Sonic Youth: Classic or Dud/S&D?

“Theresa’s Sound World” is one of my favorite SY bask-in-sound moments.

Saw them at CB's in 92 as Drunken Butterfly. They basically opened for Charles Gayle if I remember correctly and at the end of Gayle's incredible set (with William Parker on bass) Ranaldo and Moore came out and improv'd with him.

Also saw them at City Gardens and Maxwell's (both New Jersey) a few times in the 90s but the shows were only ok. A truism going around among NYC music heads at the time is that SY never played their best shows on home turf.

Maybe Dirty just needs a reshuffle? I dunno.

I do love a lot of it.

I saw the London debut supporting SPK at the Venue in December 83.

how were SPK? i saw them the year after but it was the more sanitised junk funk version. i bet they were better in '83. that gig sounds so great, danielle dax too!

'Theresa’s Sound World' is one my favorites, I'd love to make a Lee SY playlist.

Same. I did a Lee CDR 15 years ago but somehow it didn’t work that well

I thought "Theresa's Sound World" was sung by Thurston?

"how were SPK? i saw them the year after but it was the more sanitised junk funk version. i bet they were better in '83. that gig sounds so great, danielle dax too!

― stirmonster, Saturday, December 18, 2021 12:30 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink"

probably too late for them then too.
trying to be controversial by one of them swinging a metal chain around their head at their audience. & sending arcs of sparks out.
I think they did still sound about ok though the single of the time was Metal Dance which did sound washed out and overly commercial.
I think I had been listening to Leichenschrei quite heavily at the time but gave up on that after hearing the Throbbing Gristle I got into about that point and thinking it was way too close, got further and furtehr into Einsturzende Neubauten though .

Goo through Experimental Jet Set is really the only bad era to me (although I prob won’t ever listen to Sonic Nurse or anything after for the rest of my life either).

saw them in

July 86
July 87
December 88
summer 1990

they ruled my world in that era, nobody could touch them

oh and then I got to see them a 5th time at Bumbershoot 99 where they pissed off a large stadium crowd by mostly playing instrumental versions of the forthcoming NYCG&F album

Thanks Stevolende. i guess they were already headed that way at that point. i still enjoyed them but it was definitely metal bashing lite by the time i saw them. i do think time has been kind to Leichenschrei. i appreciate it more now than i did then, though it's probably a once a year listen, if that.

they ruled my world in that era, nobody could touch them

very true. i was going to gigs several nights a week at this point and SY would have blown every single one of them off the stage. so great.

Xpost - I remember not being really into the ‘98 show. The ‘95 shows were excellent.

You fuckers are convincing me to do a deep dive into Sonic Youth’s back catalog and struggle through all that goddamn SYR shit. SIGH.

to be honest I never listened to most of them.

Night Flight on USA Up All Night in 88 did a "take off on hardcore" and played the Death Valley 69 video. A little while later I bought Daydream Nation on tape. I'd never heard anything like that. Within a few months PBS showed Charles Atlas' Put Blood in the Music' and that was it. Within a short period of time I had all their albums up to Daydream, some easier than other as my older sister had Evol and Sister on a tape. She had the records but never really liked them.

I was a super fan and super excited by the time Goo came out, but had like almost totally moved onto other stuff and never even bought Dirty. It just seemed too poppy to me, and like they were acting more like some kind of post hardcore alternative rock band instead of the tape loops and deconstructed guitars birthed of no wave.

I liked Sugar Kane but ignored Dirty. By the time Washing Machine came out I was in college and going really deep and I wasn't interested. I was more into Skullflower and the Sun City Girls and the Dead C. But I still defended them, I remember a younger person at the record store I worked at, when I pointed out the DGC Confusion is Sex CD on sale, acted like I was trying to get her to buy Urge Overkill or something. I said you're not allowed to like the Dead C and not own a copy of Confusion is Sex.

After that I'd check in now and again but just didn't pay much attention. Sometimes that happens. I can't get into the last bunch of Stereolab albums either. Or The Fall post Extricate, though I know there's great stuff and I recently did that dive.

So now this thread is making me want to do it. After many years of "sonic youth changed my life" I suppose I should listen to all those albums starting with Dirty.

