Sonic Youth | Goo

Now moving on to a much superior Sonic Youth , this is one of the Greatest.... "GOO" Oh Yeah!!!!!!

In 1990, Sonic Youth released Goo (their first album for Geffen), which featured the single "Kool Thing" on which Chuck D from rap group Public Enemy guested. "Kool Thing" became the song that many casual music fans associate with the band; it was later featured in the video game Guitar Hero III and was made available as a paid download for the Rock Band video game. The record is considered much more accessible than their previous work. Their 1991 tour with the then relatively unknown Nirvana was captured in the film 1991: The Year Punk Broke.


1990 Goo





Dirty Boots



Kool Thing

Cocteau Twins

Those hearing Garlands for the first time who only know the band's other material will likely be more than a little surprised. Whereas the typical vision of the Twins is of beautiful washes of sounds and exultant vocals from Fraser, on Garlands the trio is still only part of the way there. Instead, the best comparison points are to the Cure on Faith and Pornography, perhaps Metal Box-era PiL, a touch of Joy Division here and there -- in sum, deep, heavy mood verging on doom and gloom. Bassist Will Heggie, in the only full album he did with the Twins, clearly follows the Peter Hook/Simon Gallup style of low, ominous throb, while Guthrie's guitar work more often than not screeches loudly than shimmers. Fraser's singing has a starker edge, unsettling even at its most accessible, sometimes completely disturbing at other times. The strongest track, "Wax and Wane," has the trio creating a powerful but also surprisingly danceable track, the crisp drumbox beat working against Guthrie's compelling atmospherics and Fraser's vocal hook in the chorus. Beyond that and a couple of other moments, though, Garlands falters due to something the band generally avoided in the future -- overt repetition. Too many of the songs rely on a unified formula that rarely changes; one need only compare to the multiplicity of styles tried on Head Over Heels to see the difference. As a debut effort, though, Garlands makes its own curious mark, preparing the band for greater heights. Import CD versions contain a complete John Peel session from 1983, with guest vocals from Cindytalk's Gordon Sharpe, which has since been re-released as part of the BBC Sessions package. Two other rarities, "Speak No Evil" and the fine "Perhaps Some Other Aeon," complete the release. [AMG]


Garlands-Peel Sessions

Ciccone Youth

More of a good-natured prank than an actual band, Ciccone Youth was a short-lived vehicle in which indie underground noisemakers Sonic Youth further explored their obsession with popular culture. In the mid-'80s, the members of Sonic Youth (especially Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon) made no secret of their fascination with Madonna; they were known to discuss her life and career in interviews, and the album EVOL listed "Madonna, Sean, and Me" as an alternate title for the closing tune "Expressway to Yr. Skull." At the peak of their Madonna frenzy, the band decided to record a tribute single to the Material Girl; on the A-side, Sonic Youth performed a dark, ominous version of "Into the Groove" (dubbed "Into the Groovey") that sounds slow, until samples from Madonna's original recording confirm it's being played at the same tempo as the upbeat original. The flip side featured former Minutemen bassist and fellow Madonna enthusiast Mike Watt on a jacked-up rock version of "Burnin' Up," with former Black Flag leader Greg Ginn contributing a bracingly discordant guitar solo; it was one of Watt's first musical projects following the Minutemen's collapse after the death of D. Boon. Released by Watt's New Alliance label under the name Ciccone Youth (in honor of Madonna's surname), the single became an underground success, and a widespread (but unconfirmed) rumor had it that Madonna herself persuaded Warner Bros. not to take legal action against the record for unauthorized use of her sampled voice. The single's success led to a Ciccone Youth album, The Whitey Album (referring to Sonic Youth's often-threatened intention to record an album in which they covered The Beatles in its entirety), but Watt's participation was limited to his original four-track demo for "Burnin' Up" and the disc featured no new Madonna interpretations from Sonic Youth, though Kim Gordon did offer up an intriguingly strange karaoke version of Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love." The rest of the album was for the most part devoted to playful noise experiments, and by the end of 1986, Watt and Sonic Youth had seemingly retired the Ciccone Youth banner; there were no further recordings, and they never performed live using the name.


1988 The Whitey Album

Sonic Youth | ['86-'89]

Sonic Youth had a long fascination with influential indie label SST Records. Ranaldo said, "It was the first record company we were on that we really would have given anything to be on." Sonic Youth eventually signed to the label in early 1986 and began recording Evol with Martin Bisi in March of that year.

Evol itself represented an evolution of sorts for the band: in addition to increasingly melodic material and the impact of new drummer Shelley's playing, the record also dealt with themes of celebrity, particularly with songs like "Expressway To Yr Skull" (called "a classic" by Neil Young") and "Marilyn Moore". Signing to SST catapulted the band on to a national stage, something that did not happen to their peers in the New York underground. The mainstream music press subsequently began to take notice of the band. Robert Palmer of the The New York Times declared that Sonic Youth was "making the most startlingly original guitar-based music since Jimi Hendrix" and even People praised Evol as the "aural equivalent of a toxic waste dump." Evol is also notable for a guest appearance by bass guitarist Mike Watt, a friend whom the band coaxed to come to New York after he was deeply depressed by the death of his bandmate, D. Boon.

