Sonic Youth: Classic or Dud/S&D?

may have even been on SY’s extensive liner notes/song breakdown section they have(had?).

C G D G B B

How to tune: Ed4 Ad2 Ds Gs Bs Ed5

Used by Thurston on: Anagrama, Slaapkamers, Stil, Sunday, Wildflower,
Hoarfrost, French Tickler, Karen Koltrane, The Ineffable Me,
Snare, Girl, Heather Angel, Free City Rhymes, Renegade Princess, and
Sympathy for the Strawberry.

NOTES: tuning stolen from pavement. also used on the majority of thurston's
'psychic hearts' record. the pavement tuning was actually just CGDGBE, but thurston
gave it a little sonic alteration w/ the unison Bs on top...

USED ON ALL OF "PSYCHIC HEARTS" and "CHELSEA LIGHT MOVING" LPs, plus "No Go" "Sunday Stage" "The Ecstasy" from CLM tour

The tuning he used on Murray Street and a lot of Sonic Nurse is CGDGCD, another variation. Tbc, though, if I'm reading it right, the first four strings in the original Pavement tuning would be in standard tuning, with the 5th and 6th strings dropped so that strings 6, 5, and 4 are in fifths rather than fourths. So altering the first two strings actually seems significant.

Source: http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/tab/tunings.txt

Interesting – I really like the 'psychic hearts' record (and I'm a Pavement fan, not so much an SY fan). Wonder if it's all down to the tunings, lol

Here's the same thing, but with easier to read formatting:

http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/tab/tuning.html

Looks like the only SY release entirely in standard is the first EP. "Bad Moon" and beyond, it's off to the races. Looks like "A Thousand Leaves" to "Murray Street" is the closest Lee and Thurston come to sticking with one (weird) tuning each for the whole record? Coincidence probably, but that's generally the streak where (at the time) I just lost interest in the band, my enthusiasm picking up a bit more when they released "Sonic Nurse." I should go back and revisit all of them.

When did they get their instruments stolen? Around that same period, right?

iirc their instruments were stolen some time between A Thousand Leaves and NYC Ghosts & Flowers

Yep, summer of 1999.

When instruments like that get stolen, how easy is it to trace them? I'm guessing they're usually just re-sold somewhere, right?

Or I guess I should say, how could one trace them if they're really, really wanted to search for them or put a call out, like a tweet or something saying "we're looking for a guitar with such-and-such carved inside" etc.

*if they

"This machine plays 'youth against fascism'"

Meantime, good new piece on the various archival efforts of recent years, Ranaldo and Shelley are interviewed.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/sonic-youth-and-the-business-of-keeping-a-dead-band-alive/

xpost birdistheword - there are some details specific to SY's case in this article

https://pitchfork.com/news/47906-sonic-youth-recover-stolen-guitars-after-13-years/

a surprisingly happy delayed ending, at least in part

SYR3 is also dope, but you have to be cool with abstraction, Jim O’Rourke, wordless ululations (as I am)

SYR4 I think I listened to just once, when my copy arrived.

At the time the things they were covering and the guest players occupied a realm too far from my interests to excite me. 22 years later I’m a bit nearer…

xxxp Oh wow, nice! Even if it's only a fraction of what was stolen and it took about 13 years, seven recovered guitars is pretty good. Kind of a sad story there behind the robbery - obviously only a fragment but it's enough to understand why the band simply gave those kids a few hundred for every one they still had.

Funny you should mention Keith Rowe, map- because I've thought of him as someone who's adapted ideas from the visual arts (Pollock, Rauschenberg) in a very literal way, almost comically so, compared to SY. But prob no more literal than playing Ratt through an amplifier between songs and def not as brazen!

I got to Rowe before ever hearing SY, just b/c I'd read about AMM as an important influence on early Floyd and was *that* obsessed with Syd Barrett then. And i've been drawn back into AMM for different reasons, over the years. Ultimately what I like about it is that it aims to be kind of an ambient sound, or to create a penetrable environment, and that's a really weird position to put yourself in as a guitar player. With Sonic Youth, there's a lot more interest in "references" and "symbols" and their use of guitars points to a kind of "embodied meaning" as i described. So I see them as comparable in a way but don't think I'd place them in a similar tradition, re: "guitar music". I would probably sooner put them in a tradition of someone like Jim O'Rourke who uses references to construct (and negate, and undermine) meaning. It makes good sense that they hooked up with him.

i value sy as a combiner of things, psychedelia, punk, microtonality, emotional rock, feminism, etc.

Yes, for me the pop art/postmodern/
"trash" aspect of SY is very important, and not necessarily something i find in the more out players.

I liked that post, btw.

Will read the Heetderks in a bit, thx.

Re the stolen instruments I think Lee got a Mustang back as well, I’m a regular at Offset and think I recall such a thread about 4 years ago.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/sonic-youth-and-the-business-of-keeping-a-dead-band-alive/

Here is the Heetderks analytical article: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cfkMJ1Bhm8BHNFRRViFXYv6BkLLw27Td/view?usp=sharing

this was good, maybe errs on the side of overexplaining some of the simpler passages but extremely helpful if you want to understand how the impact of some SY songs is achieved in musical terms.

Cool to see Theo Cateforis cited, he was the drummer in my favorite local band when i was in high school. Being much older than the other members, he split to earn a doctorate in rock n roll history and was thereafter known to us as Dr. Rock. He's a real sweetheart, never read his stuff but this was a nice reminder.

btw, I think Malkmus's main tuning in Pavement was CGDABE. Their songs don't register to me as obviously in weird tunings (detuned or imprecise, sure) for a number of reasons, one of which is that a lot of the guitar sound comes from the other guy who seems to always play in standard.

