Posting from Sonic Youth & Catpower at UPenn

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Hi! its fucking cold here and there's only about 300 students. Cat power played an entire set on her own. like, a real set. it was crazy. a bunch of us snuck into a commons area and now im posting to the internet. god, im lame.

― maria tessa sciarrino (theoreticalgirl), Friday, 15 April 2005 23:49 (twenty years ago)

No, you're awesome! Your pain is our entertainment!

300 people ... what would be a sold out show?

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Friday, 15 April 2005 23:53 (twenty years ago)

The one time I saw Cat Power, she played a full set by herself without breaking down or anything. I felt vaguely let down, like I'd been gypped out of the regular show! But she did "You May Know Him" and "Sea Of Love," and that was lovely.

― Matthew C Perpetua (inca), Friday, 15 April 2005 23:55 (twenty years ago)

Is the show being picketed?

― Open your eyes; you can fly! (ex machina), Friday, 15 April 2005 23:59 (twenty years ago)

i saw the same show 10 years ago

cool thread

― kephm, Saturday, 16 April 2005 00:01 (twenty years ago)

Holy shit, only 300 people to see SY? Couldn't they do better than that at any venue in Philly?

― Hurting (Hurting), Saturday, 16 April 2005 03:19 (twenty years ago)

the space is supposed to hold about 2,000 people. so yeah, it sucked for the student events committee that put it on. but it was awesome for all 400 of us -- we got to hang with thurston.

― maria tessa sciarrino (theoreticalgirl), Saturday, 16 April 2005 06:37 (twenty years ago)

I wish Thurston was my goofy uncle.

― Suedey (John Cei Douglas), Saturday, 16 April 2005 09:57 (twenty years ago)

i helped a friend move, and then didn't go to this. oh well, i read the recently re-posted amy phillips' review of murray street (on villagevoice.com), and agreed with it this time.

― blackmail.is.my.life (blackmail.is.my.life), Saturday, 16 April 2005 13:10 (twenty years ago)

Was that the one where she complained about how they're not, like, cool anymore and then got all these angry letters?

― Hurting (Hurting), Saturday, 16 April 2005 13:29 (twenty years ago)

If it was, I remember my problem wasn't so much with her opinion of Murray Street (though I did like that album), but her seeming lack of awareness that she might just be facing the disappointments of getting older, realizing her heroes are mortals etc. Nothing is ever going to seem as cool to her in her 20s as Sonic Youth did when she was 15.

― Hurting (Hurting), Saturday, 16 April 2005 13:33 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, that's the one. It was just brought on this thread earlier in the week:

Has Sonic Youth lost the untethered, nearly sloppy feeling it had in the 1980's, with those billowy passages of improvised overtone noise, guitars in odd tuning and the tribal drums walloping? Has it become sanitized?

Nothing is ever going to seem as cool to her in her 20s as Sonic Youth did when she was 15.

Bingo.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Saturday, 16 April 2005 13:52 (twenty years ago)

Which is why her piece is almost as retarded as the punkers who used to say Fugazi "sold out" when they started making their songs have more than a couple of chords (which, as far as I can tell, was pretty early on.)

― Hurting (Hurting), Saturday, 16 April 2005 14:04 (twenty years ago)

oh man, you people are turning this thread into the equivalent of pushing a pair of black horn rimmed glasses up your nose. STOP IT. go complain about sonic youth elsewhere.

― maria tessa sciarrino (theoreticalgirl), Saturday, 16 April 2005 15:38 (twenty years ago)

nope.

(xpost)

― blackmail.is.my.life (blackmail.is.my.life), Saturday, 16 April 2005 15:46 (twenty years ago)

ok, so both catpwer and sonic touth avoided much promo of this show? is htis what always ahppens with college shows? i know dylan does this.

― kephm, Saturday, 16 April 2005 15:50 (twenty years ago)

i think it's intentional that they don't do much promo for college shows, since that's supposed to cater to students. except in this case, where apparently they were woefully out of touch with the fee-paying membership.

― blackmail.is.my.life (blackmail.is.my.life), Saturday, 16 April 2005 15:52 (twenty years ago)

Actually, the organisers were woefully out of touch with their own fee-paying membership (which could have been guessed based on the comments to the student papers that were discussed on another thread). They're the only losers here, because now they presumably have no way of breaking even. The band doesn't care, because they get paid anyway, and SY are way beyond the point of caring exactly how many people have come to see them. I'm sure they enjoyed the gig regardless. And those who did pay to see them are thrilled that they got to see SY in front of 300 people -- how many of us can say that? -- and hang out with Thurston afterward.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Saturday, 16 April 2005 16:05 (twenty years ago)

*raises hand* i saw them play to like 100 people in a field in western mass. there needs to be a sy/dinosaur jr tour again

― kephm, Saturday, 16 April 2005 16:23 (twenty years ago)

Throw Mission Of Burma on that too! Our Tour Could Be Your Life!

