Sonic Youth

  On 7/9/2016 at 9:43 PM, auxien said:

Confession: I'm a decent SY fan, have about 10 of their CDs, but I've never heard Daydream Nation.

I'm actually like this with a lot of my favorite bands...there's always a couple albums I haven't heard yet. Had only heard 1/2 of RDJ's stuff up until a couple years ago. And there's like 20 Coltrane albums I've yet to hear.

 

Oh and Daydream Nation is a legit masterpiece IMO.

 

P.S. Anyone rear/hear the new Kim Gordon book? I listened to the audiobook and I lost pretty much every ounce of respect I had for her as a person...and she was always my fave SY member ("Shadow of a Doubt" y'all)

  On 7/9/2016 at 10:52 PM, LimpyLoo said:

I listened to the audiobook and I lost pretty much every ounce of respect I had for her as a person

 

 

why?

1) I always thought of her as this well-read bohemian type, but the writing in her book is barely literate...it is really really awful...it reads like a middle-schooler phoning-in an essay assignment...and she has no insight (self- or otherwise), there is no depth to any of her thoughts...so anyway, it turns out she's exactly as vapid as she pretends to be

 

2) the way she talks about the Thurston affair is so amazingly petty...it's just this orgy of passive-aggressive sardonic jabs...it's like those trite suicide notes like 'go on, this world will be better without me anyway'...now, I understand how painful these things are...but she takes petty shots at Thurston anytime she has a chance, like talking about the early days of SY and she will just drop in these covert insults about how hard he tried to look cool or how bad he was at this or that...and again not details that flesh out the narrative but these wild left-turns just to try to cut him down

 

I still love SY, of course, but...I am not impressed by Kim Gordon anymore lol...she is more Kim Kardashian than Allen Ginsberg

Edited July 10, 2016 by LimpyLoo

  On 7/9/2016 at 9:43 PM, auxien said:

Confession: I'm a decent SY fan, have about 10 of their CDs, but I've never heard Daydream Nation.

 

 

You got your head in the treees!!!!

I'm not a massive fan of Daydream Nation either. I think the problem being that Teenage Riot is one of my top 10/20 tracks of all time (if such a thing existed!)

 

Eveything else that follows is a slight dissapointment in my eyes (or ears!)

Edited July 10, 2016 by beerwolf

It pains me a little to say, but most SY albums aren't gold all the way through. That's a plus in some sense though. Over time, loving all the Thurston lead tracks in my youth evolved to really loving the Lee lead tracks as I got older.

EVOL is my favorite. I just watched a documentary about BC studios, a converted industrial building, where it was recorded. If ever a space visually represented the sound of an album, it has to be the creepy basement where the songs were tracked. Some great Swans records were made there as well, to give you more of an idea. Anyway, I'd say Washing Machine is #2, followed by Sister and then Daydream Nation.

^ What's the name of that documentary?

Good bump, reminds me that watching the full Goo video on truffles is still on my bucket list!

 

murray street and sonic nurse are so fucking good because of jim o'rourke

  On 7/10/2016 at 7:42 PM, psn said:

^ What's the name of that documentary?

Sound and Chaos: The Story of BC Studios.

 

Let me know what you think.

The Color of Noise, another good doc, is about Amphetamine Reptile.

Murray Street.

I just went through their entire discography, with a few extra listens to various albums. There's no one Sonic Youth album that is great the whole way through, but there's something worthwhile on all of them. It's a shame Lee Ranaldo didn't sing on more songs. His are always highlights. Thurston and Kim's voices grate on me after a while, especially Kim's more tuneless moments.... of which there are many. I love Sonic Youth mainly for their unique approach to the guitar, though I think my favorite album of theirs is Rather Ripped --it's the only Sonic Youth album where if you stripped away everything else you'd still have a collection of good songs. But I do think their older material would be a lot more interesting in a live context. Too bad they never had engineers/producers that could really capture that at the time. It's remarkable that they continued to release music for so long without ever sounding stale. There was never a moment in their career that really paled in comparison to what they had done earlier. It was all pretty consistent. They were sort of like the Slayer of indie music.

^ Except Slayer went stale in 1994 or so.

Well, okay I'm not going to argue that Slayer never went stale. I did really enjoy Christ Illusion and World Painted Blood though. But like SY they revolutionized a certain style of music and stuck with it for a few decades without ever straying from that path. Neither band has ever surprised me, nor have they disappointed.

Does anyone know of any albums that sound like the solo on "Silver Rocket" extended for several minutes? Doesnt have to sound exactly like that solo but, you know, guitar thrashing and feedback and whatnot for extended periods of time, with some sparse drumming

@ThatSpanishGuy:

 

The first couple of albums by ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead are pretty much based on that style of SY (plus some Fugazi, some Spacemen3, some Motorpsycho, etc). Plenty of thrashing and feedback, plenty of extensive and static sections. Really excellent stuff, highly recommended.

 

My favorites from sonic youths:

Confusion Is Sex + Kill Yr. Idols, so unique moody and fresh

EVOL, cant express how i love it

 

from sonic matures: Murray Street & Sonic Nurse

those are just 2 very good and solid albums combo with no bullshit in it

 

Other albums have hits and misses for me. These 4 are perfect

Never understood the fanboyism around Daydream Nation.

 

But really, I dont care about albums and tracks so much anymore. They are like friends to me, and when i hear their songs it means that Im having some good time with this people, whatever is playing Im feeling the same.

Edited July 29, 2016 by Mag

Just got Spinhead Sessions '86 - EVOL-era instrumentals, worth a listen.

 

one of my top picks

 

been waiting for Sister (on Goofin label) to get reissued on cd, supposed to be out a few weeks ago but there seems to be a delay somewhere along the line *scratches chin*

  On 7/31/2016 at 11:30 AM, beerwolf said:

 

one of my top picks

 

been waiting for Sister (on Goofin label) to get reissued on cd, supposed to be out a few weeks ago but there seems to be a delay somewhere along the line *scratches chin*

It's probably that damned CD Store Day clogging up all the CD factories with stupid corporate buyout releases of Britney Spears single reissues. I hate that CDSD has become so commercial, just let us celebrate the underground of our favorite 90s nostalgic format, shiny plastic discs!

  On 7/28/2016 at 9:58 PM, Zephyr_Nova said:

  There's no one Sonic Youth album that is great the whole way through,

 

 

sister

Went to this last night:

Was just expecting a decent show but it actually got pretty epic.

That is all.