I do know a few of the later tracks because a friend made me a best of Lee mix that included stuff from that period.

fun going through the gigography. the shows I can remember:

7/15/86 First Ave. Dinosaur
11/15/88 Fillmore Mudhoney and Die Kreuzen
10/22/90 First Ave Babes in Toyland and the Cows
1/22/91 Target Center Neil Young and Crazy Horse
5/29/95 First Ave Dead C
6/9/00 Rock the Garden, Walker Art Center Stereolab
3/17/02 All Tomorrow’s Parties (SY curated)
8/19/02 First Ave Sky Klad
8/24/06 Minnesota State Fair Flaming Lips
10/1/10 Matador 21

I only saw them twice, but one of those was a short "secret show" set at Barrister's in Memphis in 1995, while they were recording Washing Machine. They did a 30-35 minute instrumental set opening for Lorette Velvette and a German band I can't remember the name of. None of it was recognizable previously-released material but the crowd was pretty receptive anyway iirc. (The other time I saw them was on the Goo tour in Memphis, with the Jesus Lizard and a Knoxville band called The Scam opening.)

Lorettte Velvette is great, saw her with Tav and also the Hellcats.

4/7/95: "perhaps jokingly introduced as Sebadoh covers"

http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/cc/040795.html

wonder who the unidentified all-female German band was.

Filmmaker Mike McCarthy (we were buds at the time) called me at my job in Oxford MS right after lunch that day, a Friday I believe, and said "rumor is there's a secret SY gig tonight, you should come on up." So I left work early and got to his place about 6 -- fun night. I've tried and tried to remember the German band's name but I can't dredge it up.

i only saw them once, hammerstein ballroom in 2000 on the NYC ghosts & flowers tour. i think it was the one date on that tour where stereolab didn't open for them, and instead it was a free jazz ensemble led by ken vander mark and peter brötzmann. i remember them being about as loud as SY was.

tried getting into their 2002 central park summerstage show on standby but didn't get in

Was that this gig? http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/cc/040795.html

Love that even SY themselves can’t remember the German band’s name

Oh just noticed that had been posted apologies

this was the last time I saw them!
https://sonicyouth.bandcamp.com/album/live-in-austin-1995

I saw Lorette velvette with panther Burns at Dingwalls and i Think possibly later, not sure if she was still with them when they came back though. Had a Hellcats mini lp too.

Saw SY at CBGBs in the summer of 86 as well as Maxweels Hoboken that summer. Dinosaur pre jr support on both .

more memories:

July 1986

The Hoosier Ballroom in Indianapolis. Their whole set is on Youtube. EVOL tour with the standard setlist of LP tracks, the early "White Cross", "I Love Her All The Time", "Death Valley '69", and "Brother James". Openers were a one-off noise project of Scott Colburn's (O.D.I.R.) and not-so-great local band The Math Bats. Unbelievableshow that cemented my love for them.

July 1987

At Oberlin College near Cleveland, Big Black opened (!! yes they were great). Sister hadn't come out yet, Thurston said "we're gonna play a bunch of new songs", they burned through a great set, and then did the Ramones medley. I was very happy.

December 1988

Trax, Charlottesville, VA. Next-to-last show on the Daydream Nation tour, they were exhausted and punch-drunk but still brought it. Happy Flowers and B.A.L.L. opened. Kramer had a box of wine that got passed around on and off stage. All-star "I Wanna Be Your Dog" closer.

summer 1990

Jockey Club, Cincinnati. I remember much less about this show than the others, it also wasn't as memorable. Goo had come out for sure, I can't remember the opening band.

September 1999

Bumbershoot, Seattle, the big arena. As mentioned above this was a mostly-instrumental set of skeletal NYCG&F sketches which seemed to baffle and confuse the (very full) crowd, but they did do "I Dreamed I Dream" to my great delight. At one point a Lollapalooza-looking teen in front of us said to his friend "I thought you said their songs had words, man."

I only saw them in 2000 and 2006, I was kinda late to getting into them really, for some reason during all my indie and grunge listening in the early 90s I didn't knowingly hear anything by SY apart from 100% until the mid-90s. I got super into them in 1997 when all their albums got reissued mid-price and I had just left uni and got a job so I bought them all

Duh, just remembered that I saw them in 2007 when they did the Daydream Nation set at Pitchfork, the night Slint also played.

