Huge Sonic Youth fan, albeit a younger one. I caught the tail-end of their career in my HS/college days, c. 2003-2010. I can't think of an equivalent band today that has the kind of stature they had at the time in the indie scene.
Part of what I loved so much about them is the number of free shows they put on. I can always pin the year that I saw them in Prospect Park at 2010, because the iPhone 4 had just been released, and my friend who I was with proceeded to watch the entire show through her new phone, being completely enamored with the "retina display" while tripping on acid.
When I saw them in 2008 in Battery Park, I had the pleasure of sitting on the lawn next to 90s child star Danny Tamborelli, who many will remember as one of the stars of Pete & Pete (a show with its own sort of indie cred). My friend I was with turned to me and said "That's Danny Tamborelli, we need to say hi to him" and before I could get "No we absolutely do not" out of my mouth, he dragged me over and proceeded to introduce us saying "We're great fans of your work". So I shook his hand, way too high for this interaction, as Thurston took a drumstick to his guitar in the background.
Saw them first in 2004 with my brother. Wolf Eyes opened, my brother ended up leaving because he was sick.
It was my first “real” concert. I’d been listening to music heavily by then, we’ll into indie, but being poor and 17/18/19 it was hard to see live music. I’d been to others concerts small and big (Closing Olympic Ceremonies) - but that one cemented my love for live music, and I got really into the local scene
after seeing another smaller show (Q and not U) after that.
I saw them again ~2008 and it was good, not as good, but Rather Ripped was a great album so got to see a bunch of stuff from them.
Pavement was up there for me too, and I just saw them twice over the last 12 months.
If they had huge stature in your scene, it’s funny how different experiences can be. My interest in SY was piqued in 2000 because they had recorded an EP with song titles in Esperanto, something I dabbled in then. In spite of having a large circle of friends interested in indie music, and being active on some music forums, no one listened to SY or was even very aware of them. My conclusion at the time was that their star had waned and they must have been an ’80s or earlier ’90s thing.
Damn we were at the same show dude. That was a great one. Saw them two other times in the northeast a year or so before that one and man they (did :/ ) put on a hell of a show.
Random side note, saw Kim Gordon at a book signing in Brooklyn like 10 years ago (iirc post-Sonic Youth), and man she was looking rough unfortunately and was really out of it. Guess the whole situation she and everyone was dealing with took a bad toll :/
I've been listening to Sonic Youth since Evol. Their live sound got better as they aged, which doesn't happen for a lot of bands. This show from Austin City Limits in 2011, months before they broke up, captures it pretty well:
An underappreciated aspect of Sonic Youth is the drumming of Steve Shelley. He kept many of the discordant songs together and provided a driving beat (when needed) with some very creative fills and accents. I worked at a college radio station when Kool Thing came out and we got an alt mix or B side take on a 45 that was incredible thanks to his drumming.
Like Thurston said in the NYT interview, everyone is asking for Sonic Youth to reform for performances but I can't see Kim going along with it. OTOH Talking Heads got back together for the documentary release after David Byrne burned the proverbial bridges, so who knows?
Really good to hear that since I only saw them once and it was near the end, despite driving a car with a sonic youth bumper sticker for fifteen years. Thanks for the link!
Same, but I didn't get to see them live until Daydream Nation. Those shows were a lot of fun, but yeah, I was only catching the end of that, but earlier shows were... noisy. It took them a while to get art-rock inaccessibility-as-cred out of their system. Or maybe Moore is just really self-indulgent. Or both.
You never know what will happen, but after reading _Girl in a Band_, I don't think Deal is interested.
I don’t know why exactly Thurston Moore was interviewing an at that time almost unknown Beck, but it’s such a funny, strange, but warm interview that I never fail to get a kick out of it.
I remember this interview so well. It was a common reference for a friend and I in highschool. "Xanadu, I'm sure all the listeners will be able to relate to that"
Yeah, I had not appreciated the strange and sudden success of Loser after a bunch of tough times for the young musician - I just reviewed his page on Wikipedia.
What an amazing moment to capture. Thurston's deadpan style works perfectly. Thanks for the link.
My earliest memory of what has become modern, streaming video apps was Google Video (I think that's what it was called). It was before they bought youtube.
I very clearly remember searching for "Sonic Youth" on it and getting maybe less than a dozen results, but one of them was this indie documentary/tour-video called "1993: The year punk broke," which is about Nirvana and SY touring together through europe.
Its a really fun little movie, but mainly it felt absolutely huge to "discover" it like that. Its hard to imagine these days that you could search for anything and not get, at least, thousands of results. Back then being a hipster about music really felt like a special club, like some special minority of people drawn together by taste, and the internet as it was reflected that nicely.
