gek-opel said:
Smugness and wry affluence- yes. SY are an avant-middlebrow sacred cow begging to be lanced like a boil on the chin of Wire/New York Times approved music makers... They are so dull and unchallenging, they must be executed to make way for someone more deserving and capable of engaging with the contemporary music-scape, and this is not cos they are old, but because they are complacent, comfortable, and un-questing.
Until now I basically viewed this thread with little more than contempt. If you don't like the band, fine, more power to you, fair play. But the utter lunacy of this particular post -- intellectually barren, violent, tough-guy frothing, in the style of a gossip column -- is just
silly. And like so much of the worst kind of music writing, gek-opel's post says far more about its author than it does about the band under discussion ("they must be executed to make way for someone more deserving and capable of engaging with the contemporary music-scape, and this is not cos they are old, but because they are complacent, comfortable, and un-questing.") Ugh.
(1) For the record, the members of sonic youth are about as far from "smug" as imaginable, and certainly do not merit ridicule for some sort of imaginary "wry affluence." (Nice to see that your paranoia now extends beyond the wire [not that tired complaint again] to the NY Times too, oh the conspiracy!)
I've known a lot of people over the years whose careers received some sort of support or assistance from Sonic Youth -- Fred Lonberg-Holm, Kevin Drumm, and Jim O'Rourke were acquaintances of mine from the early 90s chicago music world who benefitted from SY's generosity and curiosity. To be honest, I can't think of anyone less pretentious in person than Steve Shelley or Lee Ranaldo. And for chrissakes, SY surely had a sense of humor -- remember ciccone youth? "Complacent, comfortable, and un-questing"? Your post is embarrassingly inaccurate.
(2) Though I'm far from a fanboy or indie partisan, I've followed the band since I became aware of them in 1986, because at the time, as someone interested in pursuing contemporary classical composition, I found the blend of tunings, feedback, damaged instruments, and top-notch drumming to be fresh and exhilarating. Live they were fierce, but simultaneously sensual and musical in their own way. And I very much appreciated the string of records that led from their 1981 EP through to Dirty's abstract noise -- Bad Moon Rising being one of the more austere, and beautiful, audio objects of art in the past thirty years imo. And they followed it with Evol, Sister, Daydream Nation, Goo, and Dirty. Not a bad run. Not, that is, if you actually pay attention to details such as tunings and feedback sections instead of hype and trends.
(3) And yes, sure, I am fully aware that there are reasons not to like SY, b/c very few people stateside in the late 80s or beyond
ever liked them. Contra mms' lamentation that SY are overly adored, I can tell you that they were never popular in the US apart from music critics and small circles of listeners. They were hated as an opening band for Neil Young in 1991; the top news story of their Lollapalooza headlining slot was that no one stayed to watch SY after Hole left the stage; and they have never had a hit song. Yet a quarter of a century later, they have shared a part, either as supporter or label owner or collaborator or musical participant, in literally hundreds of recordings, side projects, collaborative gigs, young musicians' careers, exhibitions, gallery shows, film-making, and the like, not only in nyc but chicago and LA (to speak only from firsthand acquaintance).