Sonic Youth appreciation thread.

[vi5]

Discuss.

Favorite albums?
Live experiences?
Miscellaneous?

That I still enjoy listening to this band 20 years after first hearing them is a testament, especially since for the most part I regard them as a bunch of pretentious art snobs who are responsible for some really horrible trends in music. I just can't deny that what they did and came up with is 9 times out of 10, mind blowing for me.

[swag]

1. Favorite albums: Evol and Sister

Favorite live show: 1986 at Nightclub 09:30 in Washington, DC. Beautiful. I was about 5 feet from the front of the stage and was fully blissed out as they did my favorites from mostly Evol and Sister.

Also good was a post-"Daydream Nation" (which I always considered to be critically over-rated) show with Fugazi at Citadel Studios in DC.

It's a sad commentary on me, perhaps, but I thought that "Sister" was so good that everything after that, no matter how enjoyable, never really measured up.

Earlier records and songs, like "I Dreamed I Dream", "Halloween," things like that, always held quite a power over me.

[vi5]

3. I couldn't agree more about Sister....

Evol was the first thing I heard by them and I was intrigued. But Sister just blew me away. That is just such a positively flawless and beautiful album. It reigned in some of their more overly indulgent and jammy tendencies, but without being too mainstream oriented (like I thought Dirty was). Daydream nation had some great songs but it was a little too self indulgent for my tastes.

[swag]

2. I wish I could find a net graphic of that photo on their first record

then with Richard Edson on drums. It seemed so emblematic of the early-mid 1980s art world feeling of the time, with Kim and her half-flipped up glasses, the facial expressions.

Jim Jarmusch, Basquiat, Lydia Lunch, No-Wave, Lounge Lizards, so many things I'm forgetting. Of course Jarmusch quickly scooped Edson for a role in "Stranger than Paradise" and Sonic Youth took Bob Bert (who was to bang that gas tank so well for Pussy Galore later on).

Before I had ever heard of Sonic Youth, I read an article by Kim Gordon in a 1983 ArtForum about the PiL riot at the Ritz in New York. I still have that issue of ArtForum, by the way.

Like ArtForum, Sonic Youth seemed to me at the time to be a pathway and a connector to a larger and more interesting world. Turns out they were.

on edit: it still amuses me that Steve Shelley went from the Crucifucks to Sonic Youth.

[vi5]

6. Is that first album still even available?

I had a cassette of it years (hell...at this point decades) ago. BUt never upgraded to cd.

[swag]

7. I don't know, but thanks to you I'll look for it today

I've got the thing on vinyl, and I recall seeing it once on CD, years ago.

"Confusion is Sex" was a more challenging (for the listener) record, I think, but had very worthwhile moments like "Making the Nature Scene" and "Inhuman".

One of my favorite songs from "Bad Moon Rising" was "Brave Men Run," which I'm sure must have been based on an Ed Ruscha painting.

Sorry for free-associating in your thread.

Thanks for the thread. I love the band. A nexus of art, music, and literature, and, like Warhol, a proud marriage of the "high" and "low" of culture.

[vi5]

8. Don't apologize...

free associating in a sonic youth thread is actually very appropriate.

I'm glad someone responded who was as familiar with their early work. I find a lot of younger people got into them after Nirvana but never went too far into their back catalog.

[swag]

9. Found the image - on sonicyouth.com, which seems a very fun site

[rbnyc]

4. Love them.

Saw them live only once--in Chicago in 1987 or 88.

I also LOVE Thurston Moore's solo album, Psychic Hearts. I lost my copy and it's out of print. I'd kill for it!

(OK, maybe not kill...)

:loveya:

[no name no slogan]

5. Daydream Nation got me through college

It came out in 1988 after my freshman year. By my senior year, it was my Bible.

I saw them on the Goo tour in 1992(?) and it was quite a show. I still have the tour shirt in a box somewhere, but I haven't seen it in at least nine years...

