Early 2000s Rock Dudefight Ends in a Surprisingly Sick Burn

In the early 2000s, Ryan Adams was that scruffy singer-songwriter hanging around the East Village and dating Parker Posey. Around this same time, Gideon Yago was the slightly nerdy babe hosting the political coverage on-air for MTV. If you are the type of person who gets excited about NYC rock minutiae from 2002, you will be happy to learn that Gideon Yago and Ryan Adams are having a dudefight!

The origin of this fight is an oral history about the end of the band The Strokes published in Vulture (excerpted from Lizzy Goodman’s forthcoming book Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011) which, if you can get past the notion that The Strokes were some kind of rock saviors and not just a kinda decent band in a scene surrounded by way cooler and more interesting other bands, has a couple fun nuggets to mine. Particularly, the fact that Gideon Yago thought that Ryan Adams was kind of wack:

Gideon Yago (journalist): Ryan Adams, he was one of those guys where I just remember being like, I just don’t know. I didn’t take to him very well. I mean, that to me was the beginning of the end.

A lot of other people thought Ryan Adams was wack, but apparently Ryan Adams only cared about Gideon Yago thinking he was wack, which in essence makes this a dudefight borne of love. Adams, as you may know, uses his Twitter account to scream on virtually anyone who criticizes him—journalists, fans, random famous people, whoever—and often it comes off as whiny mewling. This time, though… just this once… Ryan Adams won.