rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

Gangs of New York: All Roads Lead to Sonic Youth

     Most of my memories of New York, faded as they are from the double whammy of age and sobriety, revolve around my seeing bands in clubs and theaters, The cbgb of TV, Patti, Ramones, Talking Heads, That great night w/the double bill of Alex Chilton and Tuff Darts. Lou Reed at the Bottom Line. Laurie at the Beacon (sigh). And a very special night at Irving Plaza (no, not the night I punched Robyn Hitchcock - that's a whole 'nother post) when I was exposed - there's no other word for it - to the music of Glen Branca. (http://www.glennbranca.com/bio.html)

     Now, as usual, I was pretty drunk that night  but I clearly remember a whole mess of guitar players onstage, emanating HUGE moving chords which weaved in and out of each other like cobras in barbed wire clothes. It was one his first 3 'symphonies' and it sounded to me like someone had set fire to the Velvet Underground. In other words: home. It was at the same time some of the most frightening and beautiful music I'd heard up to that time. Sections of guitarists would have all six strings on their guitars tunes to the same note, other sections, other notes. There's a psychoacoustic phenomenon known as 'beating' which occurs when many tones - almost exact in pitch - are played simutaneously. Phantom notes appear in the din, a harmony not man-made.

     Like god in the details.

     Two of the guitarists playing in Branca's ensemble that night were Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo, who went on to form Sonic Youth (http://www.sonicyouth.com/) , continuing that altered tuning/massive volume experiments that Branca excelled at. Their first, self-titled record revealed a band still finding itself, still as self conciously out and hip as only the truly faithful but fearful of being found fraudulent can be. Tall and birdlike, Moore would pound his guitar on the stage while Renaldo, guitar strings splayed w/screwdrivers would play his guitar w/drumsticks while actual drummer Bert Berns (later Steve Shelly) would lay a tribal carpet along with  Kim Gordon's vampiric sex appeal and labyrinthine bass playing culminating in a mushroom cloud of ill intent and feedback.

     I find this particular record, along with the live 'Sonic Death', comes in handy when you need to empty yr house ..... fast.

     I moved on w/Sonic Youth through the early days of 'Kill Yr Idols', 'Bad Moon Risng", 'Evol' and 'Sister', each record showing an almost exponential growth from the one before. The altered tuning raveups became less chaotic, less stop and start, less random and had all the more impact for the newfound focus and control. But if yr only gonna buy one record (and you gotta buy at least one. Do it for the children!) I heartily recoomed 'Daydream Nation', their sprawling mission statement of a 2 record set released in 1988. A 'Blonde on Blonde' for the for the po-mo set, a post punk throwdon and where the Alternative Nation really started.

     Speaking of St. Cobain, it was Sonic Youth that convinced David Geffen to sign Nirvana in the 1st place. If you can, watch the wonderful '1991: The Year Punk Broke' video. It captures the Sonics on tour w/Nirvana opening up. Somehow Nirvana blasts past SY's genius in a hot rod pilfered from the 'mats and the Pixies straight out of the  punk rock ghetto, ultimately winding up on shelves in Wal Marts all across America.

     Sonic Youth continued on as if nothing had happened because, really, it hadn't. Nirvana's success took nothing away from the Sonics. The beautiful thing to me about SY, and the reason I think that they're as major a 'rock and roll' band as, say, ACDC, is that they plain old don't give a fuck. They move to no trends making music that can only be described as Sonic Youth music going on 30 years now. (!) And their newest (available in streaming audio on the sitelink above) 'Rather REipped' is just as antitheical to the mainstream today as 'Sonic Youth' was back in the 20th Century.

   An old girlfriend once told me that when I got sober I wouldn't need to listen to 'that headache music', as she referred to Sonic Youth, anymore. She was wrong. Sobriety changes a lot of things but it has yet to completely take awat that place where this music heals. I still love the screech and screed of NYC's favorite sons and daughter. I still find comfort in their dissonance and daring. No it's not always pleasant to listen to,  but life is not always pleasant. With SY's music I get a sense of rising above the everyday torment of modern life, like a great winged beast tearing itself from the muddy bog of existence and soaring high into the sky of possibilities (thanks, Patti), rather than the bathing- in- the- bathos pretensions of bands like KORN and Limp Bizkit. Sonic Yoth's music sounds like this new animal, born of the frustration, heat and stench of New York City, humming along the sound waves like there was something of the Velvet Underground in their water.

    In these days of artificial everything the sweet punch of Sonic Youth's music can cut you and make you bleed, and in that  blood you might find something you might have thought you losat. Know what it's called?

     Feeling.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 18:10 | link | comments (2)