On 1987's Sister, Sonic Youth continued refining their blend of pop song structures with uncompromising experimentalism. Another loose concept album, Sister is partly inspired by the life and works of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick (the "sister" of the title was Dick's fraternal twin, who died shortly after her birth, and whose memory haunted Dick his entire life). Sister sold 60,000 copies and received very positive reviews, becoming the first Sonic Youth album to crack the Top 20 of the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics poll.

Despite the critical success, the band was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with SST due to concerns about payment and other administrative practices. Sonic Youth decided to release their next record on Enigma Records, which was distributed by Capitol Records and partly owned by EMI. The 1988 double LP Daydream Nation was a critical success that earned Sonic Youth substantial acclaim. The album came in second on the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll and topped the year-end album lists of the NME, CMJ, and Melody Maker. In 2006, it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. The lead single from the album, "Teen Age Riot", was the first song from the band to reach significant success, receiving heavy airplay in modern and college rock stations. A number of prominent music periodicals including Rolling Stone hailed Daydream Nation as one of the best albums of the decade and named Sonic Youth as the "Hot Band" in its "Hot" issue. Unfortunately, distribution problems arose and Daydream Nation was often difficult to find in stores. Moore considered Enigma a "cheap-jack Mafioso outfit" and the band began looking for a major label deal.


1986 EVOL



1987 Sister



1988 Daydream Nation

Sonic Youth | [First 3 LPs]

Branca signed Sonic Youth as the first act on his record label Neutral Records. In December 1981 the group recorded five songs in a studio in New York's Radio City Music Hall. The material was a released as the Sonic Youth mini-LP that, while largely ignored, was sent to a few key members of the US press that gave it uniformly favorable reviews. After their first record, Edson quit the group for a modestly successful acting career and was replaced by Bob Bert.

During their early days as part of the New York music scene, Sonic Youth formed a friendship with noisy New Yorkers Swans. The bands came to share the same rehearsal space, and Sonic Youth embarked on its first tour, a two-week journey through the southern United States starting in November 1982, supporting Swans. During a second tour with Swans of the Midwest the following month, tensions ran high and Moore constantly criticized Bert's drumming, which he felt wasn't "in the pocket". Bert was fired afterwards and replaced by Jim Sclavunos, who played drums on the band's 1983 album Confusion Is Sex. Sonic Youth set up a two-week tour of Europe for the summer of 1983. Sclavunos, however, quit after only a few months. The group asked Bert to rejoin, and he agreed, on the condition that he would not be fired again after the tour's conclusion.

Sonic Youth found themselves well-received in Europe, but the New York press largely ignored the local noise rock scene. Eventually, as the press began to take notice of the genre, Sonic Youth was grouped along with bands like Big Black, the Butthole Surfers and Pussy Galore under the "pigfucker" label by Village Voice music critic Robert Christgau. (Christgau saw these bands as sharing an abrasive, noisy and confrontational aesthetic.) Based on this classification, and on a negative live review by Christgau, a feud developed between Moore and the critic, with Moore renaming the song "Kill Yr Idols" to "I Killed Christgau With My Big Fucking Dick" before the two sorted out their differences amicably.

During another tour of Europe in 1984, Sonic Youth's disastrous London debut (where the band's equipment malfunctioned and Moore consequently destroyed the equipment onstage in frustration) actually resulted in rave reviews in Sounds and the NME. By the time they returned to New York, they were so popular they played shows practically every week. That same year Moore and Gordon were married and Sonic Youth released Bad Moon Rising, a self-described "Americana" album that served as a reaction to the state of the nation at the time. The album, recorded by Martin Bisi, was built around transitional pieces that Moore and Ranaldo had come up with in order to take up time onstage while the other guitarist was busy tuning his instrument; as a result there are almost no breaks between the songs on the record, which feature walls of feedback and pounding rhythms. Bad Moon Rising featured an appearance by Lydia Lunch on the album's single "Death Valley '69", inspired by the Charles Manson Family murders. In contrast to their abrasive, atonal material of the time, the band considered the song relatively conventional. Due to a falling-out with Branca over disputed royalty payments from their Neutral releases, they were signed to Homestead Records by Gerard Cosloy and by Blast First in the UK (which founder Paul Smith created simply so he could distribute the band's records in Europe). While even the New York press ignored Bad Moon Rising upon its release, now viewing the band as too arty and pretentious, Sonic Youth was becoming quite critically acclaimed in the United Kingdom, where the new album had sold 5,000 copies in just six months.

Claiming he was bored with playing Bad Moon Rising live in its entirety for over a year, Bert quit the group and was replaced by Steve Shelley, formerly of the hardcore group Crucifucks. The band was so impressed with Shelley's drumming after seeing him play live they hired him without an audition. Bert has remained on good terms with the group; he and Shelley both appeared in the music video for "Death Valley '69", as Bert performed the drums on the song, but Shelley was the group's drummer when the video was made. [wikipedia]



1981 Sonic Youth



1983 Confusion Is Sex



1985 Bad Moon Rising

**2 parts Join together with HJSplit**

Death Valley 69'