Thurston Moore Revisits His Sonic Youth
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Part of what I loved so much about them is the number of free shows they put on. I can always pin the year that I saw them in Prospect Park at 2010, because the iPhone 4 had just been released, and my friend who I was with proceeded to watch the entire show through her new phone, being completely enamored with the "retina display" while tripping on acid.
When I saw them in 2008 in Battery Park, I had the pleasure of sitting on the lawn next to 90s child star Danny Tamborelli, who many will remember as one of the stars of Pete & Pete (a show with its own sort of indie cred). My friend I was with turned to me and said "That's Danny Tamborelli, we need to say hi to him" and before I could get "No we absolutely do not" out of my mouth, he dragged me over and proceeded to introduce us saying "We're great fans of your work". So I shook his hand, way too high for this interaction, as Thurston took a drumstick to his guitar in the background.
I miss Sonic Youth a lot.
It was my first “real” concert. I’d been listening to music heavily by then, we’ll into indie, but being poor and 17/18/19 it was hard to see live music. I’d been to others concerts small and big (Closing Olympic Ceremonies) - but that one cemented my love for live music, and I got really into the local scene after seeing another smaller show (Q and not U) after that.
I saw them again ~2008 and it was good, not as good, but Rather Ripped was a great album so got to see a bunch of stuff from them.
Pavement was up there for me too, and I just saw them twice over the last 12 months.
I count my lucky stars I grew up in a city with a lot of cheap, all ages shows. Of the shows I've been to over the years, seeing Q and not U in a church basement in ~2003 still sticks out in my mind.
Blogs and forums were ubiquitous, but the average person's attention had not yet been strip mined by * platform companies. Pitchfork was just getting started, too, and (cruicially) Spotify wasn't even an idea yet, so independent artists could reliably make money the old fashioned way (CD/album sales) but had access to a much larger community of potential listeners.
Everything still had a very decentralized and DIY feel.
Sounds like hyperacusis to me. /s
In all seriousness, that sounds like an amazing show.
This video came out in 2007
> Paul Rodriguez: Sonic Youth - Teen Age Riot
Opened my eyes...
But that doesn't mean their later albums aren't also great and squarely in the canon. Sonic Nurse, in particular, is one of their best imo.
I did not realize how old they were when I was obsessed with Daydream Nation and Dirty in high school. Kim’s just younger than my parents and they could never have been that cool. I went back into their catalog from there and followed along with them. That’s when I realized they formed the year after I was born. Blew my mind. Listening to the stuff like No New York that they emerged out of is kind of fascinating. Not my thing, but interesting historically.
Kim’s autobiography was an interesting view into the era my folks grew up in. I’ll have to read Thurston’s some time. Still bugs me they fell apart. I don’t normally care about famous people relationships, but they were like some kind punk rock institution to me. They were together since I wandered into that kind of music and nurtured so many bands I loved. But they’re just pretty normal people with pretty normal problems.
I totally agree on Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped as well. The stuff from A Thousand Leaves until then was interesting, but not stuff I play often. Those have stood up well next to the aforementioned albums, Goo, EVOL, etc.
Random side note, saw Kim Gordon at a book signing in Brooklyn like 10 years ago (iirc post-Sonic Youth), and man she was looking rough unfortunately and was really out of it. Guess the whole situation she and everyone was dealing with took a bad toll :/
Either way, that's good to hear she's well and thriving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O8VLwh1Na0
An underappreciated aspect of Sonic Youth is the drumming of Steve Shelley. He kept many of the discordant songs together and provided a driving beat (when needed) with some very creative fills and accents. I worked at a college radio station when Kool Thing came out and we got an alt mix or B side take on a 45 that was incredible thanks to his drumming.
For further reading on the early history of the band, I recommend Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/michael-azerrad/our...
Like Thurston said in the NYT interview, everyone is asking for Sonic Youth to reform for performances but I can't see Kim going along with it. OTOH Talking Heads got back together for the documentary release after David Byrne burned the proverbial bridges, so who knows?
Wow, that show is nothing less than epic!
Thanks for sharing +1
You never know what will happen, but after reading _Girl in a Band_, I don't think Deal is interested.
Their studio efforts from the early era were better IMHO.
Oh, absolutely. I still listen to Evol and Sister fairly regularly. The noise shows were a lot of fun to be at when I was a kid, but I wouldn't want to listen to them again.
What an amazing moment to capture. Thurston's deadpan style works perfectly. Thanks for the link.
I very clearly remember searching for "Sonic Youth" on it and getting maybe less than a dozen results, but one of them was this indie documentary/tour-video called "1993: The year punk broke," which is about Nirvana and SY touring together through europe.
Its a really fun little movie, but mainly it felt absolutely huge to "discover" it like that. Its hard to imagine these days that you could search for anything and not get, at least, thousands of results. Back then being a hipster about music really felt like a special club, like some special minority of people drawn together by taste, and the internet as it was reflected that nicely.
Embarrassed now to remember moments where I tried to convince my friends of how good and important Sonic Youth, Neutral Milk Hotel, and the Pixies were, even if they hadn't heard of them; trying to quote Pitchfork and AllMusic reviews to make my point.
Ahh, high school. Grew up in the semi-boonies so it was when I first got introduced to loads of cool music and movies pre-widespread internet access, but kids were still dipshits.
