Sonic Youth: Classic or Dud/S&D?

have you some C8703 list you could post ? since the live stuff seems to be what people still like here, and they have a formidable arsenal in their back-catalog.

i've thought about this a lot, mainly be reflecting on various O'Rourke ad Eno projects

i've lost the latest maybe late Stereolab cd (with the 'cul de sac' imagery), but i remember it being sequenced alternating Mcyntire produced/ O'Rourke produced, and i can't quite remember whether it was the O'Rourke re-sequenced on it's own that i like the most, but i really liked one of the sequences a lot more than the other, and i think it was the O'Rourke 'side'

it was a bit like an album where you got to enjoy the "how is the enoffication ?" thing because of the enormous differences between the two sides -- at least it clearly demonstrated how much producers can influence the sound of a group

I think of the key Eno albums of the '70 and the subtle use of synth, as though wiggling a synth filter could be one of those semi-chance operations. jamming real time with most synths is hard, with the EMS thing Eno had being an exception, an exception to almost all synths post-'79 and most other brands before it)

i remember Thustin citing Roxy's first post-Eno album (Stranded, which i still does have at least some Eno ideas or methods on it) as his #3 album of 'influence' in an interview somehwere, so presumably Thustin's a fan of most of that Eno crowd stuff

so why can't SY strip down a bit and become a laptop band ? (and maybe find touring easier ?)

Most rock groups run for some time, admit they've used up their best ideas, stop. Why this eternal youth cult ? A prize for against the odds attitude ? Why doesn't thurst'in do the normal corporate wisdom, move into A&R and actually make some sort of difference, like Ecstatic Peace! and Protest Records, great praiseworthy eforts, (admittedly deferring to others' talents).
How did Kim's art installation go last year ? At least it sounded fun.
But in stark contrast to side-projects and stereolab, thustin's own indie sacred cow group sonic youth, hasn't that been well and truly milked out ?

If i was to see them live, would it be better than the good songs on the records ? When i did see them supposedly "improvise" live on that xpressway song it was fifteen minutes of nowhere. I don't want to see some greatest hits from twenty years ago effort either (just like i don't want to see Bryan Ferry in 2004), and the "strictly 20th c. show" or "strictly rock show" posturing i read about sounded like it took the fun out of both appearances.

Anyway, the best:
Daydream Nation (everyone agrees - hooray!)
Sister
EVOL
Goo
Dirty

honorable mentions to Washing Machine and Experimental/Jet Set/Trash/No Star. A Thousand Leaves was fairly useless, and I haven't gotten around to the last couple records. People seem to approve of Murray Street, maybe I'll get that one...

It occurs to me that the "sonic youth" brand is such a catchy one that they'd rather not drop it, but how about franchising it to some young deserving sonically talented guitar-lap-topper mutants (by which i mean hiring some good songwriters, electro-free-improv composers, etc.., some non-NYC 21st-century youthful people for a bit of positive discrimination)

(anyway, i want O'Rourke to help them become a proper laptop/ guitar band/ collective, since their guitar tunings and "media dialog" seem very exhausted in 2004, by them anyway)

"It seems to me that a lot of the bitterness that gets directed at them - particularly at Thurston - for doing their elder statesmen schtick is coming from people who are just bitter that *anyone* would condescend to adopt such a mantle. "

that would be a hilarious comment from said elder statespeople if it were as immaculate and funny and otm as the whitey album was back then, comment along the lines of "indie" going grunge/electro-rock, and i would be keen to hear it, the whitey album perhaps finally vindicated as the fantastic timepiece it may be, prophet of punk idm.

i'm not bitter about anything particularly here, but i have noticed that i-know-more-records-than-you wise old man thing rolled out for years -- that would be fun if they made it funny -- ie if they hadn't been so po-faced, condescening and conservative in their earnestness all those times they weren't being funny,.. condescending and rude, not all the time, but still often "high art".

i just wished they'd taken more of the people on the comparitively intelligent course they were on circa '90.
In 2003, it's the "free" eps here vs. "artistic freedom" on Geffen there -- i just want to hear some worldly lyrics about current politics in these very strange times -- i want sonic youth to say something about US foreign policy, something i would consider actually taking a risk (as opposed to that "cool" = "slack" work ethic), and i want them to do it on Geffen, not the special EPs (ie not perceived as a throwaway/ work in progress/ improv. sess.)

reflecting on Daydream Nation, it is i suppose by defn. partly inward looking -- well, how inward looking is the american media right now ? watching CNN, Fox and BBC tv, the differences in emphases are quite staggering -- well i suppose everybody who's got cable in the US keeps half an eye on the BBC, right ?

"Sonic Youth", just say something about the current situation, do it on y'r major label Geffen, and get worldwide distribution. That would be what i would expect from some "intelligensia" elder-statesman, especially with said "group" having some A&R input into Geffen.
Rock music that communicates some of the doubts so many people all over the world have about the direction the US is taking right now, uses rock music to get around the media-brick-wall of American media, speaks to general college radio age people and hopefully provokes thought, rather than pandering to collector-completists and critics.

from what you have said Shakey, this experienced well-connected 'round-the-block group ought to be able to do some of that, maybe providing contrast to the sadly blighted-by-circumstance Murray Street. If i didn't think they once did have more stuff to say then _i_ wouldn't expect anything -- that's why i'm dissapointed with the seemingly politically ambiguous Murray Street. Rock music has been such a great political ideas generator in the past, however idealistic some of those ideas. Here's a band with alleged power and creative asylum within Geffen, so why aren't they on MTV ? Why not suspend high art or at least include it in a broader discourse ?

