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Thurston Moore Revisits His Sonic Youth

nytimes.com

61–70 of 82 posts

Re: Thurston Moore Revisits His Sonic Youth

#61

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

It is a shame, but stupid relationship drama seems to go hand in hand with high creativity.

I don't know if this is just "creativity breeds madness", "fame allows people to be shitty", "most marriages fail", or simply "reporting bias" (happily married couples aren't juicy news).

Re: Thurston Moore Revisits His Sonic Youth

#62
post #2

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 relea…

https://www.skatevideosite.com/videos/nike-sb-nothing-but-th... This video came out in 2007 > Paul Rodriguez: Sonic Youth - Teen Age Riot Opened my eyes...

https://youtu.be/miNe-qDMUAc starts at 1:05:18

Re: Thurston Moore Revisits His Sonic Youth

#63

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

The idea that any musician can possibly be faithful to their wife, I'm just not even sure it's possible. It's like you hit the lottery and all the women are now chasing you. For most men that's pretty hard to resist.

Re: Thurston Moore Revisits His Sonic Youth

#65

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 re…

and then were was the Record Store.

Re: Thurston Moore Revisits His Sonic Youth

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they had huge stature in your scene, it’s funny how different experiences can be. My interest in SY was piqued in 2000 because they had recorded an EP with song titles in Esperanto, something I dabbled in then. In spite of having a large circle of friends interested in indie music, and being active on some music forums, no one listened to SY or was even very aware of them. My conclusion at the time was that their…

They were definitely in the old guard by 2000 or so, just in that they had already had a career and half by then. They toured with Nirvana! But that doesn't mean their later albums aren't also great and squarely in the canon. Sonic Nurse, in particular, is one of their best imo.

They really were older mentors to Nirvana. They and their band were about 10 years older (1 Beatles career), recruited them to Geffen, and really got them their first exposure outside Seattle. They also were largely responsible for getting Dinosaur Jr. their break.

I did not realize how old they were when I was obsessed with Daydream Nation and Dirty in high school. Kim’s just younger than my parents and they could never have been that cool. I went back into their catalog from there and followed along with them. That’s when I realized they formed the year after I was born. Blew my mind. Listening to the stuff like No New York that they emerged out of is kind of fascinating. Not my thing, but interesting historically.

Kim’s autobiography was an interesting view into the era my folks grew up in. I’ll have to read Thurston’s some time. Still bugs me they fell apart. I don’t normally care about famous people relationships, but they were like some kind punk rock institution to me. They were together since I wandered into that kind of music and nurtured so many bands I loved. But they’re just pretty normal people with pretty normal problems.

I totally agree on Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped as well. The stuff from A Thousand Leaves until then was interesting, but not stuff I play often. Those have stood up well next to the aforementioned albums, Goo, EVOL, etc.

Re: Thurston Moore Revisits His Sonic Youth

#67
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

Re: Thurston Moore Revisits His Sonic Youth

#68
post #22
post #5

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 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…

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.

I think you’re getting your 90s rock goddess Kims confused, though it would be cool to hear a Breeders/SY combination!

Re: Thurston Moore Revisits His Sonic Youth

#70

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

50% of marriages fail, 25% of surviving marriages are unhappy, so the odds of marrying, not divorcing, and being happy are a bit above 38%.

70% of divorces are initiated by women, and more in higher income brackets, yet only 50% of men undergoing divorce are unhappy about it, which means about 10% of married men are just waiting for their wives to take the first step in separation.

I do not want to excuse dishonesty, deception, breach of trust etc., but marriages are hard, humans are fallible, and age has taught me to be less judgemental of people failing on a difficult endeavor.

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