Listen to a pre-'Is This It' Strokes concert in full +++ SNL promo with John Mulaney out now

The Strokes have a very good new album out this year, and they’re set to perform at the John Mulaney-hosted Halloween episode of Saturday Night Live. “Three things define New York City: SNL, the Strokes, and Ed Koch,” Mulaney said. “Koch is dead, so they got me.” All five members of the band just joined Mulaney in a masked-up promo for this week’s episode, and you can watch that below.

Meanwhile, for some much older Strokes, The FADER points out that Melbourne community radio station Triple R just released audio of The Strokes playing Fitzroy’s Laundry Bar on 18 July 2001 for around 200 people, a few weeks before Is This Out came out. Double J gives more history on that Australian tour:

[Australian rock band You Am I were looking for an opener and] it just so happened that You Am I had a relationship with Ryan Gentles, The Strokes’ manager, so they asked the question.

“One or two days later we got the okay back: ‘Yeah, The Strokes will do the tour and they’re looking forward to it’,” Rogers remembers.

“And then within four weeks they became the biggest band on the planet.”

[…] Three days after they finished the tour with You Am I, The Strokes made a big decision.

They brought forward the release of their debut album Is This It so they could put it out in Australia before its scheduled worldwide release date.

Read more at Double J and listen to the classic concert in full at Triple R.

Meanwhile, Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas just partnered with Rolling Stone to launch a new interview series called “S.O.S. — Earth Is a Mess.” The first episode is with Democracy Now! host and author Amy Goodman, and they speak about Trump, the election, corornavirus, white supremacy, the Black Lives Matter movement, and more. Watch at Rolling Stone.