[swag]

10. Wow, from the length of the thread, I would say that they are almost

as underappreciated as that famous Hip Priest.

But I wanted to mention something about the zeitgeist of when I thought that band was at their peak: in heavy rotation on my turntable in those times were Big Bone Lick by Scratch Acid, Rembrandt Pussy Horse and Creamed Corn from the Socket of Davis by the Butthole Surfers, Bend Sinister by the Fall, Time is Money by Swans, and others.

On the other end of the spectrum was ever-evolving American hardcore.

A nice time to be listening to records, that was.

[asthmaticeog]

11. Fave album: "Bad Moon Rising."

Best show I ever saw, on the "Daydream Nation" tour, with Laughing Hyenas and Die Kreuzen opening. What a GREAT time to be an underground-music freak!

[vi5]

12. "Great time to be an underground music freak..."

Wasn't it? Honestly it will never be that way again. The entire landscape of underground music has changed both in terms of quantity of bands and the motivation and outlook of underground bands.

Back then you could easily keep up with and by or dupe a copy of at least 75-80% of the releases on underground/indie labels. And most of them were doing unique, interesting things for the most part only for their own artistic gratification. Prior to the 90's the notion of any of these bands experiencing any kind of success and doing this stuff for any reason other than to get their music out and maybe eak out a meager living was just impossible and unheard of.

Since the 90's though every band no matter how weird or avant garde are looking for their big break and their big record deal. And I don't care what anyone says, looking at things that way definitely changes a person/band's artistic vision.

[asthmaticeog]

14. Well, yes and no.

The "Nevermind" dam-burst DID certainly bring the opportunists out of the woodwork for awhile, but there are still visionary bands who gloriously lack the give-a-fucks to compromise. Top of my head, I'd cite U.S. Maple, the Flying Luttenbachers, Oneida, Roué, the Liars, Lungfish, 90 Day Men and plenty of others. It's like it was in the '80s, you have to dig for it, but the good stuff's still out there.

[vi5]

16. Oh, I agree there are still plenty of good bands out there...

...doing off the wall things. But even bands like US Maple and the Liars got a lot more press and sales and PR push than similar sounding bands did or would have in the 80's.

I'm definitely not one of those "There's no good music being made today." people. There's definitely still great music being made. BUt it's just a little harder to wade through all the crap, and I think bands in general (even the good ones) are a little more cynical and calculating in a lot of what they do.

It was inevitable and it's not always necessarily a bad thing. But I think it's definitely a totally different landscape.

[asthmaticeog]

17. Crap to wade through - oh, HELL yeah.

I was in college radio in the late '80s/early '90s, and around the time of you-know-what, the pile of new releases to go through every week literally quadrupled in size, but the number of good ones stayed exactly the same. Pain. In. The. Ass. I actually had to listen to Warrior Soul. The Alternative Nation can nibble my glans, and its residue still clings to the culture.

[vi5]

21. Hahahaha.....I'm guessing we're around the same age...

I was in college radio from '88 to '92. And the last year of that I also worked at a top 40 pop radio station as an intern, board operator, and overnight DJ. Right when Nirvana broke. I used to open the cases of promo cds sent by the record labels at the top 40 station and all of a sudden it went from DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Poison and that type of stuff, to Soul Asylum, Mudhoney, Alice in Chains, etc. It was pretty funny.
That was most definitely an interesting time to be in radio, that's fer sure.

