Sonic Youth: Classic or Dud/S&D?

MacDara, perhaps they were co-producers on the South Bank Show as a whole? As Dan Selzer says, this episode was a buy-in (and yes, they junked the Ambitious Lovers and Hugo Largo sections entirely).

I think the Velvet Underground South Bank Show was an in-house job, tho?

the DN candle is a painting by gerhard richter

I had never really thought about the cover art until I saw one of his candle paintings (not the cover one) the first time I went to the art institute of chicago and had serious brain-melting OH SHIT moment.

He was a fan of the band and did not charge for the use of his image.[citation needed] The original, over 7 metres (23 ft) square, is now showcased in Sonic Youth's studio in NYC.[citation needed]

Sister was revelatory for me. You can do that with guitars?!

Daydream Nation even moreso. I got the vinyl for Christmas that year, and among the inner-groove inscriptions was “Star-strangled Bangles.” As someone who loved All Over The Place, but was disappointed with Different Light, I felt that.

Goo felt like, “Let’s do what we know we can do, and what our fans know we can do, but slightly tightened up, and with some digital crispness on the mix. You know, to kind of introduce us to this new audience.” As a holding action, I dug it. I saw them three times in three months that year: headlining November ‘90, opening for Public Enemy December ‘90, and opening for Neil Young & Crazy Horse January (or possibly February) ‘91. On the Public Enemy show, Steve Shelley was channeling Keith Moon like no drummer I’d seen before or since. Which made all subsequent SY records that much more confusing and disappointing; did they anesthetize him after 1991?

Dirty was, “Wait, do you think we can…make a…hit record?!” (No, you can’t.)

Experimental struck me as, “Remember the spirit that used to motivate us? Because I’m not sure I do.”

Washing Machine was, “Oh, ok, I remember that spirit now!” (The only album I’m able to discern in the liner photo of record shelves is Bill Dixon’s Collection, so props for that.)

The first three SYR EPs thrillingly built on one another, adding intrigue to anticipation. Which inexplicably resulted in…

A Thousand Leaves was, “Hey, you know what we haven’t tried yet? Sucking. Let’s suck! Like, not just being mediocre, but really cluelessly sucking!”

After that, I gave up.

the first time I went to the art institute of chicago and had serious brain-melting OH SHIT moment.

Ha, I had a similar moment there, around 2012-13 or so. I knew the cover was a Richter painting, but had no idea where it came from or ended up. And suddenly, 20+ years later, there it was!

Quite notm

thought A Thousand Leaves, NYC Ghosts & Flowers, Murray Street, Sonic Nurse, and Rather Ripped together were an incredible run

during that period, SYR 4: Goodbye 20th Century (1999) was too esoteric to be generally well-liked, but it was an homage to artists like Christian Wolff, John Cage, Takehisa Kosugi, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, and Steve Reich and was very interesting

I loathe SYR3, probably my least favorite release of theirs. SYR4 at least has the excellent Oliveros song and some other cool moments.

I blame Jim O'Rourke for SYR3

> serious brain-melting OH SHIT moment.

i remember walking into a gallery around Bond Street with tim of this parish around 2003 and seeing a load of Sonic Nurse (etc) paintings by Richard Prince.

Jim O'Rourke brought a lot to the table with Murray Street and Sonic Nurse

I guess, I can't really hear it aside from an overall increase in sound density but I like those records just fine

A Thousand Leaves was, “Hey, you know what we haven’t tried yet? Sucking. Let’s suck! Like, not just being mediocre, but really cluelessly sucking!”

I've possibly mentioned this before but A Thousand Leaves was the point where Sonic Youth went from being a band I like to being my favorite band.

yeah ATL is wonderful, as is "Silver Sessions: For Jason Knuth". I love late SY - saw them on the Sonic Nurse tour and I have never heard a band sound *so good* on stage, I felt like they were plugged into my brain. O'Rourke was a member then and I wondered if he may have had some influence on that.
Also Tarfumes, there's no digital on Goo, just 2 x 24 track analogue.

