Sonic Youth: Classic or Dud/S&D?

I'd always thought that they were presenting their image as a send-up: "We love our indie roots, and still we're not afraid to let you know it." Still, many people love SY cause they can connect certain songs to specific events that happened in their lives. That's not unusual, however.

oh come on: i think its great that some 40 year olds are still making rock music and still having a group that they started with unlike awful 'solo' projects that rockstars have to cash in on their 'fame' (they do have solo projects but just as another thing, SY is always something they all come back to).

that is true, but not for sy
and Jim O'Rourke, after ten years of frantic activity, and he's a rock star ? so sy are looking after him, ok..
but where does so-called Thurstin' f'r Moore get off calling O'Rourke "our Eno" ?

George if thurston did call O'rouke their ''eno'' i'd say its probably a fair comparison: O'rouke makes solo records, collaborations and produces other people's records.

x-post: I thought it was a joke at first but thiking more abt it i think its a half-joke/half-compliment too.

I'd prefer if he got round to focussing on making GOOD records for a change.

i love daydream nation. hence i said:

""DY" is incredible".

"I have trouble following you there.. You think there is bno need for them to have put out so many good albums??"

i used the word "decent" which is different to saying they've released lots of flat out Good albums. most of the post-daydream nation stuff i've heard seems solid, but not worth getting if you already have a couple of the Seriously Good SY records. Most of what they've done sounds like it has a hell of a lot in common with the album before - without much improvement. "Washing Machine" may be an exception.

tbh, daydream nation is the only one that fits into this category.

but people complained that they "didn't rock", or that "the best sonic youth rockers are covers like 'buublegum' or 'hotwire my heart'". Well covering someone else's song is collaboration of a sort too i suppose.

I remember back to when we waited for EVOL and then Sister to come out. Thinking back now, i believe the harmonic language of their alternative guitar rock was in place on those albums, but people who liked typical alternative "rock" just didn't think they went fast enough, etc. I remember thinking songs like 'Catholic Block' 'Pacific Highway' almost did rock, but that the alternative chords were not quite the right chords, and that therefore they 'did not rock' (and the group seemed to be implicitly acknowledging as much with a title like 'Catholic Block' and the act of 'hotwiring' someone else's song)

And then they proved they could and indeed did 'rock' for most people with Daydream Nation (which was a "told you so" moment for people that had had faith in them up till then) and this thread is testament to the fact that that double album is what brings sonic youth fans together, something it seems all their fans can agree on.

and then they got into big business with David Geffen's label. (imo) Goo seems like great comic crossover pop to me, with just enough heaviness. i thought this band was going to save the world from 'heavy metal' at that point.

Unfortunately, it seems Geffen/ grunge/ 'the free market' demanded that Butch Vig produce Dirty as a kind of alt rock manifest, for a new generation of people who liked 'Cool Thing' (which, with Chuck D there was pretty cool).

(And we had to have a loolapolozza (excuse my spelling, but it didn't come to my city or even Auckland (New Zealand), which felt like betrayal). sonic youth had already previously been booked to come to New Zealand but had opted for a support slot for Neil Young for Goo, a year earlier. We understood the economics of their dilemna however and forgave them for no Goo tour.)

(imo) Dirty was sonic youth aiming too low (at the Nirvana market). Maybe it should have been a single album (it came out as a double vinyl lp), or one album for this crowd, one for that, which you can do with 4 different sides of vinyl. Guns and Roses were doing something very similar with 8 sides of vinyl on the same label at the same time. I don't know how Dirty was intended to go, because i suppose everyone was gambling on vinyl vs. cd at that time. It did have five or six songs that i liked on it, but i bought the cd version of it, and so i got fed up with the rest of it. That was where they lost me.

(and the show i saw them do in Christchurch New Zealand in support of Dirty, it was awful, they played _none_ of the songs off Dayderam Nation, but they did play a whole lot of heavy rockers aimed at the metal in the audience, and sonic youth were very condescening to that audience -- uh, sorry, what do you expect from an audience you only play your heavy rockers too ? -- if you don't want kids stage diving off 20 foot PAs at your gigs, why encourage them with that music ? why not change direction on stage and play some of your subtle material ? did you leave those guitars at home ?)

