Pages tagged “sonic youth”

The mixtape to dwarf all mixtapes, Hits are for Squares, a compilation of Sonic Youth favorites, will be available in select Starbucks stores (and to listeners everywhere via HearMusic.com) on June 10. A cast of thousands (well, really, 15 or so) from the arts and entertainment world contributed their favorite choices from the Sonic Youth catalog. Radiohead, Beck and Portia de Rossi are among the diverse list of contributors.

Did hell just freeze over? Or are Sonic Youth, Charlie Daniels and Shooter Jennings really sharing the stage at the upcoming Dickson St. Music Festival in Fayetteville, Ark.?

After months of speculation among Fayetteville music fans, a press conference and an onslaught of brightly colored flyers finally confirmed that Sonic Youth will, indeed, be co-headlining the inaugural Dickson St. Music Festival April 25-26.

The NYC legends may seem like a puzzling addition to the event’s lineup – a veritable who’s who of country music featuring Daniels, Jennings, Little Feat and 38 Special. Perhaps the festival organizers realized that “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” is not every attendee’s cup of tea. Or perhaps they felt they needed a younger, edgier band to sell the event’s green theme to the next generation.

You see, the Dickson St. festival is being billed as an “eco-friendly” event, and is scheduled the same week as the internationally recognized Earth Day. Organizers are hoping to entertain concert-goers while simultaneously educating them in ways to be more environmentally responsible. To drive the conservation message home, vendors will use bio-degradable cups and plates and recycling bins will be a prominent fixture on festival grounds.

Tickets for the festival are $30 per day, or $50 for both days. The complete line-up and additional information on the festival is available at MajesticConcerts.com.

Related links:
SonicYouth.com
ShooterJennings.com
CharlieDaniels.com

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Sonic Youth seems bent and determined to prove its superhero levels of endurance this year. With three staggeringly diverse projects in the works, Superman couldn’t keep this kind of schedule.

Already one of rock’s hardest working bands with more than 20 albums to date, Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley will reunite this spring to begin writing material for a new album after a four-month break, NME reports. The as-yet-untitled follow-up to 2006’s rather-good Rather Ripped is scheduled for release sometime next year.

The band is also poised to enter the art world with an upcoming show, Moore told New York Magazine after the band’s performance at a Marc Jacobs’ event during New York City’s Fashion Week. The traveling exhibition will feature artists who have worked on the band’s album covers and other artistic concepts, and will visit “young” museums in locales such as Paris and Malmö, Sweden. The band plans to perform at each venue where the exhibition is installed, beginning in Saint-Nazaire, France, where the show is scheduled to open in June.

And to top it all off, a film version of the band’s 1988 masterpiece Daydream Nation is in the works. Rookie Michael Goldbach will direct, and Heroes ass-kicking cheerleader Hayden Panettiere will star in what is described as a 21st century coming-of-age tale, in the vein of whip-smart teen fare like Juno and Election. Filming is scheduled to start later this year, Pitchfork recently reported.

As Sonic Youth gears up for perhaps its busiest year ever, Moore will make time for one more solo performance at this year’s SXSW festival in support of his latest, trees outside of the academy.

Related links:
SonicYouth.com
Sonic Youth on MySpace
Review: Daydream Nation (Deluxe Edition)

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Tyta & Urbn Outftrs wnt u 2 Free Yr Radio.

Oh, sorry, we got a little carried away there. Free Yr Radio is the name of a campaign between Toyota and Urban Outfitters to support independent radio, and to make sure that you can turn on the radio and actually find a non-commercial station.

To that end, Free Yr Radio is releasing a CD on Oct. 20, which will be available at Urban Outfitters stores and at the store’s website. The CD features live cuts, b-sides, and previously unreleased material from bands like Sonic Youth, The Rapture and Klaxons. All of the CD’s profits will be split between participating stations, so you have no reason not to head over to Urban Outfitters and support independent radio stations through your own consumption! Then again, maybe you just want to buy this owl lamp.