Yeah, I figured Goo wasn’t recorded digitally, given how much better it sounds than many of the all-digital recordings from around that time (the Kinks’ UK Jive and Rosanne Cash’s Interiors are two awful-sounding records that spring to mind). But Goo has a brighter sheen on it than Daydream Nation or (especially) Sister. I probably associate that with digital as it was the first SY record I bought/heard on CD.

SYR4 is top three SY for me. Great idea, very well executed.

xp The Replacements' Pleased To Meet Me (which I otherwise love) comes to mind too, but at least it feels kind of hilarious in that context, like the Mats of all people recording digitally when that sort of thing was usually done by Peter Gabriel or Paul McCartney circa 1986. It's also kind of funny when you get to those pauses on "I Don't Know." I saw at least one article from the time joking, "look ma! No hiss!"

As ever, a lot being said that I disagree with, but that’s life.

Goo is the SY album I’ve spent the least time with, not sure why. (See also The Whitey Album.)

SY is just a band that means different things to different people — I'm on the Celebrate All Eras spectrum ... though these days I listen to live stuff more than the albums actually.

A lot of the time I feel like ATL is their best album but I think it's a case of Pet Sounds syndrome where you've burnt yourself out so much on Pet Soubnds and Smile that you start to think Sunflower or w/e is the best Bb's album.

DN is one of my least favorite albums of theirs, I honestly think I prefer Goo? Maybe it's just cause I really don't like "Teenage Riot"

I loved Goo too, but also thought Kim Gordon’s intro to Teenage Riot was one of the best album openers ever, and that the song itself was a great anchor for one of the very best Sonic Youth albums

"The Diamond Sea" off Washing Machine is just such a good track. Easily my favourite of their 90s albums. Will put "A Thousand Leaves" on at some point.

im playing it right now

i have a half-realised theory that the blurred photorealism of richter's kerzen is a match for the masking sheen of DN's production (which i found a letdown at the time: i wanted it to go BIG, not DISTANCED) -- value of this theory is that it might offer a way back into the dream for me

SYR4 is top three SY for me. Great idea, very well executed.

― Ward Fowler, Friday, 8 July 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Overall I am concluding their brush with 90s alternative rock led to a few sorta wasted years. Had a listen to some of the Ciccone Youth alb for the first time and, well,"(Silence)" is where it looks like they wanted to go, some of the time. But they didn't, for several years.

I will have a re-listen to SYR4 later as well xps

i shd have a look back at the stuff i was writing abt them in 89-90 i think: i had a more generous read on this brush but it was more generous bcz "the year punk broke" and the ruinous victory of grunge hadn't yet taken place so their role as melancholy curators of a much longer tradition of boondocks countercultural resistance still absolutely seemed like a noble and a worthwhile project (and not something where the resurgence was going to muffle the deep past)

i remember watching them on a late-night show (possibly sunday night) on the communal TV in the communal TV room in the communal house my sister lived in in new york in the late 80s -- with joe, who'd lived in the house since it had been a radical brooklyn squat where you went in the late 60s to get radical psychedelic therapy (eg from him) (he was still in fact a therapist), and the place (the room, the house, joe's company) had this amazing melancholy movement vibe still somehow, and SY fit that as a surviving project, and tp prove it joe thought they were cool

all round the room was a huge bookshelf of books left behind by denizens down the decades and it was just this amazing repository of forgotten late 60s and 70s cultural artefacts, all scattered now no doubt -- hope joe is doing ok, he was a nice guy, my sister will know probably

this melancholy btw is very much their dominant mode (as opposed to any kind of triumphalism): it's abt past ideals holding on not current ideals sweeping all aside

In case any of you want to see a guy stroke his chin while watching the Kool Thing video, and then talk about it for a half hour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpsL79hoxCU

Mark, thanks for that image and framing.

