13 ms·

Thurston Moore Revisits His Sonic Youth

88 points by tintinnabula 3y ago

Jeff2Serve 3y ago
The mentions of Jim O'Rourke took me back to a meeting with him I've never forgotten. Thought others would enjoy hearing. 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.
dml2135 3y ago
Huge Sonic Youth fan, albeit a younger one. I caught the tail-end of their career in my HS/college days, c. 2003-2010. I can't think of an equivalent band today that has the kind of stature they had at the time in the indie scene. 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.
- prpl 3y ago
  Saw them first in 2004 with my brother. Wolf Eyes opened, my brother ended up leaving because he was sick. 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.
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    but being poor and 17/18/19 it was hard to see live music 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.
  - throwaway743 3y ago
    Damn, Wolf Eyes?? That's a name I haven't heard in a minute. Man, miss the days of the sounds of Black Dice, Sightings, Load Records, and the likes
    - salynchnew 3y ago
      The Load Records/Three One Gee/Troubleman era was incredible. 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.
      - throwaway743 3y ago
        So true. Got me reminiscing on show papers and Todd P lol
rocketbop 3y ago
I don’t know why exactly Thurston Moore was interviewing an at that time almost unknown Beck, but it’s such a funny, strange, but warm interview that I never fail to get a kick out of it. https://youtu.be/zdzY49xlvdY?si=fVimAnAJaQTZmqZt https://youtu.be/zdzY49xlvdY?si=fVimAnAJaQTZmqZt
- next_xibalba 3y ago
  He wasn’t unknown. Loser Baby was giant hit. Moore says so at the very start of the interview.
- art-not 3y ago
  I remember this interview so well. It was a common reference for a friend and I in highschool. "Xanadu, I'm sure all the listeners will be able to relate to that"
- turmon 3y ago
  Yeah, I had not appreciated the strange and sudden success of Loser after a bunch of tough times for the young musician - I just reviewed his page on Wikipedia. What an amazing moment to capture. Thurston's deadpan style works perfectly. Thanks for the link.
ilamont 3y ago
I've been listening to Sonic Youth since Evol. Their live sound got better as they aged, which doesn't happen for a lot of bands. This show from Austin City Limits in 2011, months before they broke up, captures it pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O8VLwh1Na0 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-band-could-be-your-life/9780316247184/?lens=little-brown 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?
- WOOKIE_pizza 3y ago
  > This show from Austin City Limits... captures it pretty well Wow, that show is nothing less than epic! Thanks for sharing +1
- _jal 3y ago
  Same, but I didn't get to see them live until Daydream Nation. Those shows were a lot of fun, but yeah, I was only catching the end of that, but earlier shows were... noisy. It took them a while to get art-rock inaccessibility-as-cred out of their system. Or maybe Moore is just really self-indulgent. Or both. You never know what will happen, but after reading _Girl in a Band_, I don't think Deal is interested.
  - ilamont 3y ago
    I have a Dutch import of a live Sonic Youth club show from Amsterdam in the mid 80s. It's practically unlistenable. I get that their crucible was art/punk/experimental/psychedelic but it would be some years before they put away the power drills and lava lamps and got down to being a solid live rock band. Their studio efforts from the early era were better IMHO.
plz-remove-card 3y ago
The audio book version is narrated by him, nice.
art-not 3y ago
I've mostly fell out of listening to Sonic Youth, but it was the first band to ever open my eyes to the idea of 'weird' music. I think a lot of who I am today began with that first experience, when I first listened to Evol. 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.
- _rpxpx 3y ago
  Agreed. I bought Washing Machine on the day it was released, during my secondary school lunch break. I remember the NME review claiming The Diamond Sea as the best thing SY had ever done. I agreed with that when I got it home, and still do. It was the pinnacle of their work really, which went rapidly downhill afterwards. Pitchfork's 0.0 rating of NYC Ghosts & Flowers was sadly wholly appropriate. But the records Evol-->Washing Machine altered my life completely, and turned me on to the idea of weird/experimental/avant-garde music, and art.
  - nuxi 3y ago
    They had most of their (unique) equipment stolen a year before NYC Ghosts & Flowers was released[0], so they used whatever they had in their studio and put out an experimental album. Not my favourite record (Washing Machine and Daydream Nation for me), but I don't think it's that bad. Their later releases were also pretty good and the "really experimental" SYR stuff is quite interesting as well IMO. [0] - http://www.sonicyouth.com/history/equipment/stolen.html http://www.sonicyouth.com/history/equipment/stolen.html
  - microtonal 3y ago
    > It was the pinnacle of their work really, which went rapidly downhill afterwards. Pitchfork's 0.0 rating of NYC Ghosts & Flowers was sadly wholly appropriate. I think that was pretty much the only dud (together with Jet Set), Murray Street and the albums after that are quite ok.
- microtonal 3y ago
  Sonic Youth was a large part of my high school sound track. I had some class mates who were also into indie music, I lent my copy of Washing Machine to one of them, when she returned it to me she looked at me as if I was insane (or at least my taste in music). Evol/Sister/Daydream Nation were my favorites though.