Embarrassed now to remember moments where I tried to convince my friends of how good and important Sonic Youth, Neutral Milk Hotel, and the Pixies were, even if they hadn't heard of them; trying to quote Pitchfork and AllMusic reviews to make my point.
A guy I knew in high school got that movie on VHS (around 1993/1994-ish). I remember watching at his house after school once, but then later we had a falling out because he was in the cool alt-kid crowd but I wasn't allowed to dress in the "uniform" so he decided I was a poseur.
Ahh, high school. Grew up in the semi-boonies so it was when I first got introduced to loads of cool music and movies pre-widespread internet access, but kids were still dipshits.
I was a big SY fan in high school (early 90s). I would watch parts of "1991: The Year Punk Broke" almost every day after school. I have never been good at music but I tried to get into guitar. Evidently, learning to play guitar by trying to play with SY guitar tunings doesn't make it any easier. SY was a huge influence on my formative years.
I saw them live circa 1988-ish around the time of Daydream Nation.
They've all been super creative. Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon and also Lee Ranaldo have had interesting side projects. I very much was interested in their noise stuff. Moore collaborated once with Borbetomagus. And Ranaldo did a lot of sound experiments.
I did get the impression that they were aiming for a much wider audience in the late 80's and early 90's, much like the Pixies, and also like the Pixies it never seemed to pan out-- but it was close.
Moore has done some television host stuff 20 years back, "Sonic Cinema". He definitely has a knack for that-- introducing films and interviewing artists, etc.
The mentions of Jim O'Rourke took me back to a meeting with him I've never forgotten. Thought others would enjoy hearing.
Our paths used to cross in Chicago through a mutual friend when Jim was in his early 20s. Through the mutual friend, I had heard a story that Jim had purchased a fax machine--something reserved for big corporation at the time--and was sending his scores around the world.
One night all of us ended up at the Old Town Ale House on North Avenue in Chicago, a real old school funky mix kind of a place. Jim sat next to me at one of the two tables by the windows. He pulled a photo out of his wallet, the way people share photos of kids. This picture, though, was of an old record producer he loved. Then Jim laid out a precise vision of an album he hoped to make some day. The vision he shared became Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Wilco did not even exist as Wilco at the time of this get together. This is one of my first direct exposures to a person with a distant dream becoming a reality.
Many years later I was flipping through the Sunday Chicago Tribune. The edition had a full page story on Jim when he decided to move from Chicago to New York.
A number of years after that, one Sunday I decided to walk to a local gas station to surprise my wife with the Sunday New York Times. What article happened to be inside? A full page piece on Jim moving from New York to Japan.
Met Thurston when he came to Bard College back in the early 00s. He did a small poetry thing and had brought his electric guitar and an amp and at the end of his reading he shredded for us for a bit. Then he hung out afterwards for a while. Super chill dude.
Sonic Youth is such an interesting group because they're hugely influential, like the Pixies, among musicians — and yet for as famous as they became, Nirvana really took the genre mainstream. Not that Nirvana was necessarily super happy about that.
I was never big on Sonic Youth but I met Thurston Moore at a poetry reading when he was touring around for his book. I went because a friend suggested. I was in awe at his ease with fans and his general excitement for "the scene". I wish that was how most musicians treated their local following. Great music is fostered by local communities and he knew that and emphasized it. I admire that as much as I admire his talent.
50% of marriages fail, 25% of surviving marriages are unhappy, so the odds of marrying, not divorcing, and being happy are a bit above 38%.
70% of divorces are initiated by women, and more in higher income brackets, yet only 50% of men undergoing divorce are unhappy about it, which means about 10% of married men are just waiting for their wives to take the first step in separation.
I do not want to excuse dishonesty, deception, breach of trust etc., but marriages are hard, humans are fallible, and age has taught me to be less judgemental of people failing on a difficult endeavor.
It is a shame, but stupid relationship drama seems to go hand in hand with high creativity.
I don't know if this is just "creativity breeds madness", "fame allows people to be shitty", "most marriages fail", or simply "reporting bias" (happily married couples aren't juicy news).
The idea that any musician can possibly be faithful to their wife, I'm just not even sure it's possible. It's like you hit the lottery and all the women are now chasing you. For most men that's pretty hard to resist.
One day mid-1995 (just looked it up and it would have been May 20, 1995) Sonic Youth was playing with REM at the Gorge in Washington. He and the drummer had a side project that came to the little record store in Ellensburg (Rodeo Records, owned by Mark Pickerel of Screaming Trees fame) for a secret daytime gig. I lived half a block away and was tipped off by a friend who worked there. Went and drank with them all after the gig. Class acts all the way
I've mostly fell out of listening to Sonic Youth, but it was the first band to ever open my eyes to the idea of 'weird' music. I think a lot of who I am today began with that first experience, when I first listened to Evol.