They've all been super creative. Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon and also Lee Ranaldo have had interesting side projects. I very much was interested in their noise stuff. Moore collaborated once with Borbetomagus. And Ranaldo did a lot of sound experiments.
I did get the impression that they were aiming for a much wider audience in the late 80's and early 90's, much like the Pixies, and also like the Pixies it never seemed to pan out-- but it was close.
Moore has done some television host stuff 20 years back, "Sonic Cinema". He definitely has a knack for that-- introducing films and interviewing artists, etc.
Our paths used to cross in Chicago through a mutual friend when Jim was in his early 20s. Through the mutual friend, I had heard a story that Jim had purchased a fax machine--something reserved for big corporation at the time--and was sending his scores around the world.
One night all of us ended up at the Old Town Ale House on North Avenue in Chicago, a real old school funky mix kind of a place. Jim sat next to me at one of the two tables by the windows. He pulled a photo out of his wallet, the way people share photos of kids. This picture, though, was of an old record producer he loved. Then Jim laid out a precise vision of an album he hoped to make some day. The vision he shared became Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Wilco did not even exist as Wilco at the time of this get together. This is one of my first direct exposures to a person with a distant dream becoming a reality.
Many years later I was flipping through the Sunday Chicago Tribune. The edition had a full page story on Jim when he decided to move from Chicago to New York.
A number of years after that, one Sunday I decided to walk to a local gas station to surprise my wife with the Sunday New York Times. What article happened to be inside? A full page piece on Jim moving from New York to Japan.
Sonic Youth is such an interesting group because they're hugely influential, like the Pixies, among musicians — and yet for as famous as they became, Nirvana really took the genre mainstream. Not that Nirvana was necessarily super happy about that.
Starting around 2003, Jim O'Rourke (go listen to Bad Timing and Insignificance, which are both amazing records and very different to each other) was in a relationship with Eva Prinz while she was in a (maybe?) open marriage to her first husband. In some order, then:
* Jim and Eva break up
* (2005) Jim a) leaves Sonic Youth b) moves across the country c) moves to Japan
* (2006) Eva and Thurston Moore start a publishing company, Ecstatic Peace Library
* somewhere in here, Eva Prinz gets divorced
* (2009) Eva Prinz marries Bernardo Guillermo, a furniture designer and the son of Princess Christina of the Netherlands; they have two kids, one before and one after the wedding
* (2010) Kim Gordon finds out about Thurston's affair with Eva
* (2011) Kim and Thurston separate; Sonic Youth split up
* (2013) Kim and Thurston divorce
* (by 2017) Thurston and Eva relocate to London
* (2020) Thurston and Eva marry
From the outside, assigning responsibility for anything here is kind of impossible and immoral, but the whole thing is remarkably cliched rock-and-roll nonsense for a band like Sonic Youth were...
They were married almost 30 years. It's a rock cliche to be dead by the age of 30, not to get a divorce after being married that long.
I don't know if this is just "creativity breeds madness", "fame allows people to be shitty", "most marriages fail", or simply "reporting bias" (happily married couples aren't juicy news).
70% of divorces are initiated by women, and more in higher income brackets, yet only 50% of men undergoing divorce are unhappy about it, which means about 10% of married men are just waiting for their wives to take the first step in separation.
I do not want to excuse dishonesty, deception, breach of trust etc., but marriages are hard, humans are fallible, and age has taught me to be less judgemental of people failing on a difficult endeavor.
While I don't listen to them much anymore, I still put on Washing Machine from time to time. I'd argue that is their best work.
I think that was pretty much the only dud (together with Jet Set), Murray Street and the albums after that are quite ok.
[0] - http://www.sonicyouth.com/history/equipment/stolen.html
Evol/Sister/Daydream Nation were my favorites though.
Same here but I would add in Bad Moon Rising which is certainly appropriate for this time of year.
Haha, I named my dog after that song, or was it Richard Berry’s original, or all the other covers?
I got to talk to Jim O'Rourke after a show of their in Lexington and he was incredibly patient and kind. Definitely a lifetime "going to shows" highlight for me.
Looking for a ride to your secret location
Where the kids are setting up a free-speed nation for you
Got a foghorn and a drum and a hammer that's rockin'
And a cord and a pedal and a lock, that'll do me for now
Here's lyrically one of my favourites from the album: https://genius.com/Built-to-spill-randy-described-eternity-l...
That said, in your song, as remarkable as the first verse is (and it’s a great tune), the second verse is too close to pop tropes for me. FWIW, my favourite popular-music lyricist is Scott Walker, who I feel is fully a match for the 20th-century poets I enjoy, e.g. [0] [1]. Would love to find other similar lyricists.
[0] https://genius.com/Scott-walker-sunn-o-herod-2014-lyrics
I will say if 'pop' music has failed you, and you're largely into instrumental music, I can't recommend Dead can Dance enough. Specifically Serpent's egg if you never listened to them. They're largely 'instrumental'(the singer made up her own language). The only song with defining lyrics on the album I also think are super beautiful:
That said, I find I tend to either absolutely love or (more likely hate) their stuff in general. Not a big fan of random noise, though I can somewhat appreciate how the experimentation influenced others.