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

There are still at least 4 songs from Sister yet to place, hard to imagine that any of them will miss at this point. Not going to start predicting top 2 or 3, hope to be surprised, but at this point I can only really imagine two songs competing, so will be greatly surprised if one of them isn't it.

Albert, same for me! Said pretty much the same thing above. Kinda crazy that he doesn't milk it the second time through to be honest, though makes that first time extra special. Just super cool.

my top 6 and my #8 have placed now. i think my #7 could win here and #9 and #10 should place too.

I have a lot left, but think everything except 1 of mine will place at this point (though maybe it will sneak in, which would be really surprising to me). Gonna be a fun rollout!

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/023.jpg
23. Silver Rocket
Daydream Nation, 1988
(249 points, 12 votes, 1 #1)

OK, it's already way past my bedtime and I hate to rush these things, so here's the last one for tonight. Top 21 tomorrow!

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/022.jpg
22. Hey Joni
Daydream Nation, 1988
(249 points, 14 votes)

probably my fave sonic youth song to do at karaoke along w/ backing vocals on 'mary-christ'

kinda thought "Silver Rocket" would be higher! either "Total Trash" is way way too high or i'm going to be pleasantly surprised that it got totally locked out.

'total trash' still gets a repeat from me like half the times i listen to it whereas i burnt out on 'silver rocket' before the end of clinton's first term

"TT" just feels like, i dunno, a harbinger of the floppy flippant '90s Thurston jams, feels outclassed on an album where every other long song is really deliberately structured and full of twists and turns.

sorta odd that 'silver rocket' (or 'teen age riot' for that matter) never got that retro-love that 'how soon is now' or 'boys don't cry' or 'blue monday' or pick yr pixies song got w/ altrock radio where they got more airplay well after the fact than they did when they were contemporary. those tracks had major label distribution but odd that would matter (do labels promote catalogue albums?) plus in any case dgc reissued those at some point in the 90s.

i eventually burnt out on "total trash", but it was up there among my very favorite SY tracks for quite a while. its relative simplicity is in no sense a weakness. it's a pop songs, and a good one, that just happens to come apart at the seams for like five minutes before finally putting half its face back to stumble out (with) the door. that "BOOM wah-oo-wah" bit at the top of the chorus is the single best hook on daydream nation, imo.

i think i'd be fine with "Total Trash" if it was 4 minutes, just really wears out its welcome for me

Total Trash is the only long spacey song on Daydream Nation that I did NOT vote for, take that for what it is.

tunic was my #1, it is such a great complex song, the tune is extremely psychedelic and sad at the same time. the guitar sound is so heavenly, so immaterial.

― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Thursday, May 16, 2013 11:48 AM (4 hours ago)

i don't rate it quite as highly as alex, but it's a damn good song, easily one of the most indelible moments on goo. first, yeah, that wispy, lovely-yet-ominous immateriality, the play between weightless guitars and heavy bass propulsion. i love the push-pull between the dark, wrestling, head-stuck chorus and the lightly dancing verses. when the former breaks into the latter, it feels like release, like flying away, which makes the "hey mom, look! i'm up here, i finally made it" bit almost unbearably poignant. same goes for "goodbye richard, gotta go now, i'm finally on my own" at the end. contrast that with the sudden gut-punch menace of "you look so underfed" and "don't let it go to your head". not a song that grabbed me right off the bat, but it's become one of my long-term favorites.

yeah it's got one of the better hooks on an album not lacking for hooks. it's weird cuz both 'silver rocket' and 'total trash' were EXACTLY what i wanted from sonic youth at 14, 'silver rocket' for that takeoff section where you just have yr head drop back on yr neck and drool until it kicks back in and 'total trash' which gave the feedback and destruction and watch this i wanted as a next step from hendrix and whatever punk i'd heard at that point but still obv pop enough that doofus kid me could grasp it easy (it was warmer than big black or thrash so somehow i had a different kind of engagement w/ 'total trash' vs. just 'must destroy walls and furniture' impulse of listening?). only one made my ballot (and it didn't get #1) but i'm pretty sure those were the two tracks i played most for ppl in an evangelical sense thru the years.

love 'tunic', that and 'mote' were the big airplay getters on college radio here. that was back when you'd hear about todd haynes 'superstar' years before you might get a chance to see the thing, now you can pull the thing up on youtube.

i don't think of "total trash" as spacey, tho (xp). it's fucked-up, trashy, a goofy-ass pop tune that turns into a rotting, grocery-dropping endurance test. i'm not no cow.

i kind of put "Tunic" with "100%" as a song where i could appreciate the sentiment of the lyric once i learned what it was written about, but by the time i knew that i was already pretty disinterested in it musically and it's never quite recovered from that.

Also, I underrated "Master=Dik" when voting.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Thursday, May 16, 2013 12:06 PM (3 hours ago)

yeah *sob* i went in swearing to myself that i'd give "master=dik" a prime slot on my ballot, but in the end it felt like a silly gesture. do love it though. won't you please let me rock you?