Free Yr Radio 2007 CD tracklist:

1. Klaxons - Golden Skans – Erol Alkan’s Ekstra Spektral Edit (B-side) (Previously released as a b-side in the UK)
2. The Ponys - Hara Kiri (Live) (Recorded live at Daytrotter Studios 2/6/07)
3. Voxtrot - Steven (Live) (Recorded live at Daytrotter /Big Orange Studios 3/13/07)
4. The Long Winters - Commander Thinks Aloud (Live / previously unreleased)
5. Annuals - Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (B-side) (Previously released as a b-side in the UK)
6. Man Man - Easy Eats (Live) (Live for Free Yr Radio 05/19/07)
7. The Rapture - Crimson Red (Bonus Track) (Previously released as a bonus track to a Tower Records version of Pieces of the People We Love)
8. Rogue Wave - Publish My Love (Live) (Live for Free Yr Radio 05/25/07)
9. Tapes ‘N Tapes - Cowbell (Live) (Live for KEXP, Seattle 03/25/07)
10. Dinosaur Jr. - Yer Son (B-side) (Track appeared as a b-side on the 7” bonus single accompanying the vinyl release of Beyond)
11. Grizzly Bear - Little Brother (Live) (Live from Daytrotter Studios 02/12/07)
12. El-P - Poisenville Kids No Wins (Live) (Live for Free Yr Radio 07/14/07)
13. Dntel - The Distance - Metronomy Remix (B-side) (Track was previously released as a b-side in the U.K.)
14. Sonic Youth - World Looks Red (Live) (Live for Free Yr Radio 07/21/07)

Related links:
FreeYrRadio.com
UrbanOutfitters.com
Toyota.com

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[Above: Sonic Youth]

The Meat Puppets are back. Sonic Youth never left. Together, the former SST Records labelmates are combining forces for two Texas gigs. On Oct. 5, the devastating duo hits Stubb's in Austin, and two nights later they assault the Dallas version of the House of Blues. Don't live in Texas? Hitchhike, sucka, because these performances mark the only time that SY and the Puppets will share a double bill.

Available for the whole nation to enjoy, however, is the new solo record from Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. Credited simply to "Thurston," Trees Outside the Academy is currently tangling in record stores with other alt-rock solo releases from Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew, the Pixies' Black Francis, and, soon, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder. The critics seem to like Moore's effort the best so far, but who will win in the sales war? For indie fans, this is like Kanye vs. 50 Cent times approximately one million. Or, something...

The Meat Puppets, meanwhile, are mounting a full-scale fall tour in addition to their two-night collaboration with SY. Check out the Puppets' schedule here.

Related Links:
Paste: Meat Puppets' Rise to Your Knees Review
SonicYouth.com
Thurston talks Trees (YouTube)

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

After 19 years, Sonic Youth's masterpiece gets deluxe, remains fresh

It’s one of the greatest albums of the ’80s, one of top 50 guitar albums of all time and one of the finest 100 albums ever, but the numbers don’t do Daydream Nation justice. Even beyond such trivial lists, in 2006 the Library of Congress added the album to the National Recording Registry. So not only is Daydream Nation “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important” but it’s also in the company of similarly monumental recordings such as an 1895 Booker T. Washington Speech and the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out.

Despite the acclaim, though, the best summation of Sonic Youth’s overall greatness came during a conversation I had with Kill Rock Stars founder Slim Moon while researching an SY story shortly after the band’s 2006 album, Rather Ripped. “We will follow a favorite author for 20 years and 20 books, and forgive them for a bad book or two, but we rarely have these kinds of ongoing relationships with rock bands,” the musically intense Pacific Northwest expat began. “Sonic Youth has given us the richest, most consistent body of work of any rock band in the history of rock music. There ought to be hundreds of bands who have a multi-decade ‘conversation’ with their fans that has some real substance, but the truth is, there just isn’t. Sonic Youth is one of the only ones.”