(at least in the UK stereolab can present as real or mock marxists -- would blunt political content from sonic youth however hypothetical be "un-patriotic" right now ? what _is_ their position ? please, someone point me to an interview or reference, anything really, where thust'in has something to say about important stuff like current US foreign policy, an interview where he's not simply hyping stuff like O'Rourke's inclusion or his sept 11 experience)

then you would want New York City Ghosts And Flowers, an explicit comment/attack on the anti-hobo/anti-culture policies of Mayor Giuliani that's beautiful, poetic and angry at the same time. and a fuck of a lot more cogent and insightful than 'Youth Against Fascism'.

I love all their albums. Their last five or so most of all.

I recently read Reynolds' c.1988 (?) Daydream Nation essay. That was bad too, alas.

(it's stuff like that US attitude where they have a "World Series" that's a sporting event that's completely domestic, stuff like that, which doesn't make the 4 cable sports channels where i live, doesn't feature large on the BBC or CNN either).
OK, they're "an american band" (like Grand Funk Railroad),.. is that it ?

(anyway, am going to sleep now, so see ya)

no, you're right. on those criteria they should no longer be allowed to detune their guitars. i'm off to throw all the post-Dirty albums on the bonfire right now. how could i have let a collusion of inspiring noise, intriguing melody and abmirable creativity blind me to this essential truth?

but i have to shut up anyway and get some sleep

I wonder what of percentage of sy fandom is US people, and if that US chunk has risen or shrunk.

anyway stevie and andrew,
thanks,
goodnight.

pinefox do you like music that doesn't need melody?

Speaking of, there's not much opinion on this thread regarding the SYR records aside from Goodbye 20th Century. I've only heard Goodbye 20th Century which is so awful it's almost good.

where did you read reynolds on 'daydream nation', the pf?

one of the members of Le Tigre had plenty of civil disobedience stuff happening in response to Giuliani's night life policies. If Sy had a song attacking Giuliani for [nyc ghosts] good for them. But that song on that album [nyc ghosts] came before Giuliani's new roles. So it is an inward song.

Geffen's meant to provide SY an oasis for artistic freedom. I won't believe that until sy say something about the whitehouse and it's supposedly Zionist/Christian direction and larger scale plans for [Nile through to the Euphrates]. Can that happen on that label ?
They don't have to do songs about anything, but assuming that consigns the sy brand from what it once was, a symbol for freedom for discussion about real ideas (ie other than love songs) to merely another annoying brand name.

The music might strike you as nice, but i thought they were more ambitious than just 'alternative' as in tunings.

Pat Metheny's 'zero tolerance for silence' got a nice bumper sticker from thurstin about how innovative it was, yet even w/out any words, the cd was distributed using alternatives to the trad. Geffen food chain,.. because it was "uncompromising" ? SYR are obv. part of a similarly different distribution chain -- i had to buy all my SYR eps from american mail order. The "Protest Records" initiative _is_ admirable, even if sy themselves didn't have a suitable song on the site. Yet both SYR and PR seem handily arms-length to Geffen to me.

If sy are into being revivalist, then let's not forget that there used to be a genre called "protest music". Laurie Anderson's breakthrough album was a protest record for instance, somewhat US-inward looking but otm with "O Superman" and "From the Air" and "Big Science".
(Of course songs like "Once in a Lifetime" and "O Superman" were much bigger hits in the UK and other countries where people might have had a different view of this hand-on-heart "land of the free" guff, though i'm sure plenty of patriotic americans are embarressed by their current whitehouse)

If sy don't want to take things that far, ok, but to me, having followed their output _as_ _it_ _came_ _out_ for 20 years, there has been a clear change of direction towards bougeouis "brat-rock", .. not "frat rock", but certainly rite-of-passage indie college music, not much of the punk-inspired ferocity "Kill yr Idols" or the more obvious "complaint music" of daydream nation, more "music dept." music.

Like REM, have fans gone on to become the parents band, not the youths ? REM are retiring or maybe re-configuring. They recognise you can do so much, get listened to by one group of people only at the expense of other audiences, as time goes by.

I'm a youth of roughly the same times as SY, and i think the branding and implicit radicalism have all become "mature" or measured, but it's this inward focus on america that upsets me when i think of them once being a quite independent force.

And a nyc trilogy ? Revivalist attempts to align with radical poets and artists that happened to come from the nyc of years ago will not make them radical, and de facto radicalism, like revisionists,.. one has to be suspicious.

(and the stereolab/sy laptop groop/groupthink idea, it was a joke, although i suspect stereolab egos would be much more ameanable to collaboration, in the interests of greater good/impact, with O'Rourke the obv. facilitator)