Sonic Youth.

Started by Stefen, February 18, 2005, 11:22:06 PM

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Stefen

Thurston Moore came into the video store I work at today, it was cool. As soon as I saw him I said "I know you" and he kind of smirked then frowned then went on his business, when I checked him out I told him about the time I saw Sonic Youth play a secret show with Beck at the flywheel and he seemed to think that was cool I was at that show since there were only about 20 people at that show. He had Kim Gordon has another person allowed to rent movies and books on his account, he rented A spongebob video, and raising helen.

Anyways, any Sonic Youth fans here? I'm a pretty big fan but im not really a fan of their albums, just songs, they are really hit and miss for me. I got a catholic block, disconnection notice, and kool thing are probably my favorite tracks of theirs.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

mogwai

i'm somewhat of a fan although i don't listen as much to them as i used to do. they're a big influence on my favorite band (mogwai) so i should play some records later today. anyway, the first record i bought was 'dirty' and that was truly a blind bought. i was still this geek grunger who shit his pants when he heard some noise. thank god i got out of that fase. 'dirty' is probably regarded as the commercial record but it's a great introduction to anyone who wants to discover SY. there's records like 'goo', 'daydream nation' and 'sister' that are regarded as important records in the indie circut.

meatwad



this is a great album, "the empty page" and "rain on tin" being favorites. lots of people shit on later sonic youth albums, but i tend to go for the post-jim o'rourke stuff

Reed Rothchild

sonic youth is one of my favorite bands. if you wanna get started on them id suggest dirty or goo as a first album. if you like those two albums get like washing machine and daydream nation, if you dont like daydream nation you suck :) i listened to daydream nation first and its probably the best, but most hardcore sonic youth fans ive met like sister the best. its just really really good from beginning to end. they have like 14 cds so they are an expensive band to own if you dont download shit. i think someone had there entire discography on suprnova though.
You know, people tell me I kind of look like Han Solo.

DVD Collection

Pedro

daydream nation is certainly the best.  it can take a while to grow on you though so sister might be a better choice for people starting out.  Sonic Nurse is pretty accessible, too.

i think dirty is really mediocre  :(

Film Student

Goo, Murray St., Experimental Jet Set, and Confusion is Sex are my favorites...

Favorite songs are "Disappearer", "100%", "Sugar Kane", "Plastic Sun", "Bull in the Heather",  "Death Valley '69", "(She's in a) bad mood", "Cinderella's Big Score", "Little Trouble Girl" and their Stooges cover "I wanna be your dog".


The videos for "100%", "Disappearer" (the Todd Haynes director's cut), "Sunday" (directed by Harmony Korine of all people), and "Bull in the Heather" (featuring a painfully cute and young Kathleen Hanna) are fucking spectacular (although all of their videos are great).
"I think you have to be careful to not become a blowhard."
                                                                          --Ann Coulter

cron

Jim O'Rourke Leaves Sonic Youth!

Julianne Shepherd and Amy Phillips report:
Jim O'Rourke has accomplished many things in his thirty-six years: produced, remixed and collaborated with countless indie- and avant- rock heavyweights, recorded a slew of solo pop and experimental albums, been a member of Gastr del Sol, Loose Fur and, until last week, Sonic Youth. But, it turns out, what he really wants to do is direct. Just like George Clooney.

In an interview with Pitchfork on Friday, Sonic Youth guitarist/vocalist Lee Ranaldo confirmed rumors that O'Rourke has left the band. "We are in the process of parting ways for a number of different reasons--all of them amiable," he said. "We will continue to work together in various capacities, but he's been in a period recently of re-examining a lot of aspects of his own life and what he wants to do. I think that what he really wants to do at this point is move more into working in film. I don't think he really wants to do that much music at this point.

"I think he's really absorbed in the world of cinema and would like to be making films with directors and to be a director. I think he just felt that we were busy enough that he wasn't able to pursue that as a goal at this point. I think he'd really like to live in Japan for awhile and get further immersed in the world of Japanese cinema."

