One fateful night I discovered Suberteranean on MTV. Little did I know the Yeah Yeah Yeahs would turn my world of music on its head. I was a skateboarding, moshing munchkin who wanted to be punk, but in less than three minutes I saw something different in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Yes, their music harbors the ferocity of punk but Nick Zinner, fantastic guitarist that he is, incorporates a certain funk. It was a foreign kind of rock to my young ears. On a notepad I scribbled 'Yeah Yeah Yeah's-Date With the Night,' as well as 'PJ Harvey,' so I wouldn't forget how an incredible television show on such a trendy channel had changed my life.
When I was twelve years old I asked my dad to take me to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Sadly, plans for that fell through but I was still enamored with Karen O. Sometimes she looked like she let a kindergarden class fingerpaint her clothes and wore them like they were made for the stage. (I later learned that much of her on stage threads were the work of Christian Joy, I'll cover her in another post.)Her ripped tights and tight, tapered leg pants (amongst the era of the bootcut) held their own during her on stage acrobatics. This resulted in her looking like a superhero. At a performace on David Letterman she moved like a marionette or as if she was transfixed on vital points of the universe. Through the years I've continued to regard the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as one of the best and Karen O still reigns as an icon in my mind.