Indeed.

melancholy curators of a much longer tradition of boondocks countercultural resistance

Maybe the prime example of this at the time was their use of cheaply copied video footage of Iggy, the Fall, Sun Ra etc. in the "Teenage Riot" video.

A negative version of this tendency in that era is Twin Infinitives by Royal Trux, where 25 years of alternative music dead-ends in a room full of electronic garbage and dirty needles.

What does “boondocks” mean in this context(?) We’re talking about downtown NYC bands here, so I must be misunderstanding that bit…

Haha I wondered that too but it was such a lovely post I wasn't going to quibble.

"not famous at the time"

Take a sip every time Kim says "Hey...Hey you..." or a variation thereof.

Lol!

https://i.imgur.com/0VcsB7D.jpg

one of the first things I did when getting on the early pre-windows internet was printing off a listing of Sonic Youth guitar tunings from usenet. I showed it to this guy I knew and he sneered at me, saying it was pretentious to use alternate guitar tunings. when I pointed out he was a massive Dylan fan he got fuckin mad, saying that was "different" somehow. lol.

he was idiot and you shd have pushed him over

What did he think the pretence was?

Shared this in the "I Rate Everything" board accidentally (no idea that existed). This was just posted by Roxy Cinema in NYC but not widely announced - they're screening The Velvet Suite with a Q&A afterwards with Lee Ranaldo and filmmaker Ignacio Julia moderated by Thurston Moore:

https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/the-velvet-suite/

what is the Roxy Cinema? How long has that existed?

The Roxy Hotel decided to turn its basement into an arthouse cinema around 2017. It's been building its profile since then. (I think it helps that a few distributors/programmers who were friendly with Metrograph seemed to have gravitated more towards Roxy.)

I saw a rare screening of Godard's King Lear there recently and there's a pretty cool retrospective on Sara Driver coming up too. Right now they're also playing Aftersun, EO and Moonage Daydream.

FWIW, this turned out to be pretty awesome. The concert that was filmed turned out to be pretty great, but they also presented some re-discovered footage of the Velvets at their very first concert after they began their association with Andy Warhol. It's a pretty brief glimpse, but it's amazing to see them and the kids they were playing too (who apparently walked out as soon as the feedback-drenched solos began). The Jonas Mekas film was also a pretty great tribute to Andy with some surprising faces (like Lennon and Ono).

The Q&A was long, with Ignacio Julia doing most of the talking, but Moore and Ranaldo hung out for a long time afterwards, happily talking with anyone but also selling the new book, Linger On, published by Ecstatic Peace Library. Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley were also there in the audience which was pretty cool - last time I saw them with anyone from Sonic Youth (specifically Ranaldo and Steve Shelley), it was actually at the Lou Reed tribute at Lincoln Center where Kaplan, Hubley, Ranaldo, Shelley and others performed "Sister Ray." (Since then, at least Ranaldo has played in their annual Hanukkah shows, but not at the ones I attended.)

*the kids they were playing to

The legendary mid 80s "bootleg" Walls Have Ears is getting an official reissue via the band in February:

https://sonicyouth.bandcamp.com/album/walls-have-ears

Culled from three 1985 gigs in the UK during a transitional and transcendent time in the band’s story, Sonic Youth’s ‘Walls Have Ears’ appeared as a 2LP set in 1986, not just a live album but an artful tapestry full of live experimentation with songs, between-song tape segues, darkness, humor and audio verité on par with elements of side B of ‘Master Dik’ to come later. With a bit of complexity to the situation of the release itself. Deleted as quickly as it appeared, it’s now issued for the first time officially under the band’s auspices.