O'Rourke is no cinematic newbie. He was "music consultant" on Richard Linklater's Jack Black tour de force School of Rock (helping the kids learn how to play their instruments, if I remember the DVD extras correctly) and has worked on the soundtracks to such films as Grizzly Man, Love Liza and Julien Donkey-Boy. He has also named three of his solo albums after Nicolas Roeg movies. Does any of that mean he'll be a good director? Who knows? Although "Halfway to a Threeway" would make a pretty rad movie.

Ranaldo also hinted at what's in store for the Sonics in the Post-O'Rourke age. "We've decided that we're going to go ahead and make our next record as a four-piece again," he said. "It's gonna be interesting because on one hand it's what we've always been, except this last period with Jim, but on the other hand, having a fifth member opened up the group to different things. We could flex different muscles as a five piece."

"I really don't have any idea what the future will hold, whether we'll bring other people out on tour with us or if we'll just go out as a quartet. But we are most of the way through a really cool group of songs that are being written as a quartet." He added, "Change is always good. It always works out for the better. It brings you to a new place." Unless that place is NYC Ghosts & Flowers, we're cool with it.

Ranaldo described the new songs as "sort of rocking in a way that maybe we haven't really tried before. Some of them are kind of an extension of the last couple records, and some of them are almost more like noise-slash-sound pieces that either shoot off in their own direction or hark back to earlier works. There are a few things that are more sound-process pieces."

As previously reported, Ranaldo recovered two of his beloved custom-modified guitars, lost since an equipment heist in 1999, this summer in California. Although the guitars are currently in pretty bad shape, Ranaldo is optimistic that they will be rehabilitated to working order soon. And then he can get back to ripping up "Eric's Trip" just like the old days.
context, context, context.

jazzjune

sonic youth are great..but aren't they in europe right now?
be quiet and drive

mogwai

Sonic Youth set to release compilation via Starbucks

Indie legends are coming to the coffee-drinking masses

Sonic Youth are readying a compilation album, which will be sold at Starbucks coffee shops across the US.

Speaking to Pitchfork recently, Thurston Moore revealed that plans were afoot to record a new song for the release, and recently confirmed the news to Billboard.

The album entitled 'Hits Are For Squares' will be sold early 2008 in just eight US cities, and will be available online at hearmusic.com.

The release will be made up of songs chosen by celebrity fans of Sonic Youth including Dave Eggers and actresses Chloe Sevigny and Michelle Williams. They will also contribute to the sleeve notes on the album, explaining their choice of song.

Speaking to Billboard, Moore defended the band's decision to release the album through Starbucks/Universal saying:

"I guess, for some, Sonic Youth represents something that they don't really equate with Starbucks. But I kind of like the absurdity of it. Sonic Youth has always, in a way, made itself available to the super mainstream."

(nme.com)

WorldForgot

#9
Recorded at Easley Studios, Memphis, between January and May '95, with slicez workshopped in between demo-jotting, along an early year college tour, away from their NYC habitat, WASHING MACHINE has been widely considered a transitional record for SY. By criticz and, erm, well rateyourmusic doodz and readingz along my google searchez... Anyway I just heard it for the first time last week and it has quickly become one of my all timer favz, combining the slacker poeticz of the 90z with EVOL-lvl screwin' sound~ ~

In regardz to the record, an exploration of feminist themes and nowave-melodia that reverberates into modern acts.... transitional record, putting that out there seems to me to be a misreading of what the Geffen contract allowed SY to play with, in how it molded avant garde rock'z sound and the band'z own production ecosphere crater. And while I think that word devalues the sound, its thematic arc and sonic scope, quite literally in SY timespace, what had to have been one big trip, heady, intimate-to-grand-scale trek, it's true.