Daydream Nation—now given the full-on reissue treatment nearly 20 years after its original release—reaffirms guitar as the backbone of rock ’n’ roll and frightens the hell out of anyone who thinks rock music is “too noisy.” And that’s the thing: This record is too noisy. It’s rock music in a nutshell—fuzzy, unpredictable and ready to hurtle off the rails at any moment, crashing down the mountain in a ball of flames. But, somehow, something holds it together. Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley, in making their most agreed-upon masterpiece (there are a handful in SY’s catalog), also set the standard for organized chaos in the form of a rock record. The year was 1988, and the first Bush was about to take the presidency without so much as a whimper from his competitor, so what were a group of hip, young New York musicians supposed to do aside from make the most punishingly beautiful album they could?

From one of the best track-one/side-ones of all time (“Teenage Riot”), which is about appointing J Mascis the leader of a nation that seemed in a perpetual daydream (Sonic Youth was collectively obsessed with Dinosaur Jr at the time), to the ending trilogy (a full 70 minutes later), this was clearly one of those Grand Statement works destined for either utter failure or complete success. The latter proved true; between those bookends is everything from mountain-tall guitar lines that would make Television proud to the stripped-back, surreal “Providence,” consisting of ghostly piano and an answering-machine message from The Minutemen’s Mike Watt.

It makes sense, then, that the band and Geffen chose to augment this remastered version with a mirror image: The second disc comprises a solid live version of every song from the original record, plus four hard-to-find studio-recorded covers of The Beatles, Neil Young, Mudhoney and Captain Beefheart. If you’ve never heard Sonic Youth do “Touch Me I’m Sick” or “Electricity” (from the pricey, out-of-print Beefheart tribute Fast ’n’ Bulbous), then you’re missing some of this iconic group’s most fun moments.

For open-minded listeners seeking the true possibilities of what can be accomplished through rock ’n’ roll, Daydream Nation was—and is—a wakeup call. “Yes, you can do whatever you want,” it seems to say. Over the years the album has earned Sonic Youth many a fan, perhaps the biggest among them being the aforementioned bass-playing Minuteman Watt. After his friend and bandleader D. Boon died in a car accident, Sonic Youth lit a fire under Watt, getting him playing again. When I phoned Watt (for the same SY article I interviewed Moon for), he got to the heart of why, after over 25 years, this band still matters.

“It’s easy to see through Sonic Youth that there are always possibilities,” he said. “Anything can happen. They redefine rock ’n’ roll for themselves and make it their own. It’s very empowering. It’s a revolution every few years where new people come into the fold and listen to their records and go to their shows. It’s hard to think of a world without Sonic Youth.”

Daydream Nation hammers home these exact sentiments—with feedback-drenched authority.

It’s been almost 20 years now since Sonic Youth released Daydream Nation, and it’s doing it again.

Originally the band’s sixth album (and first double LP), Geffen Records' June 12 reissue features two CDs; the first contains the entirety of the original album plus one bonus track, a demo of “Eric’s Trip.” Live Daydream, the second disc, consists of 15 mostly unreleased live tracks from the band’s Daydream Nation tour, as well as four bonus studio covers of the Beatles, Neil Young, Captain Beefheart and Mudhoney.

Speaking of live, the band will play the album in it’s entirety on North American and European dates scattered throughout the summer.

Goofin’ Records, the band’s imprint, will release a four LP vinyl version of the album on the same day.

2007 Sonic Youth tour dates featuring Daydream Nation:

June
2 - Barcelona, Spain @ Primavera Festival
21 - Munich, Germany @ Tollwood Festival
27 - Berlin, Germany @ Columbia Halle

July
5 - Turin, Italy @ Spazio
6 - Ferrara, Italy @ Piazza Castello
7 - Rome, Italy @ Teatro Romano di Ostia Antica
13 - Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Festival
19 - Berkeley, CA @ Berkeley Community Theater
20 - Los Angeles, CA @ Greek Theater

August
30 - London, England @ Roundhouse
31 - London, England @ Roundhouse (sold out)

September
1 - London, England @ Roundhouse (sold out)

Related links:
Sonic Youth’s site
Sonic Youth on MySpace
Geffen Records’ site

Any Sonic Youth news is great news, especially if they’re bringing out a compilation of B-Sides titled The Destroyed Room: B-Sides and Rarities, according to Filter.com. The tracks were selected by Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo.