[asthmaticeog]

22. God, that reminds me...

The college station I was working for had an annual summer festival with loads of local bands, and we'd *always* get submissions from delusional poodle-metal dipshits that must have actually thought we'd even consider them. So around '93, all their demo tapes went from being straight-up Warrant ripoffs to having three Warrant ripoff songs -- and two Pearl Jam ripoff songs. Just listening to the tapes, you could almost *see* them fretting about whether there was enough time to grow a goatee before their next gig. It was HIGHLY amusing to see the alpha-male dickweeds who used to give me acres of shit trying desperately to jump to the front of my parade. :rofl:

[vi5]

23. Similar post-college story....

I graduated in '92 and was working full time. I was always a guitar player but I just was not in the mood to balance my first full time job with the creative back and forth and hassles of playing in an original band. So I joined a cover band that was doing the "alternative" hits of the day and playing bars and such. At first I was o.k. with this since it included the token Nirvana and PJ song but we were also doing Social Distortion, Mudhoney, Replacements, U2, The Cure and a few other more tolerable bands. But the guys who I got into this with were at the time in their early 30's, and were also poodle heads who had just cut their hair and were jumping on the bandwagon. I didn't know this at first because when I started playing with them they pretty much looked the part. But then I caught some older pictures of them (not that much before we were playing together) and they were all Warranted out. It was pretty funny. I didn't last long in that setting.

[tigereye]

26. what kills me is the dearth of imagination

that characterized those "jump on the grunge bandwagon" bands. Slow, fast, add throat ripping screams here. Humor, gone. Whimsy, gone. Clever lyrics, gone. Bizarre chord changes and time sigs, gone. Kind of sad, actually.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

13. I'd be hard-pressed to pick a favorite album

It would have to be Sister, Daydream Nation or Goo -- but really, depending on my mood at the time, it probably changes.

Seen them a few times.

On the Washing Machine (Lollapalooza) tour, some smaller club that I can't quite remember too well now (!) and, one of the best, last summer in Central Park. Nice to finally see them on their hometurf.

[Rabrrrrrr]

15. Thurston Moore played at my seminary last year - fucking incredible!!

Not with Sonic Youth, but with another guitarist friend, drummer, and cellilst.

They did a 30 minute complete improvisation - wall to wall noise, feedback, playing guitars with metal files, noise noise noise for a good solid 30 minutes.

It was INCREDIBLE!!

Just them, about 50 of us in the audience, hanging out in the seminary's chapel. Before Thurston was a jazz combo who came and did an hour long complete improv piece.

And all organized by our worship professor, a 65 year old Catholic nun, who loves improvisation.

[swag]

18. Damn, that sounds like a rare experience in so many ways.

[Rabrrrrrr]

20. It was!

That was more than a year ago, and I'm STILL charged up about the experience.

[rbnyc]

27. Awesome

Yeah, he's done similar stuff at Tonic and the Knitting Factory.

Sounds like a very cool nun.

[Rabrrrrrr]

28. One of the coolest nuns ever!

:-)

[shugh514]

19. I can't pick a favorite

For some reason I remember listening to Goo more than any others. I have all their albums on my hard drive play them all on shuffle when the mood hits.

I never had a chance to see them live but I did meet them on the street unloading their equipment in front of CBGB's one summer afternoon in 1986. I have also come across some very nice bootleg DVDs of live shows.

[enigmatic]

24. Daydream Nation

Classic.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

25. Sister, Daydream Nation or Goo

depends on my mood. I've seen them a bunch of times too.

[swag]

29. TOM VIOLENCE (lyrics)

MY VIOLENCE IS A DREAM--A 'REAL' DREAM
A SKINNY ARM--A CRUSH ON LIVING SIN
MY VIOLENCE IS A SLEEPING HEAD
NODDING OUT TO RISING BLISS
I LEFT HOME FOR XPERIENCE
CARVED 'SUK FOR HONESTY' ON MY CHEST
MY VIOLENCE IS THE NUMBER
COMING OUT OF PRAYER
FIND IT IN THE FATHER--FIND IT IN A GIRL
THERE'S A THING IN MY MEMORY
HOLDING ON FOR DEAR LIFE
WITH A FEELING OF SECRETS
BEATING UP UNDER MY FLESH
MY TONGU IS TIED--I'M SLEEPING NIGHTS AWAKE
TOM VIOLENCE IS A DREAM
COMING OUT OF A GIRL




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lyrics: thurston moore
sonic youth - evol (1986)