"Lookin so sweet with all your might"

During the end of, letz say, their initial DGC-Scrappy trilogy, mid 90z angst territory has allowed grunge to flourish, Swans, and Free Kitten's Nice Ass (Kim'z in there!) open up the year in January. PJ Harvey pulls thru for Alt in February, Radiohead's sophomore effort whatevzright and NIN goes FURTHER DOWN THE SPIRAL in June, and The Dismemberment Plan ! up emo indie anxiety james foreverafter in October. Blonde Redhead debuts this year with two albums that carry more than one similarity to Daydream-era and current SY. The Billboard Landscape is pocketed with great hip-hop, and GZA will slay us, man. Its a transitional decade, is how I feel. One that pav'd route for glitch to become its post-postindustrial pop mutant, as it exists now.

Coco Hayley Gordon Moore is born in July of '94.

Riding the Diamond Sea of this album our Sonicz will establish SYR, Sonic Youth Recordings, as a safe haven label for free improv and noise association setz, then later continue on to pockmark its catalog well into the 00z.

Following up Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star their best-charting release in the United States (until 2009's The Eternal), drummer Steve Shelley's foray into jazz performance, and his and Thurston Moore's sweet-femme guitar rock Psychic Hearts we get a record that showcases the group with their heart on their sleevez and head in the cloudz. They go from family snapshots and college fans to stadiums, REM, Lollapalooza, then back to SY specific setz in the fall, onto global territory with Foo Fighters and the Beastie Boys. Deep into '96 they're in on the 6-date tour at the Reading Festival in England, with one final WashingMachine date themselves in Spain. Kim'z on guitar for most of the LP, but the three tracks she serves on bass are standouts. I'm particularly fond of Panty Lies.

"It was so great to be out of NY recording somewhere else. Things were relaxed there . We ate a lot of barbeque from Payne's. I can't believe the record ever got recorded. It's one of my favorite's. Coco was about 8 months old. She met her first Elvis impersonator there." - Kim Gordon in a FILTER discography self-commentary

Its two singles, The Diamond Sea and Little Trouble Girl (Kim Deal! Memphis' Lorette Velvette and Melissa Dunn), tether two endz, a spectrum of feminist musings.



Quote from: official sonic youth siteThough not executed quite as extreme as on the previous 2 albums, Ronaldo Lee and Thurston's guitars are once again isolated to their own speakers -- Lee is in the left, Thurston is in the right. At some point in early '95, Sonic Youth were seriously considering changing their name to "Washing Machine. The image of 2 fans wearing "Washing Machine" shirts on the cover was taken after the April 28th, 1995 show at Amherst College in Amherst, MA. The shirts were signed by opening act Come. There was actually an MTV news bulletin a short while later calling out for the fans to contact the band to grant them permission to use the photograph for the album cover. The R.E.M. tour found Sonic Youth as openers in front of huge, stadium crowds -- but a mere month later they would find themselves headlining before huge, stadium crowds. The tour: Lollapalooza '95.

Four trax of modern fable open our flick -- unspool into the titular jam, a Ginsberg-esque crawl that settles into side3, three Slacker-Lullabies before we're perk'd again on side-4 into a swirl, the noir riffz of Becuz Coda and Skip Tracer giving shapes to cities, The Diamond Sea blanketing our sky and united stags cragz, valleys, coasts and how that extends and it's deeper still, and actually, it's everything we're on (the finale counterpart, the "alternate ending" version of Diamond Sea, sparkling at nearly 26 minutes).

Quote from:  SY'z The Diamond SeaBlood crystallized as sand
And now I hope you'll understand
You reflected into his looking glass soul
Now the mirror is your only friend

Look into his eyes and you will see
That men are not alone on the diamond sea
Sail into the heart of the lonely storm
And tell her that you'll love her eternally

Time takes its crazy toll
Mirror fallin' off the wall
You better look out for the looking glass girl
Cause she's gonna take you for a fall

Look into his eyes and you shall see
Why everything is quiet and nothing's free
I wonder how he's gonna make her smile
When love is running wild on the diamond sea