(and lots of bands have been to the South Island of New Zealand since, but not sonic youth)

Death Valley '69
Tom Violence
Shadow of a Doubt
Expressway to Yr Skull
Schizophrenia
Beauty Lies in the Eye
Teen Age Riot
Silver Rocket
The Sprawl
Total Trash
Candle
Computer Age
Dirty Boots
Sugar Kane
Superstar

(77:47, weighted towards melodic tracks with the popular ones from 'Daydream Nation' as a fulcrum - I'd love it if somebody did a latter day disc as I haven't really kept up).

Kool Thing
100%
Creme Brulee
Bull in the Heather
Sweet Shine
Washing Machine
Saucer Like
The Diamond Sea
Sunday
French Tickler
Small Flowers Crack Concrete
NYC Ghosts & Flowers
The Empty Page
Disconnection Notice
Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style

their blatent careerism and continued barking for some sort of icon status, it's pathetic. most good alt. bands hit their stride, did it, recorded it, and then went and did something else. not sonic youth. they're different from everybody else. yeah right.

so they need some talent/ideas, recruit o'rourke who sycophantically barks, and still, just like what Phil said upthread, Murray Street is such feeble garbage, so over the hill

they had this sept 11th event that they
(1) cashed in on shamelessly
and
(2) failed to address in any interesting way on the actual record (oh i forgot, unlike downtown bahgdad, disconnection from isp or electricity can be traumatic for americans if they can't sort it out within a few days)

most everybody i know thinks the same thing about sonic youth -- they should have disbanded years ago, have failed to be relevent except to themselves in the last ten years, are not the alt. flag-bearers for all the other bands they purport to be part of some lineage in, and would appear to be nyc scenester middle-class brats with nothing better to do -- why don't they
(1) grow up
and
(2) shut up

isn't Watt in there in the "tuff-titty rap" ? burning up ? but didn't Watt help them around the studio ? if not, who did help them around the studio ? if they can do that stuff themselves why aren't they trying to save the world with rap/pop type stuff that youth might actually be interested in listening to ?

as to DV69, who wrote the words ? who points the gun ? who co-sings ? the riff's the easiest part of the song .. but "you're right" .. who did that, that great middle section ? the idea .. who's idea ? could they have come up with that idea without all five of them ?

if sy could rock like that then why isn't lunch guesting on seminal sy dross like "society is a hole" from that time ?

i'm not sure why above you indicate that "murray street" necessitated some kind of obligation / intent on the part of the band to address 11 sept? had they addressed it only then could you claim that they "cashed in" on it. but, seeing as how they did not address it directly what, exactly, are they cashing in on? and, could you define "cashing in" for me? i'm not intimately familiar with the sales of recent sy albums, but i have a hard time seeing all 5 band members laughing their way to the bank on however many copies of murray st soundscanned.

from what i've read recently nyc ghosts and flowers, murray street and whatever album comes next are a "new york trilogy" of sorts. i am much happier that "murray street" can exist without 11 sept significations than have it be some trite fucking bruce springsteen bullshit.

i often fall into a camp of "x band used to be so good", but belaboring the point really won't convince anyone...

My bridge from Smashing Pumpkins/Soundgarden type stuff when I was fourteen (still love all that, actually) into what was then a novel and unnatural idea to me - that dissonance could sound really great (bridge album: Experimental Jet Set, for what it's worth).

I detest nyc ghosts and flowers, love Sister and DN madly, and love everything else enough to never tire of listening to it.

About image - frankly, they could be the most pretentious indier-than-thou fucks that have ever walked this earth, but the way Cross The Breeze makes me feel when turned up loud outweighs all of that for me.

why call it murray street w/out risking linking the two ? and is disconnection notice not about events in new york ? is it an attitude thing ? 'teenage riot' part two, as some have suggested ?

"cashing in" is a bit strong, but i was expecting something topical or political for part two or three of the 'nyc trilogy' -- they are there, they admit it, i look forward to part three, but was dissapointed by stuff like "radical adults suck .." on part two -- in fact i get angry, visceral for it -- to me they're a different band now, and maybe i'm left feeling dissapointed at perceived indifference in their music to to many things -- perhaps i should drop my lack of indifference to them

i guess that the old sonic youth visceral experiences i have had with ''cross the breeze' will have to wait for part three -- i hope that happens, but sometimes it feels like waiting for part three of the second star wars trilogy

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 ?)