EASE DOWN THE ROAD

The above-mentioned shift in musical politics all comes to mind as I think back to my first Sonic Youth show. Allow me to paint the picture of hipness. First off, the show took place at Detroit’s Andrew’s Hall, not the most ideal place for a bunch of skinny white guys with homemade t-shirts to hang out. Second, we had the local hardcore scene in full effect, and they had no desire to see Kim Gordon bounce around, Steve Shelley blend in or Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo duel their wonderful noise. No, they just wanted to smoke pot and fistfight to the sound of the local hardcore bands who were opening (and when I say fight, I really do mean fight). Also in attendance that night was the indie rock t-shirt club, who proudly stick out more than the ladies you’ll occasionally see around town with the red hats on. These folks typically talk through the whole show about the last show they saw (which is written on their shirt in case they suddenly can’t recall). So that represents about 80 percent of any indie-oriented crowd; the rest are all usually there for the band. You’re bound to find a few older guys, a couple super fans and then a spattering of nearly invisible music junkies (look for the guys with crossed arms and wide eyes).

More relevant advice: You’d best not listen to Sonic Youth until you’ve realized that Nirvana is overrated and you can’t yet handle a Miles Davis album. Most listeners think that Sonic Youth is “noisy crap” with bad vocals and wonder “why do they get such good reviews.” I have a running bet with a co-worker about Sonic Youth’s status as an influential band; he laughed when I told him that they’d be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame someday. I told him to keep me current with his phone number so if we end up in different places, I can immediately call him once they are inducted, you know, to rub it in.

Whether you realize it or not, a good portion of the bands you hipsters listen to either listened to Sonic Youth, stole from Sonic Youth or are influenced by someone who was inspired by Sonic Youth. Needless to say, the Youth have done their part.

So, say you’re a level one listener (”Death Cabber”) and you pick up one of the Youth’s more recent albums. You don’t get it, right? Long before they morphed into the band that quietly released two of the most accomplished, textured rock albums of the current decade (Murray Street and Sonic Nurse), Sonic Youth were an often abrasive, sometime dreamy experimental basement progressive rock outfit. As with any 25-year-old band, Sonic Youth changed multiple times through the years, all but leaving their very early years a mystery to most and their self-titled debut all but forgotten. Now available to the indie t-shirt clubs for the first time, Sonic Youth shows the band in amazing early form over the albums five works.

Also accompanying the five dreamy landscapes are seven early live tracks, as well as what stands as their earliest released studio track, entitled “Where the Red Fern Grows.” The live tracks are, surprisingly, a bit more subdued than one would expect, given the all-out attack of their impending debut full-length, Confusion is Sex, while the studio songs take the jazz out of Can and stuff it with NYC post-punk noise. Moore and Ranaldo already seem to have their intricate guitar interplay down, most impressively on “I Don’t Want to Push It,” which also sees Moore in rare early vocal form. Unpredictably, Sonic Youth is so high-quality, it’ll make listeners wonder what happened on the sub par Confusion that followed in 1983.

So in this musical communist state we’ve all of a sudden entered, are you ready for the Youth? Rather than picking up Daydream Nation, Goo, Dirty or one of their other more accessible albums, start at the beginning with Sonic Youth. Not only will your street-cred go up, but you’ll hear the origins of grunge. Death Cabbers, take this down: Sonic Youth’s early work influenced The Pixies, Nirvana and, thus, everyone who currently makes a living ripping off Nirvana. It’s not a lesson, it’s a fact: Sonic Youth were doing in 1981 what most bands Pitchfork and the like hail as “experimental” are doing in 2006. Sonic Youth is must-have for fans and a roots lesson for ambitious alternative rock novices.