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Grantland Posts 3,844 Words on Parquet Courts; Only 3 of them are “Denton.”

A Grantland writer does his best to push the New York label on the band, which is mostly comprised of former Denton residents.
By Chris Mosley |
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Grantland just posted a lengthy piece on Parquet Courts, which makes little mention of the band’s North Texas roots, however, The Strokes are inexplicably mentioned twice. I know, I know. You’re from Denton and you desperately want to somehow claim the band as your own. Parquet Courts is 3/4 former Denton/North Texas residents, and the members were in so many era-defining bands while they lived here—Teenage Cool Kids, Wiccans, and Fergus and Geronimo, among them—that you wish any associated act will be considered a local band forever. We even touched on this last November, by going up to New York to cover the great North Texas Artistic Brain Drain. Yes, as much as we hear about how the region is in the midst of a massive population boom, mostly in various other industries, artists and musicians are not exactly flocking to Dallas in droves. Or Denton, or Fort Worth, or anywhere nearby for that matter. It kind of makes you wonder exactly who is moving here, but that’s another issue altogether.

The Grantland piece adds insult to your already injured hometown ego, by calling the piece (ready?):

The Last Great NEW YORK Band? 

Gasp. Doesn’t that sting a little, Denton? Those caps are mine, but you can imagine that Grantland staff writer Steven Hyden put his little Dr. Evil pinky up to his pursed lips when he hit “enter” on that headline, too. He starts off the article with a quote, and I just chewed out a writer for doing that yesterday, but this is a very illuminating piece, all kidding aside. Yes, it’s filled with ten too many unnecessary references to New York, but Savage is always a great interview. In the following gem, he says what you’re likely all thinking, regarding regional identity and New York:

“When I said that in an interview, because you’re definitely not the first person to ask about that, it had less to do with the myth of what it is to be [a New York band] than that, literally, we are a band that exists in New York,” he says. “We’re not going to move anywhere. I’m not a big fan of mythologizing New York. Other people do that enough. It’s not up to me to define what that means. I don’t really see the point in romanticizing something that has been so heavily romanticized by everyone. I love living here. I consider it my home, but I don’t really like to build up the usual visual lexicon that people think of when they think of New York. To me, it’s kind of played out and cheesy.”

That’s more like it. Savage also discusses his issues with epilepsy and his understandable disdain for being referred to as a slacker. The band even compiled all the times they were puzzlingly referred to as such in a recent blog post. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. When one considers that the band is still very much putting out records on their own terms—via their own label Dull Tools as well as the independent What’s Your Rupture? imprint—they still represent the legacy of Denton’s long-vibrant DIY community.

Read the entire massive thing by going here.

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