earthscienceman 3y ago
I was never big on Sonic Youth but I met Thurston Moore at a poetry reading when he was touring around for his book. I went because a friend suggested. I was in awe at his ease with fans and his general excitement for "the scene". I wish that was how most musicians treated their local following. Great music is fostered by local communities and he knew that and emphasized it. I admire that as much as I admire his talent.
appletrotter 3y ago
It's a shame he cheated on his wife :(
- nativespecies 3y ago
  Not sure why you're getting downvoted. It almost certainly played a role in the band breaking up as well.
  - cammikebrown 3y ago
    It was the entire reason they broke up, in fact.
- Modified3019 3y ago
  Huh, well that’s disappointing to hear. This sort of thing is why I basically never look into the personal lives of artists.
  - adw 3y ago
    The whole backstory here is, to say the least, complex, extends over about a decade, and is important subtext for the last few SY records. 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...
robear 3y ago
I was a big SY fan in high school (early 90s). I would watch parts of "1991: The Year Punk Broke" almost every day after school. I have never been good at music but I tried to get into guitar. Evidently, learning to play guitar by trying to play with SY guitar tunings doesn't make it any easier. SY was a huge influence on my formative years.
MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20231026153006/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/23/books/review/thurston-moore-sonic-life.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231026153006/https://www.nytim...
jkern 3y ago
I enjoy Sonic Youth a fair bit, but in the majority of cases find Thurston Moore completely uncompelling as a singer.
- nativespecies 3y ago
  Some of the worst lyrics in the biz for sure
  - justinator 3y ago
    Teenage Riot is a masterpiece. 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
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    The older I get, and the more my knowledge of poetry has expanded, the more turned off I am by the doggerel that most popular-music lyrics are. My rock listening is increasingly limited to shoegaze, a genre where the vocals get so submerged in the mix, you can’t even make out the words and nothing hinders you from enjoying the pure sound.
    - art-not 3y ago
      I hate to give indie rock recos, but you may really like the album "Perfect from now on" by the band Built to Spill. Here's lyrically one of my favourites from the album: https://genius.com/Built-to-spill-randy-described-eternity-lyrics https://genius.com/Built-to-spill-randy-described-eternity-l...
      - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
        I really appreciate your recommending me something. Often people might just bristle that I said anything negative about popular music (even if it’s purely a matter of my personal taste) and not even try to help me find something I might like. 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 https://genius.com/Scott-walker-sunn-o-herod-2014-lyrics [1] https://genius.com/Scott-walker-track-five-lyrics https://genius.com/Scott-walker-track-five-lyrics
salynchnew 3y ago
An amazing band that got more amazing over time. 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.
shautvast 3y ago
>>For Thurston Moore, a driving force in the important art-noise band Sonic Youth, the epiphany was “Louie Louie,” the indecipherable-at-any-speed single by the Kingsmen. Haha, I named my dog after that song, or was it Richard Berry’s original, or all the other covers?
beepbooptheory 3y ago
My earliest memory of what has become modern, streaming video apps was Google Video (I think that's what it was called). It was before they bought youtube. 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.
- soylentcola 3y ago
  A guy I knew in high school got that movie on VHS (around 1993/1994-ish). I remember watching at his house after school once, but then later we had a falling out because he was in the cool alt-kid crowd but I wasn't allowed to dress in the "uniform" so he decided I was a poseur. 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.
- doubloon 3y ago
  and then were was the Record Store.
crispyambulance 3y ago
I saw them live circa 1988-ish around the time of Daydream Nation. 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.
gdubs 3y ago
Met Thurston when he came to Bard College back in the early 00s. He did a small poetry thing and had brought his electric guitar and an amp and at the end of his reading he shredded for us for a bit. Then he hung out afterwards for a while. Super chill dude. 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.
thefaux 3y ago
My favorite Thurston Moore sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0FoVuUYh4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0FoVuUYh4w
themark 3y ago
I had their Sonic Nurse facemask during covid. It was a kool thing.
- soylentcola 3y ago
  Still have mine (and the t-shirt!)
diggum 3y ago
One day mid-1995 (just looked it up and it would have been May 20, 1995) Sonic Youth was playing with REM at the Gorge in Washington. He and the drummer had a side project that came to the little record store in Ellensburg (Rodeo Records, owned by Mark Pickerel of Screaming Trees fame) for a secret daytime gig. I lived half a block away and was tipped off by a friend who worked there. Went and drank with them all after the gig. Class acts all the way
hestefisk 3y ago
Teenage riot!

