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

Fall flat = SN (largely), Evol (relatively speaking), Eternal
Can't "get" it = DN, Goo (largely), debut EP

Then there are SY albums that hit me on some special level for aesthetic or personal mythology reasons..

Mythology: WM, Dirty, ATL, SS
Aesthetics: RR, MS, SYR9, CIS

Of course there's definitely overlap between those categories

Xpost

mid-90s live set by Mecca Normal, the band that inspired "Skip Tracer":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4UACM1MpqE

Somehow I've still never listened to Mecca Normal

BMR and Sister would fall under aesthetic pleasures I think

Can't really believe that "Beauty Lies in the Eye" placed this high. So many better Kim songs. I get that it is a beloved record (and lol yeah 44 isn't THAT high) but still, many Kim songs already placed that are better than this.

― grandavis, Wednesday, May 15, 2013 12:07 PM (3 hours ago)

love "beauty lies": the weird watery guitar sound, the measured vocal & slowly building tension, "hey baby, hey sweetheart, hey fox, come here". you keep waiting for the "shadow of a doubt" style explosion that never comes. it's slight, but very cool.

four more today:

59. Eliminator Jr.
50. Youth Against Fascism
47. Pipeline / Kill Time
44. Beauty Lies in the Eye

i feel a little guilty abt "youth against fascism", but every time it comes on i crank it up & smile. the heart wants what it wants.

what's to feel guilty about?

lots of us voted for it -- it's a terrific performance

it's the hongro i date

Definitely down with "Beauty Lies...". Contenderizer captures the appeal well. Might even be the most durable Sister track for me, as odd as that seems as I type it. Looks like "Pipeline" was my only other track from this batch.

man people who act like Steve lost his touch after Dirty are missing out, Washing Machine is one of their best albums drum-wise, so many cool subtle performances

Favourites?

definitely mainly the 3 that placed today, also shaker section of "Unwind" and the cymbal crazy ending of "No Queen Blues"

definitely need to do my playlist of songs where Steve plays maracas/shakers. so far i got:

Dirty Boots, Bull In The Heather, Hyperstation, Karen Koltrane, Unwind, Anagrama, Female Mechanic Now On Duty, Sunday (SubUrbia version), i think some Made In USA tracks. what am i missing?

Wtf are ppl going onabout Kool Thing veing fun? That song is ferocious! Best single of their altrock phase. Major regrettable omission on my ballot. That part where Kim goes "What'd he say?!" at the end of one of the verses always gets m
Was a bit of a dry run for me then Halloween ushered in a string of my choices: Beauty, Karen, Washing Machine

Youth Against Fascism completely rules and I love it, but I cut it in favor of things I love even more. Conventional wisdom at the time among fellow music fans was that the new album sucked (something I have heard friends say about every single SY album since Sister), but I remember playing YAF once for a friend, who loved it and was like "dammit, Matt and Tony told me this record sucked!"

"Karen Koltrane" is fine but definitely a song that would've been on my ballot 10-15 years ago that wasn't considered for a moment now

Only "Brother James" from my ballot today. Really surprised how much from the mid-90s is showing up.

well i mean, if they stopped in 1993, there wouldn't be 100 songs to count down

wait, brother jams came up today? naw, you mean

49. Kill Yr. Idols (155 points, 12 votes)

which i forgot earlier, cuz yeah, i voted for that one too. up to nine!

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/040.jpg
40. Inhuman
Confusion Is Sex, 1983
(181 points, 10 votes, 2 #1)

MY BODY IS A PASTIME MY MIND IS A SIMPLE JOY I LEARN MY LESSON THE HARDEST WAY

I'm genuinely surprised that so much pre-EVOL stuff is popping up this high.

TOO LOW

'Pastime'? I always heard 'My body is a pipeline'

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/039.jpg
39. Bull in the Heather
Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, 1994
(182 points, 12 votes)

"We never said we were professional"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1JJmI1QhsM

Inhuman only really struck me during the ballot process. It made my list because it is AWESOME and because it sounds like Throbbing Gristle.

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/038.jpg
38. Shaking Hell
Confusion Is Sex, 1983
(183 points, 11 votes, 1 #1)

Thanks to whoever put this as their #1. Scary, scary track.

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/037.jpg
37. Stereo Sanctity
Sister, 1987
(184 points, 10 votes, 1 #1)

heh i was just thinking last night "could 'Bull In The Heather' be in the top 20? do i dare to dream?" oh well

Nice. Just goes to show: the early shit garners respect, even now.

Hehe. "Shaking Hell" was my #1. "Scary" also figured in my explanation of this choice in an off-thread conversation.

Yay for "Inhuman" as well. Confusion is Sex in general just sounds ever better with the passage of time IMHO. Inexplicably, I barely rated it back in my first flurry of fandom.

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/036.jpg
36. Hyperstation
Daydream Nation, 1988
(191 points, 12 votes)

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f163/courtneykaehler/maracas.jpg

The pictures are killing me

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/035.jpg
35. Brother James
Kill Yr. Idols, 1983
(202 points, 13 votes)

jeez, i guess this is where confusion comes in. have to admit that i sometimes underrate that album. it's marred, imo, by a few lesser tracks, but otherwise up there with their best work. song for song, though, i think i prefer kill yr idols. had "brother james" in at #6, "kill yr idols" not far behind.

I usually forget which tracks are CIS and which are KYI tbh, cos I have them on 1 CD. Brother James and Shaking Hell are my favourite songs from that CD anyway.

'Pastime'? I always heard 'My body is a pipeline'

I put my CD in a binder without the liner notes when I moved here but iirc it says "pastime" in the liner notes of the DGC reissue. Just checked a few lyrics sites that all say "pastime".

What Throbbing Gristle sounds like this?

I owe a beer to NNN for putting "Shaking Hell" at #1. I know I'm on the right board when all this no wave/industrial-era material shows up this high.

Oh, I didn't mean to say you were wrong, just that I misheard it all these years.

Although 'pipeline' makes more sense biologically :)

Kill Yr Idols is such a potent EP, makes me feel like if they'd written a few more songs in that era before beginning the BMR stuff it'd probably be their strongest early album.

Hehe. "Shaking Hell" was my #1. "Scary" also figured in my explanation of this choice in an off-thread conversation.

Yay for "Inhuman" as well.

― Nag! Nag! Nag!, Thursday, May 16, 2013 3:46 AM (1 hour ago)

"scary" is a good word for early SY. back then, they often seemed intent on putting down the creep: confusion, bad moon and evol. they mostly dropped this angle on sister, though "beauty lies", "pipeline/kt" and "pch" might have found room on a more unnerving, horrorshow version of that album. by the time they got to goo, they'd traded disturbing for funny, noise and drone for hard rock. suspect that's why so many got off the bus at or by that point.

I had to almost force a goth rock-loving friend of mine to listen to CIS back in undergrad. He said he never thought Sonic Youth could be that good.

the "haw haw haw" bit at the beginning of "inhuman" sounds so much like (later) butthole surfers that it always throws me for a moment. actual lyrics ftr:

my body is a pashline
my body is a super sore!

lol, blew that one. uh, "mind" goes in there somewhere too.

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/034.jpg
34. Disconnection Notice
Murray Street, 2002
(204 points, 10 votes, 1 #1)

wow a #1