― miccio (miccio), Saturday, 16 April 2005 17:02 (twenty years ago)

barry, youre right. however, you need to keep in mind, they're college students not professional promoters. they dont know that when campus press & reactions are overwhelmingly negative, they need to fling open the doors to the general public [pun intended, btw]. a lowered ticket price [12$? i could have hung with that] might have also drummed up some extra audience members.

but the shows over, enough with the analyzation -- whats done is done. i got to see catpower play an hour long set, which for me, has never happened before. i also got to see sonic youth in a fairly intimate setting [except for the part where the crowd barriers were 20 feet from the stage] and they played a lot of new stuff [plus a really sludgy "bull in the heather"]. since they're my favorite band ever, so all is good in the world.

― maria tessa sciarrino (theoreticalgirl), Saturday, 16 April 2005 17:12 (twenty years ago)

i once worked a murder city devils show in school where we had the space for about 250-300 people. 19 showed up. i felt really bad for my friend who set it all up, but it's difficult to gauge these things.

― rajeev (rajeev), Saturday, 16 April 2005 17:24 (twenty years ago)

my friend ruined the ability for the student radio station to have shows by running an Aloha show where like 15 people came

― Open your eyes; you can fly! (ex machina), Saturday, 16 April 2005 17:32 (twenty years ago)

these things always shatter the illusion that young people are cynical

― miccio (miccio), Saturday, 16 April 2005 17:33 (twenty years ago)

heh. it helps to know your space and your audience. my radio station and one of the on-campus all-ages performance co-ops in ann arbor managed to get Low to play, and managed to pack in enough bodies to double the fire code limit at a 150-cap space...

― kingfish maximum overdrunk (Kingfish), Saturday, 16 April 2005 17:43 (twenty years ago)

when friends of mine got elected to student union board and had a steering interest in the spring concert, i thought (and sang to myself, in my head) "looks like we maaaade it!"

then we booked the merchantless 10,000 Maniacs and Mighty Mighty Bosstones (the year after "The Impression That I Get" had run its course). The impression that I got was "Is it still 1992?"

The answer? Nope, it was 1999.

But both gigs were totally packed, and fun, according to attendees.

I think that as much as the other things that kept me from going to SY last night was that they were so wonderful as a group of human beings and as a band when they opened for Wilco. No one was as excited as the few SY fans in the audience, and they really responded to the kind words from the fans.

― blackmail.is.my.life (blackmail.is.my.life), Saturday, 16 April 2005 17:53 (twenty years ago)

also, thurston forgot the words to "rain on tin" because, in his own admission, he was "thinking about girls going wild, in western massachussetts."

― maria tessa sciarrino (theoreticalgirl), Saturday, 16 April 2005 18:52 (twenty years ago)

College shows are hard to put on. Even if you get a band that you know people will love if they please just give it a chance, it's hard to get them in the door without lying and saying they sound like O.A.R., and so the Mountain Goats, or Bonnie Prince Billy or whoever show up at your college and play to less than 100 people. Plus the student-run sound sucks.

Still can be great, lifechanging experiences nonetheless.

― Kevin Erickson, Saturday, 16 April 2005 20:51 (twenty years ago)

awesome slumber-party-in-the-Humanities-building esque scene in the Microphones / Little Wings DVD to thread

― Roger Fidelity (Roger Fidelity), Saturday, 16 April 2005 23:57 (twenty years ago)

Hey a good portion of that DVD was filmed at my college and in my apartment!

― Kevin Erickson, Sunday, 17 April 2005 00:27 (twenty years ago)

Thurston is everybody's goofy uncle.

― The Sensational Sulk (sexyDancer), Sunday, 17 April 2005 01:26 (twenty years ago)

fwiw, the new Little Wings album is, quite predictably, amazing

ps kevin are you in the DVD at all?

― Roger Fidelity (Roger Fidelity), Sunday, 17 April 2005 02:53 (twenty years ago)

Maria, what did Thurston have to say, when yall were hanging out?

― don, Sunday, 17 April 2005 04:54 (twenty years ago)

(Also, what did you name the singles column?)