88 points by tintinnabula 3y ago

The mentions of Jim O'Rourke took me back to a meeting with him I've never forgotten. Thought others would enjoy hearing. 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.

dml2135 3y ago

Huge Sonic Youth fan, albeit a younger one. I caught the tail-end of their career in my HS/college days, c. 2003-2010. I can't think of an equivalent band today that has the kind of stature they had at the time in the indie scene. 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.

prpl 3y ago
Saw them first in 2004 with my brother. Wolf Eyes opened, my brother ended up leaving because he was sick. 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.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  but being poor and 17/18/19 it was hard to see live music 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.
- throwaway743 3y ago
  Damn, Wolf Eyes?? That's a name I haven't heard in a minute. Man, miss the days of the sounds of Black Dice, Sightings, Load Records, and the likes
  - salynchnew 3y ago
    The Load Records/Three One Gee/Troubleman era was incredible. 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.
    - throwaway743 3y ago
      So true. Got me reminiscing on show papers and Todd P lol

rocketbop 3y ago

I don’t know why exactly Thurston Moore was interviewing an at that time almost unknown Beck, but it’s such a funny, strange, but warm interview that I never fail to get a kick out of it. https://youtu.be/zdzY49xlvdY?si=fVimAnAJaQTZmqZt https://youtu.be/zdzY49xlvdY?si=fVimAnAJaQTZmqZt

next_xibalba 3y ago
He wasn’t unknown. Loser Baby was giant hit. Moore says so at the very start of the interview.
art-not 3y ago
I remember this interview so well. It was a common reference for a friend and I in highschool. "Xanadu, I'm sure all the listeners will be able to relate to that"
turmon 3y ago
Yeah, I had not appreciated the strange and sudden success of Loser after a bunch of tough times for the young musician - I just reviewed his page on Wikipedia. What an amazing moment to capture. Thurston's deadpan style works perfectly. Thanks for the link.

ilamont 3y ago

I've been listening to Sonic Youth since Evol. Their live sound got better as they aged, which doesn't happen for a lot of bands. This show from Austin City Limits in 2011, months before they broke up, captures it pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O8VLwh1Na0 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-band-could-be-your-life/9780316247184/?lens=little-brown 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?

WOOKIE_pizza 3y ago
> This show from Austin City Limits... captures it pretty well Wow, that show is nothing less than epic! Thanks for sharing +1
_jal 3y ago
Same, but I didn't get to see them live until Daydream Nation. Those shows were a lot of fun, but yeah, I was only catching the end of that, but earlier shows were... noisy. It took them a while to get art-rock inaccessibility-as-cred out of their system. Or maybe Moore is just really self-indulgent. Or both. You never know what will happen, but after reading _Girl in a Band_, I don't think Deal is interested.
- ilamont 3y ago
  I have a Dutch import of a live Sonic Youth club show from Amsterdam in the mid 80s. It's practically unlistenable. I get that their crucible was art/punk/experimental/psychedelic but it would be some years before they put away the power drills and lava lamps and got down to being a solid live rock band. Their studio efforts from the early era were better IMHO.

plz-remove-card 3y ago

The audio book version is narrated by him, nice.

art-not 3y ago

I've mostly fell out of listening to Sonic Youth, but it was the first band to ever open my eyes to the idea of 'weird' music. I think a lot of who I am today began with that first experience, when I first listened to Evol. 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.

_rpxpx 3y ago
Agreed. I bought Washing Machine on the day it was released, during my secondary school lunch break. I remember the NME review claiming The Diamond Sea as the best thing SY had ever done. I agreed with that when I got it home, and still do. It was the pinnacle of their work really, which went rapidly downhill afterwards. Pitchfork's 0.0 rating of NYC Ghosts & Flowers was sadly wholly appropriate. But the records Evol-->Washing Machine altered my life completely, and turned me on to the idea of weird/experimental/avant-garde music, and art.
- nuxi 3y ago
  They had most of their (unique) equipment stolen a year before NYC Ghosts & Flowers was released[0], so they used whatever they had in their studio and put out an experimental album. Not my favourite record (Washing Machine and Daydream Nation for me), but I don't think it's that bad. Their later releases were also pretty good and the "really experimental" SYR stuff is quite interesting as well IMO. [0] - http://www.sonicyouth.com/history/equipment/stolen.html http://www.sonicyouth.com/history/equipment/stolen.html
- microtonal 3y ago
  > It was the pinnacle of their work really, which went rapidly downhill afterwards. Pitchfork's 0.0 rating of NYC Ghosts & Flowers was sadly wholly appropriate. I think that was pretty much the only dud (together with Jet Set), Murray Street and the albums after that are quite ok.
microtonal 3y ago
Sonic Youth was a large part of my high school sound track. I had some class mates who were also into indie music, I lent my copy of Washing Machine to one of them, when she returned it to me she looked at me as if I was insane (or at least my taste in music). Evol/Sister/Daydream Nation were my favorites though.