'tunic's a weird one cuz at the time it sounded very 'out' and 'weird' and now it sounds super conventional (not a bad thing per se) to me, it could be mid-90s rem almost.

also shoutout to steve shelly for that beatles train engine drum part during the breakdown on 'total trash'.

tunic was thrashed on aussie alt-radio when the album came out, whereas mote didn't get played much if at all - i had never heard it til i picked up a secondhand goo LP in '95 or something..

'total trash' still gets a repeat from me like half the times i listen to it whereas i burnt out on 'silver rocket' before the end of clinton's first term

― balls, Thursday, May 16, 2013 3:47 PM

I agree with this fwiw

that Night Music performance of "Silver Rocket" is so killer

I really don't get it with Silver Rocket.

There was an indie rock club named after it 10 years ago and I didn't get it then either. Why would you name your club after the worst song on an album? It's so clunky. I mean the rhymes are like fuckin Andy Bell or something. Pocket rock it stop it.

i.e. you can tell that you look too small but you feel like you're too big?

I think the implication in "Tunic" is that she looks in the mirror and still sees herself as being too fat despite actually wasting away.

...which I think is close to the truth.

Fuck I forgot master dik altogether

I wanna know what karaoke joints balls frequents that boast "Silver Rocket" as a choice.

the non-beatbox version vs this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbx-_-xSWEg

was anticipating that Silver Rocket would be top 20 for sure. SY never found a more perfect middle ground between aggression and tunefulness.

"Master Dik" was my #3, though that was perhaps partly strategic. Stronger and funner than the 'official' Ciccone Youth tracks IMHO!

there used to be indie rock karaoke in town here that had a ton of sonic youth, 'hey joni' was my fave if only for the 'kick it!'. pavement was my main steez, he had nearly the entire catalogue or pretty close at least. used to do gbv alot, 'game of pricks' mainly, managed to THWAP a major major crush of doctor casino's in the face w/ the mic one night doing the daltrey/pollard lasso thing w/ it. the guy who did it moved to idaho, the guy who took over has some indie rock but it's like arcade fire. sign o the times.

Both versions are approximately equally fabulous/ridiculous. XXP

I think the implication in "Tunic" is that she looks in the mirror and still sees herself as being too fat despite actually wasting away.

― Kent Burt, Thursday, May 16, 2013 5:01 PM (27 seconds ago)

otm

i think it's too literal to take "i feel like i'm disappearing" only as a description of karen's physical state, or even her sense of it. i mean, it is that, but it also suggests a loss of selfhood, the comingled desire for and fear of non-existence. outside, she sees a negatively distorted image of her own body, and inside, she's fleeing an equally distorted sense of self-worth. it's in part a critique of stardom, of "vanishing into a role" (or a tunic). in this context, the cliche acquires a nasty double edge.

I loaned a bunch of SY albums to a roommate once (Graham Coxon had name-checked them or something, and he was curious) and Tunic was the only song he liked. Don't know what that means.

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/021.jpg
21. The Sprawl
Daydream Nation, 1988
(250 points, 14 votes)

I can't decide if this or 'JC' has my favorite Kim vocals. Still, gorgeous song, even though I had it only at #29.

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/020.jpg
20. Eric's Trip
Daydream Nation, 1988
(254 points, 13 votes)

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/019.jpg
19. Tom Violence
Evol, 1986
(257 points, 18 votes)

Ah, guess "Hey Joni" didn't beat "Eric's Trip", then, and I'd hoped "The Sprawl" would have done a little better - as someone who's never been anywhere near NYC, it's p.evocative.

I think my experience w/"Silver Rocket" was similar to balls'.

Tom Violence was a hard cut to make.

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/018.jpg
18. Pacific Coast Highway
Sister, 1987
(259 points, 17 votes)

awww man, i really hoped "Eric's Trip" and "PCH" would be top 10

I agree re: 'Eric's Trip', but I don't really understand the love for 'PCH'. For me it's always been the link between two awesome halves of Sister, more an interlude than a true song.

ohhh man, some day you're gonna realize how amazing "PCH" is. listen to some live versions maybe.

I kind of see what you mean. Love the drums on the first part! The trumpet wasn't such a great idea though...

"Karen Revisited" was my #1, the song where I first "got" SY, after having had e.g. Daydream Nation since the early 90s. yeah, it's the "ask me if I care" part, but not just Lee's voice; it's that the squall never peaks; there's some more fills on the drums, but the guitar tones stay level, which makes it more eerie. maybe the guitars get more dense there? I'm not sure, but they don't peak in any obvious ways & that accentuates the moment.

http://www.melson.nl/ILM/sypoll/017.jpg
17. Star Power
Evol, 1986
(267 points, 14 votes, 1 #1)