POLL YR. IDOLS: The official SONIC YOUTH RESULTS thread!

These pictures rival the ones for the results of the Pavement poll for inspired brilliance...

Hah yeah, and not a Jaguar or Jazzmaster in sight.

you could make a really nice playlist/comp of sonic youth cover versions (songs covered by SY, i mean).

"is it my body" is their only real failure, imo. seems as though it would be perfect, esp for kim, but they completely butcher it.

I only realised when researching for this poll that Thurston sings most of Ca Plane Pour Moi in random English phrases!

http://m.soundcloud.com/nofancy/sonic-youth-jams-run-free

Seriously, this is like an orgasm

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/068.jpg
68. Tokyo Eye
Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, 1994
(100 points, 5 votes)

I only realised when researching for this poll that Thurston sings most of Ca Plane Pour Moi in random English phrases!

― scintilla (seandalai), Tuesday, May 14, 2013 8:38 AM (4 minutes ago)

wham bam lost his eyes she's so horny bongos faze i'm a born listen come a whiskey come a deeda dada tada toi, fruit a leevitatee deeda inna jar, ooh say in a flash ooh OOH ooh ooh, i got to laugh

and shit yeah, "tokyo eye" is such a jam. cannot play that shit loud enough.

R.E.M. makes its way in there at some point.

Xpost "Ca Plane Pour Moi"

voted for "Superstar" high; this'll sound corny but in 94 it was ~important~ for me to hear covers of "cheesy" (by "punk" standards) artists (REM was playing "Wichita Lineman" live that year too)...helped open my mind again (nb I was 20 at the time)

TOKYO EYE! That was really high on my ballot, just an amazingly unique use of rhythm and dynamics even within the SY catalog. Has the source of the cymbal crash sample/toy ever been identified?

EJS was one of the last old SY albums I bought, and it consistently surprised me.

Tokyo Eye is fantastic, think I voted for it.

Yeah, "Experimental ..." was so much better than I remembered it, can't believe I had left that record alone for so long. I had really blunt/incomplete memories of the songs for some reason, relistening opened up all kinds of subtleties that I had forgotten about. "Tokyo Eye" is definitely a cool song and a welcome curveball in their catalogue.

Isn't that cymbal just Steve with a lot of filters on it?

It's such a SPARE record, that's why - so stripped back.

My picks from that album were Screaming Skull and Quest...

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/067.jpg
67. Making the Nature Scene
Confusion Is Sex, 1983
(106 points, 7 votes)

Also, the obvious shock of hearing "Winner's Blues" as the first track on the record immediately following the general heaviness of "Dirty" kinda confused me at the time. I immediately did a U-Turn and went and bought all of the old SY records I didn't own yet (that I could find) instead of dig into "EJSTNS". Think I actually liked "Winner's Blues" and "Bull In The Heather" the most at the time, but yeah, decided to hit the back catalogue for a while pretty much immediately.

^ fucking CLASSIC. did not vote for it, but damn glad to see it get the nod here. love the conceit, the city as nature, organic humanity an "unnatural" intrusion on its pattern. much more appealing that contemporary artists who worship an idealized vision of untainted nature from the comfort of urban apartments/suburban homes.

xp re: making the nature scene

"Making The Nature Scene" was a late cut for me. Classic for sure. Really glad that I got to see this song live, it is a powerful live experience.

To say the least.

It took the Ciccone version for me to realize it's one of their most rhythmically driving early songs

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that one person secifically voted for the Ciccone Youth version. I'm too lazy to look it up now - was it you, some dude?

sPecifically obv.

I see now that it was Sleeve.

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/066.jpg
66. Drunken Butterfly
Dirty, 1992
(107 points, 7 votes)

YES xp

I love the Ciccone Youth version so much!

ooh I also voted for Drunk Butterfly

It always surprised me to learn "Drunken Butterfly" had a video and was one of their most played live songs. Not really a standout in any context, but it kinda bangs.

I think I ended up putting this at #2 on my ballot. Dirty was my first sonic youth album and this is the song I played the most way back then.

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/065.jpg
65. Kissability
Daydream Nation, 1988
(108 points, 7 votes)

You will not believe where I got that image from.

Holy shit, how the hell did that come up?

Also, "Kissability" rules! Fucking love that guitar solo.