While I don't listen to them much anymore, I still put on Washing Machine from time to time. I'd argue that is their best work.
Agreed. I bought Washing Machine on the day it was released, during my secondary school lunch break. I remember the NME review claiming The Diamond Sea as the best thing SY had ever done. I agreed with that when I got it home, and still do. It was the pinnacle of their work really, which went rapidly downhill afterwards. Pitchfork's 0.0 rating of NYC Ghosts & Flowers was sadly wholly appropriate. But the records Evol-->Washing Machine altered my life completely, and turned me on to the idea of weird/experimental/avant-garde music, and art.
Sonic Youth was a large part of my high school sound track. I had some class mates who were also into indie music, I lent my copy of Washing Machine to one of them, when she returned it to me she looked at me as if I was insane (or at least my taste in music).
Evol/Sister/Daydream Nation were my favorites though.
>>For Thurston Moore, a driving force in the important art-noise band Sonic Youth, the epiphany was “Louie Louie,” the indecipherable-at-any-speed single by the Kingsmen.
Haha, I named my dog after that song, or was it Richard Berry’s original, or all the other covers?
I got to talk to Jim O'Rourke after a show of their in Lexington and he was incredibly patient and kind. Definitely a lifetime "going to shows" highlight for me.
I’m the exact opposite, I find Kim absolutely grating a nerve in almost all the songs where she’s the primary singer. Thurston has a laid back sound that fits many of the tracks really well imo.
That said, I find I tend to either absolutely love or (more likely hate) their stuff in general. Not a big fan of random noise, though I can somewhat appreciate how the experimentation influenced others.
“Completely uncompelling” can be a virtue. One of the factors that makes New Order such a peerless band is Bernard Sumner’s unaffected, almost amateurish singing.
[+] [-] dml2135|2 years ago|reply
Part of what I loved so much about them is the number of free shows they put on. I can always pin the year that I saw them in Prospect Park at 2010, because the iPhone 4 had just been released, and my friend who I was with proceeded to watch the entire show through her new phone, being completely enamored with the "retina display" while tripping on acid.
When I saw them in 2008 in Battery Park, I had the pleasure of sitting on the lawn next to 90s child star Danny Tamborelli, who many will remember as one of the stars of Pete & Pete (a show with its own sort of indie cred). My friend I was with turned to me and said "That's Danny Tamborelli, we need to say hi to him" and before I could get "No we absolutely do not" out of my mouth, he dragged me over and proceeded to introduce us saying "We're great fans of your work". So I shook his hand, way too high for this interaction, as Thurston took a drumstick to his guitar in the background.
I miss Sonic Youth a lot.
[+] [-] prpl|2 years ago|reply
It was my first “real” concert. I’d been listening to music heavily by then, we’ll into indie, but being poor and 17/18/19 it was hard to see live music. I’d been to others concerts small and big (Closing Olympic Ceremonies) - but that one cemented my love for live music, and I got really into the local scene after seeing another smaller show (Q and not U) after that.
I saw them again ~2008 and it was good, not as good, but Rather Ripped was a great album so got to see a bunch of stuff from them.
Pavement was up there for me too, and I just saw them twice over the last 12 months.
[+] [-] OfSanguineFire|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway743|2 years ago|reply
Random side note, saw Kim Gordon at a book signing in Brooklyn like 10 years ago (iirc post-Sonic Youth), and man she was looking rough unfortunately and was really out of it. Guess the whole situation she and everyone was dealing with took a bad toll :/
[+] [-] MuffinFlavored|2 years ago|reply
This video came out in 2007
> Paul Rodriguez: Sonic Youth - Teen Age Riot
Opened my eyes...
[+] [-] ilamont|2 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O8VLwh1Na0
An underappreciated aspect of Sonic Youth is the drumming of Steve Shelley. He kept many of the discordant songs together and provided a driving beat (when needed) with some very creative fills and accents. I worked at a college radio station when Kool Thing came out and we got an alt mix or B side take on a 45 that was incredible thanks to his drumming.
For further reading on the early history of the band, I recommend Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/michael-azerrad/our...
Like Thurston said in the NYT interview, everyone is asking for Sonic Youth to reform for performances but I can't see Kim going along with it. OTOH Talking Heads got back together for the documentary release after David Byrne burned the proverbial bridges, so who knows?
[+] [-] WOOKIE_pizza|2 years ago|reply
Wow, that show is nothing less than epic!
Thanks for sharing +1
[+] [-] ideamotor|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _jal|2 years ago|reply
You never know what will happen, but after reading _Girl in a Band_, I don't think Deal is interested.
[+] [-] cammikebrown|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rocketbop|2 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/zdzY49xlvdY?si=fVimAnAJaQTZmqZt
[+] [-] next_xibalba|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] art-not|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] turmon|2 years ago|reply
What an amazing moment to capture. Thurston's deadpan style works perfectly. Thanks for the link.
