NYC never quite bought into the whole Strokes thing as much as the rest of the world did, partly because (a) it's New York, and nobody gets too bothered about anything, and (b) the Strokes are a bunch of calculating rich kids who met at Swiss boarding schools before shamelessly plundering riffs from every cool New York band that ever was.

The media barrage surrounding Strokes album number three culminated in an hysterical New York magazine cover story by former literary wunderkind Jay McInerney, himself rather keen to flog his by-nowobligatory post 9/11 novel, The Good Life.

McInerney chronicled the Manhattan high life . . .very high, by all accounts . . .in his coke-addled autobiographical classic Bright Lights, Big City; now he's just another grumpy middle-aged dude going to pains to keep his finger on the pulse.

Much as the Jayster makes a case for the Strokes debut album . . . the still-wonderful Is That It? . . .as the definitive post-9/11 soundtrack, his barely disguised contempt for the neurotic young pups he's hanging out with culminates in an unintentionally hilarious account of a five-hour wait for an interview with leading singer Julian Casablancas.

"I want to tell him, " writes McInerney, "that I'm too fucking old to be waiting around on some egomaniacal 27-yearold who's flexing his self-importance after studying Chapter Two of Rockstar 101, by Mick Jagger. And come to think of it, Jagger was only 20 minutes late when I met him for a profile in the mid '80s." Oooooh . . . get a load of her!

Imagine if they had sent him on the road with Babyshambles.

First Impressions Of Earth isn't all that bad, actually. It's just not that good. Buy a Ramones album instead.