The ’85 shows were the second time the band appeared on British soil, picking up on a newfound high profile in the press after their 1983 London debut supporting SPK and Danielle Dax. That particular gig, while admittedly a technically-challenged, volumatically room-clearing one for the band, nonetheless wowed music scribes in attendance. This anarchic set cast the New Yorkers in a bit of an exotic light, Brits now getting juiced to the mythos of the emerging guitar-slinging American independent underground; an art/punk band from NYC sporting casual attitudes and tees sporting Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and Prince made some good copy on top of their bludgeoning stage appearance. For Brits, Sonic Youth repped an all new avenue apart from the usual 4AD/Rough Trade/Some Bizarre hold on the scene, and were embraced. After a mostly dormant 1984, the band then established a new evolution within themselves via ‘Bad Moon Rising’ and found a home stateside on Homestead. In Britain, SY found its keyhole to the all-encompassing (even on an indie standpoint) music biz via Paul Smith, who was wowed by a cassette passed to him by Lydia Lunch. A promoter and label liaison who had forged many connections locally working for the likes of EMI and Cabaret Voltaire’s Doublevision label, Smith ultimately founded his own imprint Blast First to take on ‘Bad Moon Rising’ and evangelized the band with P.T. Barnum-esque gusto, eventually acting as a strong portal for UK footing for others of the American underground (Big Black, Butthole Surfers, Dinosaur Jr.). Blast First continued to act as an overseas diplomatic envoy for Sonic Youth through their SST years as well as issuing their classic 1988 Daydream Nation outside the USA. But true to Barnum, Smith’s injection into the band’s creative sphere as a sort of de facto manager type was somewhat in guerilla mode, and the Smith-produced ‘bootleg’ of their ’85 UK gigs surfaced much to everyone’s surprise, just before EVOL, their SST debut, was to be released. It turned out to be a marker of the group’s dissatisfaction that ultimately led to the band and Smith parting ways after Daydream.

In this 2LP set brimming with primitive classics like “The Burning Spear”, “I Love Her All The Time”, “Death Valley 69” and “I’m Insane” (uncredited on sleeve), segues and live guitar changes ooze together threaded by Madonna tapes and vocal loops off the board (somewhat a necessity for distraction until the band had a full fledged stage crew to prepare guitars). Claude Bessy (French punk raconteur who moved to LA for a period to cofound Slash Magazine and notoriously appeared in the Penelope Spheeris ‘Decline of Western Civilization’ documentary) humorously MC’s their intro to a October 30th ULU London gig with a lob at the indie label zeitgeist: vocally detailing how Rough Trade had come down on distributing the “Flower” 12” for sporting a xeroxed, nude female on the cover. The message was that music was reality, not manufactured subcultures, and Sonic Youth was there to present Britain with a healthy dose of it. The first two sides of ‘Walls’ are massive, cavernous, with newly-drafted drummer Steve Shelley in tow taking on past tunes and unveiling “Expressway To Yr Skull” in glorious form. They tear it up especially on one trash-fi excerpt of “Blood On Brighton Beach” (actually “Making the Nature Scene”) from a legendary outdoor gig November 8th where Moore, Gordon and Ranaldo’s guitars treble-blast dissonant shockwaves over the black-stoned beach of Quadrophenia fame.

The record’s second slab spotlights an April 1985 pre-Shelley gig supporting Nick Cave at London’s Hammersmith Palais and was one of the final appearances live of Bob Bert, again featuring some molten takes on “Brother James”, “Kill Yr Idols”, “Flower” (Iisted as “The Word (E.V.O.L.)”), “Ghost Bitch” and others. The emergence of the Jesus and Mary Chain in the world gave Brit scribes a lazy and easy parallel, addressed here with a wink with the inclusion of “Speed JAMC”, another offstage tape interlude playfully scrolling through one of that band’s songs at fast-forward. In six more years the continual evolution of Sonic Youth would find them darlings of The Reading Festival, on tour with Nirvana in tow and continuing to smash down walls, but this document remains an essential representation of some lean and mean years of the quartet’s throttling march out into the world.

Brian Turner

V excited by this. Amazing music on that boot.

Absolutely amazed to see an announcement of this in my inbox.

Oh wow have never seen a copy of this anywhere other than the radio station I DJed at. It really does have some amazing stuff on it.