― don, Sunday, 17 April 2005 04:58 (twenty years ago)

last nite at suny purchase-------April 16th: Gza and Inspektah Deck w/ DJ Allah Mathematics(wu tang clan), Diplo, Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Matt Sweeney Play Superwolf(got me stoned), The Walkmen(i dont care), Mr. Vegas(dancehall sweat), Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings(fuckin soulfulled), Cat Power(my loverdoll,sing th phonebook and i will show up), Lightning Bolt(great to see sun shine on the paste filled),Gary Wilson(better than Zappa), The Danielson Famile(slyly sexual Lord), Dan Deacon(total spazz dance music)...........the order is reversed..so chan came on after litnin bolt..it was quite astonishing..all these lil grrls came up to chan afterwards and presented her w gifts and cds..One had a special song she wanted to sing.,.So i locked them both in my van and made fantasy dreams come true..she even got to use chans danelectro..it was tons of fin and i sold a load of records to th kiddiexxx

― dan bunnybrain (dan bunnybrain), Sunday, 17 April 2005 13:42 (twenty years ago)

You capitalist, you extracter of coins from the young. (But I suppose that's why you were there.)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 17 April 2005 13:49 (twenty years ago)

http://img78.echo.cx/img78/2376/4copy8xv.jpg

― dan bunnybrain (dan bunnybrain), Sunday, 17 April 2005 13:51 (twenty years ago)

Yes, but the banned Aug 8 show in Hammersmith.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 17 April 2005 13:53 (twenty years ago)

Large college shows suck because anything that will fill a normal small- to medium-sized venue will completely bomb somewhere huge. Anyone who'd fill a large venue is probably unattainably expensive or some band from a few years back that people will go to just because they've heard of them.

My university (well, the one I graduated from) had a long-running spring festival that would have a large concert on the weekend. There were a few notable acts over the years, including The Who in 1980 (which got namechecked at every available opportunity, leading me to believe that might be the biggest thing they got). They ended up with stuff like the Goo Goo Dolls in the late 90s, but the death knell for the large concert really happened after 2000.

They booked an act that, while not costly, the organizers apparently thought would be enjoyable. There were articles in the paper wondering who the hell they were, people claiming that the act wasn't right for the college demographic and maybe a select group would like them, and general whining. I found an article from as late as 2003 complaining about the "scarcely known" group. Who were they? The Black Eyed Peas.

― mike h. (mike h.), Sunday, 17 April 2005 14:25 (twenty years ago)

Paul Harvey to thread

― dan bunnybrain (dan bunnybrain), Sunday, 17 April 2005 14:28 (twenty years ago)

GIN BLOSSOMS @ SJU CAMPUS SPRING '96 - we'd also had violent femmes and tmbg. i feel that there was a year that there was no concert at all, with no explanation wherefore.

― blackmail.is.my.life (blackmail.is.my.life), Sunday, 17 April 2005 14:29 (twenty years ago)

Roger, I am in the background of the DVD briefly, as is my cat Steven, and my religion professor.

― Kevin Erickson, Sunday, 17 April 2005 16:59 (twenty years ago)

cool!

― Roger Fidelity (Roger Fidelity), Sunday, 17 April 2005 17:44 (twenty years ago)

it was a good show! at the end as people were filing out I overheard a girl say something like "they were better than I expected them to be after everything I heard, but it still wasn't anything great, it wasn't like a Ryan Adams show or anything".

thanks again to Maria for managing to get me into the show even though I was a total flake and got there too late to meet up with her and couldn't find her once I got there.

the setlist:
I Love You Golden Blue / Stones / Pattern Recognition / Unmade Bed / Eric’s Trip / Bull In The Heather / Dude Ranch Nurse / Paper Cup Exit / New Hampshire / Rain On Tin / Teenage Riot

― Al (sitcom), Monday, 18 April 2005 01:00 (twenty years ago)

thanks for the set list, al. sorry we didnt get a chance to meet up! i realized i didnt know your last name so i left your ticket at will call as "al h." so chickfactoresque of me.

― maria tessa sciarrino (theoreticalgirl), Monday, 18 April 2005 01:06 (twenty years ago)

What was SY's set like?

― The Brainwasher (Twilight), Monday, 18 April 2005 01:07 (twenty years ago)

what was it like you mean in greater detail than the setlist I just posted? well, like Maria said, Thurston flubbed the lyrics on "Rain On Tin" and Kim had to remind him (it kinda cracked me up that that song only has like 8 lines and he forgot to sing them). and in general they seemed a little more loose than when I saw them do pretty much the same set last summer, which makes sense since that was in the middle of a long tour and this is just a quick little string of shows. "I Love You Golden Blue" had a longer noise intro than I remember it having last time, and there was a looong noise section after "Teenage Riot". "Stones" was one of my least favorite songs on Nurse but live it's so so good. I'm still bummed that they never seem to play "Dripping Dream" live, though. and "Eric's Trip" is never as good live as it should be.

― Al (sitcom), Monday, 18 April 2005 01:21 (twenty years ago)

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