the Sonic Youth poll for songs with Lee Ranaldo on lead vox

Thanks Barnaby.

Downloaded it. Thanks!

used to think he was the best songwriter evah or something

'it sounds crazy' but by hit-rate there can't be (m)any better

^ OTM

tho tobin sprout hit a similar average on those early GBV records

(faultless 2nd bananas poll)

seems like spiral stairs would fit in there, but he is far from faultless

I would jump off a building and hoped I landed on Spiral Stairs.

i dont even know which songs he wrote

generally speaking, the ones he sang ... two state, hit the plane down etc.

well he wrote pavement songs so i'm not sure he's going to be challenging schubert and arthur lee

unexpected tag team

the Lennon-McCartney of art-suck?

are schubert and arthur lee faultless second bananas?

art suck could be your life

arthur LEE, not arthur SUCK...! God, clean out yr ~ears~

thanks for that comp!!! lee is the best!!!

i def wouldve chosen 'hey joni' on this poll cuz its my favorite SY song

karen I & II are so perfect, beautiful and sad

i made a Lee mix a few years ago, cool to see someone else's and some small ways the sequencing is similar (especially opening with Mote/Hoarfrost): http://narrowcast.blogspot.com/2006/08/sonic-youth-notorious-rockin-lee.html#comments

yeah hooray and thanks. tried to get this together inspired by his thread but foiled by mp3 lack.

home from dinner and listening to the comp. lost the sequencing importing it to ituens, so i'm just running it sequentially. wanted to note that the drum break before the second verse of "pipeline", about 1 minute in, is one of my all-time favorite musical moments. bum ... ba BOOM ba ksh ksh (pause) crak boomboom BAM BAM! so rad.

hokay, so i listened to all the lee is free songs, and they are some great, but it was somewhat disappointing to find that the somewhat disappointing post-dirty dropoff that i once thought i noticed still seems to exist. at least in and among the lee songs. i'd hoped it was mere figment and that i'd be blown away, chagrined chet-like at what i'd then failed to understand. but no.

of the songs i knew, i still dig "skip tracer" and the thousand leaves cuts, still loathe "nyc ghosts & flowers", and "rats" is awesome (but much better than most of RR, iirc). biggest surprise was the relative excellence of "karen revisited" and the eternal tracks (great drum recording). reservations aside, i guess i need to pick up the last 4 albums and really spend some time with them. rather ripped is the only one i've heard from front to back...

'pipeline' is sucha rad fukken song man

fukken a

No problem on the mixtape, you're all most welcome.

The Manchester gig I caught in December wasn't so hot unfortunately. I wasn't really feeling the setlist and the band seemed under-rehearsed (Catholic Block took three attempts to get right!).

Still, the encores ruled.

Sonic Youth - Manchester Academy - Dec 30th 2010

1. No Way
2. Sacred Trickster
3. Calming The Snake
4. Tom Violence
5. Walkin Blue
6. Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso)
7. Poison Arrow
8. Anti-Orgasm
9. Antenna
10. (I Gotta A) Catholic Block
11. Stereo Sanctity
12. What We Know
13. Massage The History

Encore

1. The Sprawl
2. Cross The Breeze

Encore

1. White Cross
2. Death Valley '69

haven't seen them in so so long. have to make the time next time they're around.

"i dreamed i dream" got fukken shafted in this poll. one of their very best songs. half regret voting for "mote" now...

no votes for "Saucer-Like"?????????????????? besides that wack beat poetry shit in the middle, that's one of SY's most thrilling and creepy songs.

"Saucer-Like" is great, one of the reasons I love that record. Still hard to vote for it over the other classic Lee tunes though.

Would put it over "Skip Tracer" though (even though I also like "Skip Tracer" a lot ....)

My picks

Hoarfrost is an unexpectedly low key and beautiful choice, from one of my favorite Sonic Youth albums

We'll know wheeeeeennnn

it's so good

Skip Tracer is my #1, glad to see it listed. Great song, kind of scary.

"Rats" v. underrated Lee cut.

I remember liking Pipeline/Kill TIme but I think Eric's Trip was the first time I thought of Lee Ranaldo as a distinct entity within the band

same!

even on "Hoarfrost" I thought at first that Moore sang it.

His solo records have been outstanding. It doesn’t sound anything like Sonic Youth. It’s much more melodic. Almost like classic rock.

Crazy that "Genetic" only ended up with 2 votes. It was on the My So-Called Life soundtrack (which should be polled!)

he grew up as a deadhead xp

Great Lee video (we need that SYR with Nels Cline!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVMo4F2H0dY

"Wish Fulfillment" is such a sad song. Like something Thalia Zedek would have written.

Skip Tracer is so good.. the production on Washing Machine is stellar, I never really recognized its shortcomings (lack of bass?) ... i didn't realize Lee had such a strong presence on Unwind, it's not so obvious / apparent. a friend of mine once recorded (himself singing) a short parody of Ranaldo's vocal delivery--it's pretty spot on. Haven't kept up with Lee's recent output, he seemed to get a bit hackneyed (similar to Thurston), recycling bits of his old recordings for some of his more recent free-form sound work, but i can't really speak on the recent song-based stuff

Eric’s Trip made me think about music a little differently when I heard it in high school - like, I’d heard a few Somic Youth songs, and had even seen them live at this point (touring Murray St at a festival), and I got that they incorporated noise, but what I’d heard was the jams in the middle of songs (or just slamming their guitars against the amps during Karen Revisited). Eric’s Trip was the first song I’d heard where the noise seemed to actually propel the song, and it didn’t conform to the way I thought about proper songwriting at all, but I immediately loved it.