Party On: Despite downsizing tour scope, Strokes handpick Vegas for Dec. 31 show

Spencer Patterson

Friday, Dec. 26, 2003 | 8:56 a.m.

As always, New Year's Eve will feature a crowded concert slate in Southern Nevada. Some of the options on Wednesday's musical menu:

The Strokes are relative neophytes in the music industry, having just released album No. 2.

But the popular New York City garage rock quintet has already learned one valuable touring lesson: know when to say when.

"What we learned after our first album, when we were much more naive and a little bit younger is, if you say yes to everything you'll exhaust yourself and you'll break up little by little," Strokes bassist Nikolai Fraiture said.

So when Fraiture and his bandmates recently toured Europe, they hit only major cities, passing over some of the other places they've visited in the past.

"With our manager, the six of us have open discussions about what's best for us and for the band," Fraiture, 25, said in a phone interview from his Manhattan apartment. "We've made sure to cut down on our touring this time."

One town the Strokes won't be skipping is Las Vegas. The band lands at UNLV's Cox Pavilion on New Year's Eve, its third Vegas concert in less than two years.

"We like to make every New Year's an event where we all get together with our fans," said Fraiture, adding that the group handpicked Vegas for this year's Dec. 31 celebration.

"Every time we play there it's always a great time, nothing weird or bad, just a lot of fun," Fraiture said.

The Strokes are able to make those types of touring decisions themselves because of the nature of their contract with RCA Records, Fraiture explained.

"When we signed with RCA (the label) was not at a good place," he said. "So instead of a lot of money, we opted for creative and artistic control."

That control extends to everything from album cover designs to producers for its videos, the most recent of which for clap-along single "12:51" references imagery from 1982 sci-fi film "Tron."

The band also has input when it comes to the selection of its opening acts, helping some of its less famous musical comrades gain recognition. Last year, the Strokes brought Longwave and Har Mar Superstar to the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay and Adam Green and Ben Kweller to The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel.

Wednesday's scheduled openers are Nashville, Tenn., garage quartet Kings of Leon and New York singer/songwriter Regina Spektor.

Unlike those acts, the Strokes never had to toil in relative anonymity. Even before their debut, "Is This It," hit shelves in 2001, they were being hailed as musical "saviors," leaders of a retro rock movement that also included the White Stripes and the Hives.

Fraiture says he never saw it that way.

"With the first album, we were never really sure that it was a huge success," he said. "We really felt it could have been better in many ways. So we wanted to make this one better than the last, an album that we were comfortable with."

Released in October, the follow-up CD, "Room on Fire," follows the same basic pattern as its predecessor. The 11 tracks are short (the disc clocks in at a little more than 33 minutes), full of hooks and highlighted by Julian Casablancas' raw vocals and the twin, fuzzy guitar riffs of Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi.

Fans already familiar with "Room on Fire" may wonder how the Strokes will reproduce the apparent keyboard parts present on several of its cuts, most notably "12:51" and "The End Has No End."

Fraiture says that won't be a problem, since it turns out those sounds were in fact created by a guitar, not a keyboard.

"That's actually Nick," said Fraiture, who anchors the band's rhythm section, along with drummer Fab Moretti. "He turned his guitar tone all the way down for that, and blew like four or five amps doing it. But it's a cool sound. It's so exciting when I hear him playing it (onstage)."

The Strokes' bassist is also excited about the options the new album's 11 songs present in terms of creating each concert's set list. For the past several years, the band has leaned almost entirely on material from "Is This It."

"It's definitely nice," Fraiture said. "Now we are able to get the same feeling we had when we started playing small bars and clubs in New York, where you haven't played it live so much and you (expletive) it up sometimes.

"It's much more exciting for us and for the fans.""

Nikolai Fraiture

STROKES

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