{"id":4693,"date":"2021-12-20T23:11:24","date_gmt":"2021-12-20T23:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=4693"},"modified":"2024-02-08T09:23:06","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T09:23:06","slug":"music-media-sonic-youth-from-the-basement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=4693","title":{"rendered":"MUSiC\/MEDiA: Sonic Youth, From The Basement\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This promo pic captures Sonic Youth\u2019s art-house rock energy!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This was an interesting watch. A trip down memory lane, and a blast from the past!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The date on the video, i.e. when it was posted to YouTube, is 2020. I was puzzled by the fact that altho\u2019 Lee Renaldo is greying, Thurston and Kim look pretty much as they did back in the \u201880s. Nuts!? But\u2026 aha! That explains things; this was actually recorded back in 2007!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lineup is the \u2018classic\u2019 quartet, plus a guy called Mark Ibold, who became an essential fifth member in the years before they split in 2011. So that\u2019s Steve Shelley, drums, Kim Gordon, bass\/vocs, Lee Ranaldo, guitar\/vocs, Thurston Moore, guitar\/vocs, and Ibold, doubling on bass!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The performance space is nice. Very old school rock club. Love that blood red carpet!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The setlist for this performance is three tracks from their album of the moment, Ripped<\/em>, and The Sprawl and Hey Joni, from Daydream Nation<\/em>. The last of these is one of my favourite numbers from what is probably also my most favourite of their albums. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Daydream Nation<\/em> pieces are easily the best. To my mind\/ears. The overall performance is pretty good. Almost certainly best listened to, I assume, very<\/em> loud. I was listening to this pretty quiet, lying abed around midnight! Not ideal. But it still came over pretty well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have to admit that there are some forms of music – anything from this to Beefheart or Slayer (but perhaps intense and weird music especially so?) – that seem inescapably the music of youth. And the idea of folk enjoying listening to, or even more strangely, performing<\/em> such music, as they age, can seem a bit odd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ageing no-wave noise-rockers ageing pretty gracefully!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But maybe that\u2019s totally spurious? I\u2019ve seen Christian Zander and his Magma crew – several of whom are growing ever longer of tooth – doing their very weird very intense thing fairly recently, and thought it pretty compelling. Hmmm!? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watching this reminded me how much I loved some of this sort of music once – particularly the Daydream Nation<\/em> and earlier stuff (Evol<\/em> and Sister<\/em>); hadn\u2019t heard any Rather Ripped<\/em> stuff till I saw this! – and, to some extent, I still dig it. It also makes me think I\u2019d like to hear more from their later catalogue. Perhaps especially when Jim O\u2019Rourke joined? I like what he brought to Stereolab. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When this performance started, I was cringing a bit, at the very self-conscious and shoe-gazy vibe. But as it went on, the music re-captured my heart and mind. The Sprawl and Hey Joni in particular, because, as already attested to, Daydream Nation <\/em>was a much loved and very familiar reference point for a former younger me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A screenshot the setlist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It looks like there are a number of From The Basement<\/em> gigs on the YouTube archives. I\u2019m now watching a Radiohead one. Not a band I\u2019ve ever gotten into, to be honest. But their set is pretty cool. I like Thom Yorke\u2019s total commitment to the music. But I sometimes find his fey delivery a bit much. But that\u2019s for another post! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was an interesting watch. A trip down memory lane, and a blast from the past! The date on the video, i.e. when it was posted to YouTube, is 2020. I was puzzled by the fact that altho\u2019 Lee Renaldo is greying, Thurston and Kim look pretty much as they did back in the \u201880s. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “MUSiC\/MEDiA: Sonic Youth, From The Basement\u2026”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-1dH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4693"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4693"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11483,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4693\/revisions\/11483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}