Tracklisting:

1. Fire Engine Dream - Sonic Nurse outtake, previously unreleased
2. Fauxhemians - All Tomorrow's Parties 1.1
3. Is It My Body? - Alice Cooper Tribute
4. Razor Blade - Bull in the Heather B-side
5. Blink - Pola X soundtrack
6. Campfire - At Home With the Groovebox
7. Loop Cat - You Can Never Go Fast Enough
8. Kim's Chords - Sonic Nurse Japan edition
9. Beautiful Plateau - Sonic Nurse Japan edition
10. Three Part Sectional Love Seat - The Noho Furniture Sessions, previously unreleased
11. Queen Anne Chair - The Noho Furniture Sessions, previously unreleased
12. The Diamond Sea - Washing Machine LP version

Labyrinthine, sprawling soundscapes, mucho guitar—what did you expect?

The case for Sonic Youth’s immortality basically goes like this: name one other band that is simultaneously a punk band, a jam band, a designer of cerebral/architectural but jaggedly satisfying instrumental passages, a high-art purveyor of noise-as-noise, and reluctant fashion-plate for the now-greying alternative nation. Told you so. Simply put, Sonic Youth is an institution without much left to prove. Which may be why its recent albums have been so solid. Taking up where Sonic Nurse left off, Rather Ripped is about as accessible and smooth as this band is going to get, yet the mystery and menace of its iconoclastic past remain very much in evidence on songs like the dazzling “Pink Steam,” the taut “single” “Incinerate” and the gorgeous “Do You Believe in Rapture?” And, yes, the guitars are still a revelation.

Despite the added time constraints of parenting and various side projects, it appears Sonic Youth has no intention of slowing. Sonic Nurse, the group’s 19th LP in 23 years, hit record stores this summer and the band was slated to headline Lollapalooza until the festival was canceled in late June. It’s surely a disappointment for the noise rock legends since bassist Kim Gordon and guitarist Thurston Moore had planned to tour around their 10-year-old daughter’s summer vacation. “We have to tour when our daughter is out of school,” says Gordon.

Sonic Youth—now comprised of Gordon, Moore, Lee Ranaldo (guitar/vocals), Steve Shelley (drums) and recent addition, utility man Jim O’Rourke — continues to explore new aural territory with increased political vigor. The most blatant examples on Sonic Nurse are Moore’s dreamy “Peace Attack,” Ranaldo’s “Paper Cup Exit” and Gordon’s fierce media critique “Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream,” which initially featured pop diva Mariah Carey’s name instead of Gordon’s. “They were afraid Mariah could sue us if she had a bad day,” Gordon says. “[But] it’s really pro-Mariah, It’s meant to be more anti-corporate and more about the media and our obsession with celebrities.”

Commentary on celebrities isn’t new to Sonic Youth. In 1989, under the name Ciccone Youth (Madonna’s last name), the band recorded The White(y) Album. “I can’t believe we were ever allowed to do a record like Ciccone Youth where we actually used Madonna’s record on our record and sang along with her,” Gordon says. “You could never do that now.”

Times were different then. It was before the band signed to Geffen, before children, before the 9/11 terrorist attacks (which damaged the band’s Murray Street studio in New York) and before the war that followed. With a presidential election on the horizon, some members of Sonic Youth remain staunch opponents of the current administration.

Moore is the proprietor of protest-records.com, a free-music website enabling musicians to “fight the good fight” in the face of “greed, sexism, hate crimes and war.” Gordon is also outspoken about her political views. “Everyone should vote,” she says. “Liberals tend to be too-cool-for-school and don’t actually go to vote. Republicans vote.”

This June, both Sonic Youth and British group Zero 7 will perform live on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic, hosted by Nic Harcourt. The station's signature music show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. until noon (PST).

Sonic Youth will play at 11:15 a.m. on Thursday, June 10, and Zero 7 will perform a set of new songs during the June 4 broadcast, also at 11:15 a.m. The shows can be heard worldwide at www.kcrw.com and will also be webcast later on their respective days from 4 to 7 p.m. and the following days from 2 to 5 a.m. (PST).

(photo - Sonic Youth)