearing.
Super Baseball 2020 and The Strokes actually do go together. This is an endearingly real group of people doing whatever they want to do. That is something that should be easy to root for. Alas, it’s not. Or at least not in the 2000s. Even today, they remain one of the most difficult bands to like publicly.
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Comedown Machine
When The Strokes burst onto the scene in the early 2000s, it was a bizarre time for culture in general. Hipsters still weren’t a defined thing, but the concept was floating around. However, it was mostly an anti-big city sentiment. And when I say big city, I’m almost exclusively referring to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago.
There was something unflinchingly pretentious about these places, especially as it related to rock music. This created an odd tribalism beyond those major metropolises. People who openly admitted to being fans of The Strokes essentially leaned full-on into indie personas, trying to act as musical gatekeepers and tastemakers despite being nowhere near those actually involved in the big city.
Seeing this unfold, those who did not like the band or genre of music basically assumed anyone who listened to it was nothing but a snobby asshole. This time in history was hard to explain. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Anyway, there was no middle ground for those of us who liked The Strokes and similar bands but didn’t want to devote our lives to various bands. Those folks who were openly fans thought we were somehow posers. And if you mentioned you like The Strokes to the counter movement, well, they assumed you were a giant douche.
For those on the third path, we just simply listened to them without telling anyone. It was the CD you stored in your case with the shiny side facing out or the song you pretended not to know when it came on in public. Having no opinion was the only option.
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Super Baseball 2020 and The Strokes
When I first saw the music video for The Adults Are Talking with references to Super Baseball 2020, it made me realize how much I hate the tribalism of music, especially growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s. You couldn’t just like a thing for what it really was. Everything had to be something. And that something was usually a part of an individual’s persona.
But it also helped me rediscover my appreciation of The Strokes and other bands of that era. Their fans may have been pretentious douchebags, but the music was never for them. After all, what kind of asshole drives a Lotus? The same one who served as a band gatekeeper and tastemaker back in the day.
