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Sonic Youth


Viaene

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I'm going to a festival for one day to see 'Triggerfinger' a great stonerrock Belgian band. On the same day 'Sonic Youth' performs and they are said to rock. So I'm wondering if anybody knows more about them and perhaps has some idea what they would play live ;)

EDIT: sorry I meant Sonic Youth :P

(Status Quo plays on another day)

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Sonic Youth are the single most significant band in the evolution of US alt.rock (IMHO) Oh yes, The Pixies, Nirvana and what-have-you may have enjoyed more coverage and commercial popularity, for one reason or another, but they and so many others owe a huge artistic debt to the ground-breaking work of Sonic Youth. SYouth took the primal energy and urgency of Stooges / punk-rock, the experimental edginess of the post-punk avant-garde and fused it with their instinctive and uncompromising creativity to forge a distinctive music of intensity, imagination and daring. They are not always pretty to listen to, neither are they always immediately accessible. However, they are certainly capable of transporting you, through their visionary music, to places you never previously envisaged, and of shining a torch around the deepest recesses of the human psyche. And for that, I think its worth the resilience and patience that might be required, depending on your receptiveness to this kind of thing.

They have released stacks of albums; it would be a struggle to recommend one over another: personally, I never tire of the Blast First albums "EVOL" and "Sister", but still enjoy listening to their 1989 album "Daydream Nation" which is often cited as their "classic", the one which saw them beginning to cross over to a wider audience and which helped to create the musical landscape into which grunge would explode, big-style, but which was also the breeding ground for what we now tend to call "alt.rock". Their influence is also to be found in the shimmering incandescence of the post-rock scene.

"Goo" is also a pretty fine album. "Experimental Jet-Set Trash and No Star", too. Ask different Youth fans their favourites, you'll get different responses. One thing I expect they would agree on: If you have the chance to see them, grab it: it'd be silly not to.

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Like BF said, Sonic Youth is the single most influential band in the modern era.

Formed in 79(or 80) depending on your source, they stared right a the end of the punk wave, and took every influence from yesterday and turned it into something new, fusing John Cage with Johnny Ramone.

Excellent band.

excellent excellentexcellent band

As a sidenote, Sonic Youth jumpstarted Nirvana's career, by inviting them to open on a series of shows for them. and continued to mentor Nirvana to the end.

also, they did the same for Pavement, which if you're into pavement, is pretty rad.

And Thurston Moore=GeniusXabazillion.

Probably my fave guitarist of all time, he's not always playing the pretty notes, but he's playing 'em well.

To add to the list of things they might play, Probably a couple of their newest disc 'Rather Ripped' which is quite excellent- I'm almost 100% 'incinerate' will be played, and possibly 'do you believe in rapture' and maybe (slim) 'Reena'

Then look for 'Unmade Bed' from Sonic Nurse

and 'Schizophrenia' a great tune that they like to bust out live.

but it's hard to predict what SY will play, because that band has written 100s of hours of music.

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He's a great guitarist because of his intricate tunings and chord structures

and he plays with melody and harmony

rather than playing scale after scale to form a 'solo'

edit- so it's not quite something you can witness in a youtube video, but by grabbing some SY albums and listening to them, overandoverandoverandover

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And they were great!

The music rocked, their experimental style is quite cool, but the singing was more like a not to understandable yelling and the outros were very distorded and long, but that's probably me.

I enjoyed the show and I'm glad I went :rockon:

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