Also wow @ playing Ratt through their amps between songs

― The 25 Best Songs Ever Ranked In Order (Deflatormouse),

Are there recordings of these shows in circulation? Seems likely that there are?

I'm imagining this as something like Andy Kaufman's perfect, hip-shaking Elvis impersonations after in his anti-comedy sets, like the joyous release following a big 'No'.

Are there recordings of these shows in circulation? Seems likely that there are?

I dunno, sounds like bullshit to me. Reminds me of something I read once about the making of "Murmur" and Mitch Easter or someone was boasting about the anything-goes atmosphere, which allegedly involved even James Brown samples (?) at some point, and I remember reading that and thinking, nah, that never happened.

I do bet it sometimes *felt* like SY was taking five minutes to tune sometimes, but I saw them on the Neil Young tour (which Thurston specifically cites), and no, I don't remember them taking five minutes to tune, nor do I recall them blasting anything by anyone through the PA while they did so. Maybe it just didn't make an impression? But it was a pretty tight opening set, so I somehow doubt they wasted so much of it tuning.

In fact, I just found this full set of theirs from 1991!

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

By 91, they had loads of guitars for all their different tunings. They were talking more about the Confusion Is Sex/Bad Moon Rising era. They actually did include some samples of "Not Right" between songs on BMR.

xpost - From Wikipedia:

Sonic Youth's use of transitional pieces in (Bad Moon Rising) was inspired by their live shows, which featured either Moore or Ranaldo tuning guitars for up to five minutes while the other played slow transitory guitar riffs or prerecorded sound collages

Also a Metal Machine Music sample xp

Yeah, there's boots and live albums from the 80s with them playing cut-up Madonna tracks and Beach Boys stuff over the PA. P sure there's some of that on the infamous Walls Have Ears semi-boot.

OK, I stand semi-corrected, especially if a couple of them were making noise themselves while another tuned, or if they used prerecorded collages. But in the Gore piece Moore does specifically mention the Neil Young tour, where they supposedly used "War Pigs," "Rico Suave," Karen Carpenter and a Ligeti piece.

This set list from Sacramento from that tour lists those samples.
http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/cc/040791.html

Interesting! Maybe that clip I posted has them in it, too? I honestly just skipped around.

BTW, that AVClub piece, rankings aside, is otm when it comes to "100%." What a ton of fun that song is. I remember seeing the Thermals open with it (for some reason) at the Pitchfork Fest, and the crowd response was, well, 100%.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LQPQLd9v2c

Lol the Orlando clip begins with a Carpenters sample! Around 0:30.

I just figured it was their intro music, lol.

I think it's "Rico Suave" around 24:10 here? Similar beat anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbTtU7z9YyU

oh shit -- they and Neil Young played in Miami!

My rankings change all the time, but here's where I'd put them as of today:

Daydream Nation
Murray Street
Washing Machine
Sister
Bad Moon Rising
Evol
Dirty
The Eternal
A Thousand Leaves
Sonic Nurse
Experimental Jet Set
Goo
Rather Ripped
NYC Ghosts & Flowers
Confusion is Sex

Sister
Daydream Nation
Evol
Sonic Nurse
Murray Street
Bad Moon Rising
Washing Machine
Goo
A Thousand Leaves
Dirty
Sonic Youth
NYC Ghosts & Flowers
Experimental Jet Set
Rather Ripped

^not a downright bad one in the lot, still have never heard Confusion is Sex and The Eternal, I realize

Yeah, there's boots and live albums from the 80s with them playing cut-up Madonna tracks and Beach Boys stuff over the PA. P sure there's some of that on the infamous Walls Have Ears semi-boot.

Yeah, there isn't a bad one in the batch. I mean, Goo is a great album and still ends up in the bottom third for me.

Sister
Daydream Nation
Sonic Nurse
EVOL
Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star
A Thousand Leaves
Rather Ripped
Dirty
Murray Street
Goo
The Eternal
Washing Machine
NYC Ghosts & Flowers
Confusion is Sex
Bad Moon Rising

Bad Moon Rising
EVOL
Sister
Daydream Nation
Confusion Is Sex
------
Don't care

Don't care is underrated.

their rare shel silverstein cover available only on import 7"

Psychic Hearts
"Teen Age Riot"
"Winner's Blues"
some other tracks on Jet Set
I remember Murray St. being good...
----

As mentioned in the Dirty thread, I'm diving into them today (I had a bad experience with being disappointed by Daydream Nation back in the days when I should have been spending CD-money on food and have mostly avoided them ever since). Anyway, I am almost through my first pick - Washing Machine - and I think I might like it even better than Dirty!

Washing Machine is a masterpiece.

S tier:
Sister

A tier:
S/t
Confusion Is Sex
Bad Moon Rising
Evol
Daydream Nation
Goodbye 20th Century
Murray Street

B tier:
Goo
Dirty
Washing Machine
SYR 1, 2, 3, 6, 7
A Thousand Leaves
Hidros 3
Sonic Nurse
Rather Ripped

C tier:
NYC Ghosts & Flowers
SYR 8, 9

D tier:
Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star
The Eternal

E tier:
The Whitey Album

a thousand leaves
washing machine
murray street
daydream nation
sonic nurse
evol
bad moon rising
sister
dirty
goo
rather ripped
nyc ghosts
confusion
experimental

The wild thing about this band is how many of their albums could top someone's list and not earn a raised eyebrow.

Evol
Daydream Nation
Dirty
Sonic Nurse
Goo
Sister
Murray Street
Rather Ripped
Confusion Is Sex
A Thousand Leaves
Washing Machine
Bad Moon Rising
Experimental Jet Set
The Eternal
NYC Ghosts & Flowers

It's a really solid catalogue all things considered, like only the bottom three there I'd rate below a 7/10.