"Kissability" definitely deserved better. Being such a concise, controlled song buried in the back half of a woolly epic has kind of kept it hidden in plain view, I think.

way, way behind as usual these days, but Flower slipping completely through the cracks is rong, so xxxxp to sleeve:

well Flower should be about 50 places higher

yeah, Flower is a R&RHoF klassik in the secret fuck-off category. upthread Contenderizer mentions the lack of musical support Gordon fights against on some later SY tracks, but Flower ramps entirely around her flaying vox, which take only three minutes to track an unfolding idea from a jagged, unsettled thought to an interior mantra, words mumbled under breath, rude shit said at parties, a spit slogan, and then a brief interlude of civil discourse f/ the common creep (look at that shit on yr wall, man) before exploding back into personal rage that’s cornball but riveting punk towering monumentally over skinhead nation. Ranaldo and Moore lay down a ratcheting shitstorm of static, but I love how the tune structurally references hip-hop and grabs yr throat w/ so little - at 0:58 the reverb that pops the vocals, the snare drop at 1:53, the one-note bassline that unexpectedly lurches at 2:00, the free-falling drum dropout at 2:56 that injects vertigo into the upward ascent (all v. inspiring to a young, guitar-mangling Hellhouse w/ minimal skillz, but really a testament to the exhilarating belligerence barreling straight down the middle). notable also f/ weaving so many key SY strands – dissonant feminism, anthemic demolition, emotional politics, psych agitation, dreams into violence. outstandingly rude and OTT then and now, and glaring at 82.

Damnit Hellhouse, don't make me feel even badder about leaving it off! (good post otm etc....)

Uggh, the correct word is "worse"

bit surprised to see Drunken Butterfly so low, but also realising that Sonic Youth have an awful lot of good songs.

from wayyy upthread:

100% is great but I watched the video for the first time in ages last week and HOLY COW it is so 1992 fashion it is insane. Dirty Boots is pretty hysterically grunged out too

― da croupier, Monday, May 13, 2013 10:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That was a big part of the point with "Dirty Boots", wasn't it?

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Monday, May 13, 2013 10:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

was it entirely tongue-in-cheek? The stage dives are hilarious but I didn't totally get the sense it was knowingly so

― da croupier, Monday, May 13, 2013 10:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, I didn't think it was tongue-in-cheek but I think it was pretty deliberately meant to celebrate alt/grunge culture.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Monday, May 13, 2013 10:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So yeah, no, it probably wasn't meant to be hysterical.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Monday, May 13, 2013 10:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah 'dirty boots' vid was conscious valentine to a particular moment in the culture ('sugar kane' vid was also but there's some definite tongue in cheek there, whereas 'dirty boots' is pretty unabashedly romantic albeit not humourless).

― balls, Monday, May 13, 2013 11:06 PM (Yesterday)

Female lead in Dirty Boots video is wearing Nirvana t-shirt + video was released about 6 months prior to Nevermind so careful with that revisionism...

my god: I forgot to vote for "Kissability."

great post, hellhouse, cheers

i dig both "kissability" and "drunken butterfly", but am cool w not voting for either

like so so many other kim tracks, "kissability" seems as though it deserves to score high on lyrics alone. i place at least equal emphasis on tunes/rocks/jams, though, and on that level, it doesn't floor me.

not, at least, as much so as several other DN tracks

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/064.jpg
64. The World Looks Red
Confusion Is Sex, 1983
(108 points, 8 votes)

You know, similar to Hellhouse (i.e., his statement about the musical approach on Flower being "all v. inspiring to a young, guitar-mangling Hellhouse w/ minimal skillz"), seeing SY perfom "100%" on TV when Dirty came out was a real revelation for me. I hadn't seen them live at that point, but the general artlessness and simplicity of the approach (hit a couple of notes in unison and then freak out between the notes) was super influential and freed me the hell up. I never really worried about being "good" at guitar again (for better or worse).

Oh man, the Letterman dogpile was the first time I saw them perform live. Thought they seemed like the worst band ever, but I wised up later.

Yeah, not even sure I processed it fully, but I had become a fan and was totally mesmerized by some of the guitar on Goo etc., so to see them just going for it like that erased a lot of the negative experiences I had had trying to play guitar and watch folks my age pull of pretty accomplished shit on guitar. It gave me license to be bad, as long as I was bad in an interesting way! (I could not even play barre chords or anything, so even watching punk bands and shit made guitar look hard to me for some reason.) Probably misguided in retrospect, but still, I learned to focus on finding a sound and milk a few notes I liked and not overthink it so much partly because of that experience.

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/063.jpg
63. Protect Me You
Confusion Is Sex, 1983
(110 points, 6 votes)