Published by Swiss James on 24 Apr 2007 at 07:48 pm
Sonic Youth
Last night I went to see a band. The band were the long-running experimental art-rock set up Sonic Youth, the venue was a classical music concert with full seating. This was a bit weird.
I’ve wanted to see Sonic Youth ever since I listened to them whilst doing my paper round- back in ‘92. When the tickets were announced I called up the same morning, so my seats were row 1, right in the middle. I was so close I could smell Kim Gordon’s shampoo (Jojoba).
Not for long though, the kids rushed down from their seats to the front of the stage and the security could only hold them back for a song or two before they rushed in and filled the gap between me, Emma (my date) and the stage. Just as well really, as Emma said
“Now it feels like we’re at a gig instead of a private audience with the Sultan of Brunei“.
At least that’s what I think she said, some sweaty guy with a beard was shouting “We loooove you Sonic Yooooooth!!” in my ear.
In case you haven’t heard them before, most Sonic Youth songs go like this:
- Bass guitars and drums pound out rhythm
- Guitars come in sounding like R2D2 getting a hand job
- Guitars and bass start to play a tune together
- Cool sounding lyrics
- Guitar freakout which sounds like an electric toothbrush being dropped into a bath full of copper wire
- 3 second drum solo
- Bit more guitar
- Fade out.
My Dad’s a big fan.
Some of the guitar freakouts were spectacular, Thurston (a pop singer) rubbed his guitar all over the PA stack at the side of the stage, then threw it up there, and nearly took out the security guard getting it down again. Lee (a pop singer) and Thurston later rubbed their guitar necks against the other a bit like in Ghostbusters where they cross the beams. Kim (a pop singer) meanwhile was dancing around and driving all of the kids in the audience crazy by letting them touch her hands.
At one point they played some tinny music over the PA, everybody looked at everybody else trying to work out what was going on until the Canto-pop lyrics kicked in. Everyone kind of laughed and cheered, then starting booing and sticking their middle fingers up- straight afterwards they launched into a really poppy version of “100%”- the first song of theirs I ever got into. It was, you know, a special moment.
By the end it was a total free-for-all, people stage-diving into the 4 person deep crowd between the stage and my seat (I fell backwards into my chair about 8 times), people going crazy trying to touch the guitars and hands of the band.
Kim said something to the audience right at the end, the guy next to me didn’t catch it:
Guy: What did she say?
Me: She said “You’re one of the best fucking audiences we’ve ever had”
Guy: Oh, she’s very polite!
Thumbs up.
gutted i wasnt first. oh well. you never mentioned this plan when we were comparing cock size, er um, the difference between chinese and japanese chinese characters yesterday… sounds class.
Great pictures James - it looks ace! Am going to see Sonic Youth in the summer in Barcelona - cannae fricking wait!
Mr Creegan. Welcome back to my reading pleasure. I have missed your tales of the orient.
Good stuff.
btw.
Was it my comment hellorizing Chinese Ancestor worship, prostitute merderers! and the pagan religion known as catholicism, what broke your blog? Sorry to you and all of the above if it were. (Except prozzie killers BOOOO!)
Rory, I heard it was because you were planning to post a comment explaining Chinese Remainder Theorem, so they closed down the blog in fear that you would tear a hole in the space-time continuum.
kim was in the guardian sunday mag not long back - & to say she must be about 104 now, i’d definitely poke her in the eye if she asked me to…
a very, very cool band.
coooel, i’m going to see them in london (i think) in july (i think!) my mate organised it so i’m having a bit of a brain fart about the time or place thing!