[+] [-] beepbooptheory|2 years ago|reply
I very clearly remember searching for "Sonic Youth" on it and getting maybe less than a dozen results, but one of them was this indie documentary/tour-video called "1993: The year punk broke," which is about Nirvana and SY touring together through europe.
Its a really fun little movie, but mainly it felt absolutely huge to "discover" it like that. Its hard to imagine these days that you could search for anything and not get, at least, thousands of results. Back then being a hipster about music really felt like a special club, like some special minority of people drawn together by taste, and the internet as it was reflected that nicely.
Embarrassed now to remember moments where I tried to convince my friends of how good and important Sonic Youth, Neutral Milk Hotel, and the Pixies were, even if they hadn't heard of them; trying to quote Pitchfork and AllMusic reviews to make my point.
[+] [-] soylentcola|2 years ago|reply
Ahh, high school. Grew up in the semi-boonies so it was when I first got introduced to loads of cool music and movies pre-widespread internet access, but kids were still dipshits.
[+] [-] doubloon|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robear|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MrBuddyCasino|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crispyambulance|2 years ago|reply
They've all been super creative. Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon and also Lee Ranaldo have had interesting side projects. I very much was interested in their noise stuff. Moore collaborated once with Borbetomagus. And Ranaldo did a lot of sound experiments.
I did get the impression that they were aiming for a much wider audience in the late 80's and early 90's, much like the Pixies, and also like the Pixies it never seemed to pan out-- but it was close.
Moore has done some television host stuff 20 years back, "Sonic Cinema". He definitely has a knack for that-- introducing films and interviewing artists, etc.
[+] [-] Jeff2Serve|2 years ago|reply
Our paths used to cross in Chicago through a mutual friend when Jim was in his early 20s. Through the mutual friend, I had heard a story that Jim had purchased a fax machine--something reserved for big corporation at the time--and was sending his scores around the world.
One night all of us ended up at the Old Town Ale House on North Avenue in Chicago, a real old school funky mix kind of a place. Jim sat next to me at one of the two tables by the windows. He pulled a photo out of his wallet, the way people share photos of kids. This picture, though, was of an old record producer he loved. Then Jim laid out a precise vision of an album he hoped to make some day. The vision he shared became Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Wilco did not even exist as Wilco at the time of this get together. This is one of my first direct exposures to a person with a distant dream becoming a reality.
Many years later I was flipping through the Sunday Chicago Tribune. The edition had a full page story on Jim when he decided to move from Chicago to New York.
A number of years after that, one Sunday I decided to walk to a local gas station to surprise my wife with the Sunday New York Times. What article happened to be inside? A full page piece on Jim moving from New York to Japan.
[+] [-] gdubs|2 years ago|reply
Sonic Youth is such an interesting group because they're hugely influential, like the Pixies, among musicians — and yet for as famous as they became, Nirvana really took the genre mainstream. Not that Nirvana was necessarily super happy about that.
[+] [-] earthscienceman|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] appletrotter|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tdullien|2 years ago|reply
70% of divorces are initiated by women, and more in higher income brackets, yet only 50% of men undergoing divorce are unhappy about it, which means about 10% of married men are just waiting for their wives to take the first step in separation.
I do not want to excuse dishonesty, deception, breach of trust etc., but marriages are hard, humans are fallible, and age has taught me to be less judgemental of people failing on a difficult endeavor.
[+] [-] bsder|2 years ago|reply
I don't know if this is just "creativity breeds madness", "fame allows people to be shitty", "most marriages fail", or simply "reporting bias" (happily married couples aren't juicy news).
[+] [-] DoesntMatter22|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Modified3019|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nativespecies|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doubloon|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themark|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soylentcola|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diggum|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] art-not|2 years ago|reply
While I don't listen to them much anymore, I still put on Washing Machine from time to time. I'd argue that is their best work.
[+] [-] _rpxpx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microtonal|2 years ago|reply
Evol/Sister/Daydream Nation were my favorites though.
[+] [-] shautvast|2 years ago|reply
Haha, I named my dog after that song, or was it Richard Berry’s original, or all the other covers?
[+] [-] salynchnew|2 years ago|reply
I got to talk to Jim O'Rourke after a show of their in Lexington and he was incredibly patient and kind. Definitely a lifetime "going to shows" highlight for me.
[+] [-] thefaux|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plz-remove-card|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkern|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Modified3019|2 years ago|reply
That said, I find I tend to either absolutely love or (more likely hate) their stuff in general. Not a big fan of random noise, though I can somewhat appreciate how the experimentation influenced others.
[+] [-] Doctor_Fegg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nativespecies|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slibhb|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hestefisk|2 years ago|reply