>
>
> On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 3:26 PM, Eric Beck <ersatzdog at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 2:46 PM, Dwayne Monroe<dwayne.monroe at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Here at LBO, home of delicious mixed drink recipes, dystopian dating
>> > guidance, bored AIs in search of weapons platforms, neuromancing femme
>> > personas, language is a virus REsearch, old fashioned cranky opinion
>> > mongoing and jacketed anti proton beams, we argue about many things.
>>
>> I have a historical connection to SY that is probably too strong, but
>> still I agreed with some of what k-punk wrote. On the other hand, I
>> can't really take his posts seriously. I think they'd be worth arguing
>> against if he'd (1) not been intentionally provocative or contrarian
>> (I can read Zizek for that); (2) shown any interest in the music SY
>> has produced over the last 25 years; and (3) not consistently engage
>> in the same sort of curatorial exercises and canon-making that he dogs
>> on SY for engaging in: Burial brilliant, the rest of dub-step bad; The
>> Fall were brilliant through the first half of '82, etc.
>>
>
> I'll admit this sounds about right to me.
>
> As for Sonic Youth themselves, I knew nothing of them until I was
> introduced by a friend to Daydream Nation (1988, I believe, was the release,
> to answer Chris's question), and it was a revelation.
> I built rituals around some tracks and sequences of tracks that stayed with me for nearly twenty years,
> they had such emotional
> power. Shoot, I even liked "experimental jet set" (which I believe Doug recently used a snippet from).
> I admit I have not kept up closely with them (I haven't with much of anyone,
> except for one or two obsessions, so it really means nothing wrt my judgment
> of them), but now that the question is posed, it occurs to me that I think
> of them as rather like the way Woody Allen talks about sex and pizza: when
> they're good, they're really good; and when they're bad, they're still
> pretty good.
>
> I had a girlfriend once who used to go to Burning Man (before it got the
> WIRED endorsement, but also after; no, I never went, although I thought
> about it once for a few minutes). When we were first getting to know each
> other, she told me a story about DJing at the radio station early one
> Burning Man, and having played Daydream Nation and A Love Supreme
> back-to-back. To me, this was a powerful indicator that she was Right,
> because she was so right, and -- being disconnected from much of a music
> community -- I was sure I was the only one who had ever thought something
> like that.
>
> The appeal of Daydream Nation, which I haven't listened to in a while, but
> which is always on my phone, actually, and always on my computer, and
> probably one of the first things I put on my computer when I first got an
> ipod, is in both the sonic and the lyrical thematics, but these are of
> different orders. The cyberpunk schtick appealed very much to me, as I was
> also reading Gibson and Sterling (et al) at that time, and I still enjoy
> that aspect of the album, but the deepest resonances are are obviously in
> the music itself, especially the guitar work. The relationship between
> structure -- sustained (more or less, but I think mostly "more") over two
> LPs -- and its dismantling, or chaos and its structuring. But others are
> much more eloquent on this than I will ever be. I'd be content (if not
> happy) to say that it just sounded amazing.
>
> I am inspired to listen to it now, in fact.
>
I did get to see them once, btw. It was pretty sweet.