For the month of November, I’ll be selecting songs in conjunction with the music Twitter challenge: #WelcomeToTheOccupation.

Timing is everything, isn’t it? When 9/11 happened, everyone remembers everything changing. But if you’re a New Yorker, you can amplify that sense ten-fold. For months on end, New Yorkers were different. Kinder. More human. We were in it together. Anyone who lived in NYC at the time can attest to this. It’s why an up-and-coming band scouring Lower Eastside bars and venues decided to remove “New York City Cops” from their groundbreaking debut album U.S. release. It was just the right thing to do.

“New York City Cops” doesn’t put officers in the best light to say the least. In the chorus, Casablancas espouses, “New York City cops, but they ain’t too smart”. It’s a great song, but it was just bad timing because the cops, firefighters and first-responders were mega heroes in our eyes at the time. The song has taken on a life of its own as part of the double a-side single “Hard To Explain / New York City Cops”. Decades later, it’s hands down one of the great, early Strokes anthems that seems almost better for not being on the debut album.

“I got to come clean but the authorities they've seen Darling, I'm somewhere in between.”