earthscienceman 3y ago

I was never big on Sonic Youth but I met Thurston Moore at a poetry reading when he was touring around for his book. I went because a friend suggested. I was in awe at his ease with fans and his general excitement for "the scene". I wish that was how most musicians treated their local following. Great music is fostered by local communities and he knew that and emphasized it. I admire that as much as I admire his talent.

appletrotter 3y ago

It's a shame he cheated on his wife :(

nativespecies 3y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. It almost certainly played a role in the band breaking up as well.
- cammikebrown 3y ago
  It was the entire reason they broke up, in fact.
Modified3019 3y ago
Huh, well that’s disappointing to hear. This sort of thing is why I basically never look into the personal lives of artists.
- adw 3y ago
  The whole backstory here is, to say the least, complex, extends over about a decade, and is important subtext for the last few SY records. 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...

robear 3y ago

I was a big SY fan in high school (early 90s). I would watch parts of "1991: The Year Punk Broke" almost every day after school. I have never been good at music but I tried to get into guitar. Evidently, learning to play guitar by trying to play with SY guitar tunings doesn't make it any easier. SY was a huge influence on my formative years.

MrBuddyCasino 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20231026153006/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/23/books/review/thurston-moore-sonic-life.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231026153006/https://www.nytim...

jkern 3y ago

I enjoy Sonic Youth a fair bit, but in the majority of cases find Thurston Moore completely uncompelling as a singer.

nativespecies 3y ago
Some of the worst lyrics in the biz for sure
- justinator 3y ago
  Teenage Riot is a masterpiece. 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
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  The older I get, and the more my knowledge of poetry has expanded, the more turned off I am by the doggerel that most popular-music lyrics are. My rock listening is increasingly limited to shoegaze, a genre where the vocals get so submerged in the mix, you can’t even make out the words and nothing hinders you from enjoying the pure sound.
  - art-not 3y ago
    I hate to give indie rock recos, but you may really like the album "Perfect from now on" by the band Built to Spill. Here's lyrically one of my favourites from the album: https://genius.com/Built-to-spill-randy-described-eternity-lyrics https://genius.com/Built-to-spill-randy-described-eternity-l...
    - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
      I really appreciate your recommending me something. Often people might just bristle that I said anything negative about popular music (even if it’s purely a matter of my personal taste) and not even try to help me find something I might like. 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 https://genius.com/Scott-walker-sunn-o-herod-2014-lyrics [1] https://genius.com/Scott-walker-track-five-lyrics https://genius.com/Scott-walker-track-five-lyrics

salynchnew 3y ago

An amazing band that got more amazing over time. 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.

shautvast 3y ago

>>For Thurston Moore, a driving force in the important art-noise band Sonic Youth, the epiphany was “Louie Louie,” the indecipherable-at-any-speed single by the Kingsmen. Haha, I named my dog after that song, or was it Richard Berry’s original, or all the other covers?

beepbooptheory 3y ago

My earliest memory of what has become modern, streaming video apps was Google Video (I think that's what it was called). It was before they bought youtube. 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.

soylentcola 3y ago
A guy I knew in high school got that movie on VHS (around 1993/1994-ish). I remember watching at his house after school once, but then later we had a falling out because he was in the cool alt-kid crowd but I wasn't allowed to dress in the "uniform" so he decided I was a poseur. 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.
doubloon 3y ago
and then were was the Record Store.

crispyambulance 3y ago

I saw them live circa 1988-ish around the time of Daydream Nation. 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.

gdubs 3y ago

Met Thurston when he came to Bard College back in the early 00s. He did a small poetry thing and had brought his electric guitar and an amp and at the end of his reading he shredded for us for a bit. Then he hung out afterwards for a while. Super chill dude. 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.

thefaux 3y ago

My favorite Thurston Moore sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0FoVuUYh4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0FoVuUYh4w

themark 3y ago

I had their Sonic Nurse facemask during covid. It was a kool thing.

soylentcola 3y ago
Still have mine (and the t-shirt!)

diggum 3y ago

One day mid-1995 (just looked it up and it would have been May 20, 1995) Sonic Youth was playing with REM at the Gorge in Washington. He and the drummer had a side project that came to the little record store in Ellensburg (Rodeo Records, owned by Mark Pickerel of Screaming Trees fame) for a secret daytime gig. I lived half a block away and was tipped off by a friend who worked there. Went and drank with them all after the gig. Class acts all the way

hestefisk 3y ago

Teenage riot!