The 2000 show I went to was for the NYCGAF tour and almost half the set was off that album which is one of my least favourite but it worked OK live. I did enjoy the 2006 set a lot more (half Rather Ripped and the rest all from Sister, Daydream Nation and Confusion Is Sex)

Was the Oberlin show in the ‘Sco (basement of student union) or Finney Chapel? (Big church)

it was in Hales Gym!! I still have a flyer!

part of the "1987 WOBC music festival"

sleeve I’ve had a recording of that Bumbershoot set forever, I really like it. I think the stolen gear truck prompted a major rethink and the new material was written on borrowed gear without customisation?

Speaking of the stolen gear truck, my only SY show was the This Ain't No Picnic festival in Irvine, CA, 4th of July 1999--the first gig after the gear was stolen.

Highlights of the day included:
- My introduction to Boredoms, playing Super AE stuff.
- The spontaneous discussion among strangers as we headed for our cars at the end of the day between the "I don't see what the fuss is" folks and the "Holy fuck that was awesome" contingent.
- Driving back to L.A. on the 5, and passing through Anaheim with the Disney fireworks going off ahead of me.

To clarify, point #2 above was specifically about Boredoms.

oh man Hales. I never even stepped foot in there. The only concert I remember being held there was De La Soul.

xp Weirdly, I don’t specifically recall Boredoms’ performance at ATP USA 2002 (curated by SY)… though I must have seen them, as I was a fan, (and I remember seeing them later)? I definitely remember other acts at that fest…

drummer Richard Edson’s cymbal crashes

Today I learned that one of the guys who stole Cameron's dad's car in Ferris Bueller's Day Off used to play drums for Sonic Youth

I just saw him in an old re-run of Homicide: Life on the Street, a really great episode that was mostly him and Bruno Kirby. Didn't he get his start as an actor in Jim Jarmusch's Stranger than Paradise? Crazy how he jumped to that from Sonic Youth.

He’s in Good Morning Vietnam, as well.

I somehow find it funnier that Kim Gordon dated Danny Elfman for a long time, before the band.

I forgot Moore has a song called "Sleepin' Around" (as in "I'm not...").

lol

I don't think "I'm not" is implied at all in that song!

If anything, it seems pretty sympathetic to the person who's sleeping around - the only concern is "what will the neighbours say", while the verses paint a grim picture of their relationship ("what did you good is gone/Nothing you do is right...") imo.

I agree!

:) but :(

Speaking of the stolen gear truck, my only SY show was the This Ain't No Picnic festival in Irvine, CA, 4th of July 1999--the first gig after the gear was stolen.

Hah I was there too. I saw them four times: 1990 at UC Irvine, This Ain't No Picnic, Terrastock V's all Murray Street set, and finally at ATP Long Beach in 2003

That This Ain’t No Picnic set was the first time I ever saw them and like Elvis I was there for the T5 set — third time was the first ArthurFest and fourth and last time was an excellent show in Seattle on the _Rather Ripped_ tour. But they were all great and three out of four times they played my favorite song by them, “Mote.”

Of the many times I saw them the one that really sticks in my head was the 2000 set at the Walker Art Center (w/ Stereolab); their gear had been ripped off that last summer, everyone had decided NYC Ghost & Flowers sucked for some reason, their last Mpls appearance was for circa A Thousand Leaves & it was a good but pretty mellow, O'Rouke was in the band now and no one had any expectations for them and they hit the stage with "Teen Age Riot" and it was like 1987 all over again. They were fucking great.

I only saw them once, the first time I saw a show at the now-demolished Roseland Ballroom in NYC when they were on the Goo tour.

This was before the venue added the stage at the end of the room so Sonic Youth played on what would later become the VIP area.

I remember that I was so impressed that they were selling shirts for only $10 I bought one even though I was perpetually broke back then. I wore the fuck out of that shirt.

I also remember the show was wonderful and heavy on Goo which was fine with me as it and Daydream Nation were my two favorite Sonic Youth albums (I like to imagine a world where Sonic Youth are a pop band).

I first saw them in St. Louis, summer 2003. They opened with "Peace Attack" and I remember thinking it was the most beautiful thing they had ever done. I had to wait another year to hear the studio version on Sonic Nurse and it did not disappoint. The rest of the set was basically Murray Street plus the hits, an ideal situation imo.