'Bad Moon Rising' is the best Sonic Youth album!

BTW, I know everyone around here thinks "Daydream Nation" sucks, but I love it. I truly don't hear the bad production that everyone complains about, and I think it contains some of SY's most focused noise-art and best songs.

Uh, no.

Bad Moon Rising is pretty darned good. One neat thing about my copy...it's the Blast First edition, and there's some wonko numbering going on. I think my copy has no track 9. Anyone else notice this?

http://www.ilxor.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=004vWr

At any rate, I couldn't disagree more-LOVEITLOVEITLOVEITLOVEITLOVEIT.

-J

^^The above comment might be true...

But this is the best Sonic Youth album. Why don't they do the between song ambience any more? Really this album anticipated Washing Machine/A Thousand Leaves. Parts of it sound very similar to the recent B-sides thing they put out.

BRAVEMENRUNNNNNNN! INTO THE SETTING SUN!

i've never heard any sonic youth pre-daydream nation

That's fine, but it's no way to live. Really you should just fix that. Like quickly.

Toss up between this one and 'Confusion is Sex' for me.

esoj I think you would like Sister, give it a listen sometime.

this is the best SY album, yes.

society is a hole.. it makes me lie to my friends..

I almost started a Sonic Youth poll, but I didn't want to be that guy.
I would have voted for Bad Moon Rising. It's sexy!

My friends have big hair.
And everybody's scared.

I think there was an SY album poll. This album should have won, but didn't.

well, i didn't find it in a search.
All the better that I didn't start one, I guess.

BMR has always been my favorite. I just now noticed BMR is the album title and first song.

it's running down my street with white power sneakers

their first really good, but not great, album

side 1 is easily my favourite side of any sonic youth record.

Okay this is a bit weird...I pulled this album out earlier tonight before I saw this thread was revived. I'm shocked to find someone else revived it besides me! Yes..."Brave Men Run..." etc. I mainly pulled it out for "I Love Her All The Time", but I did play it from the beginning and let it roll. Sometimes I really, really love this album, and other times it doesn't grab me as much. It's kindof strange like that. I really dug it tonight, though. No doubt.

She started to HOLLER!

The thing to remember is that there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING which sounded anything like BMR when it came out. They refined it, other people picked up on it, but it was just shockingly new at the time.

The only track I'll return to here is "Death Valley `69", which still fucking delivers.

I only ever listen to "Brave Men Run".

"Sister" is the best one, tbh.

The whole first side is seamless, and I think I've said it elsewhere but I really wish that more people would use *this* album as their inspiration when they want to be influenced by Sonic Youth. The way Society is a Hole and I Love Her All The Time emerge from chaotic between-song collage remains breathtaking. I've never been as big on side two...seems like a lead-up to DV69, which sounds like Evol.

Secret theory is that once the band found a "good" drummer, the end was near, with Evol and Sister being (fantastic) documents of a band that had already peaked conceptually.

I pulled this album out earlier tonight before I saw this thread was revive

Weird. I just downloaded BMR this morning and am currently listening to it for the first time - jaw on the floor. The only Sonic Youth I'd heard previously was Daydream Nation, Goo, and Dirty. I can confidently say that the better qualities of those albums pale before anything on here. This record is the shit! I am on "Satan Is Boring" right now.

I totally agree with both dlp and Soukesian, I think part of my response to this record may have been my age and the time it came out in... familiar motifs for those incandescent early music experiences. The cover made a visceral impact, standing out from a wall of nondescript albums like a giant signal bonfire. The music itself had a cataclysmic impact on me and many of my friends. I may never love an album so much and so completely ever again (I was 19 when it came out, btw).

yeah, i've got a few 85 shows but not this one. is this right after steve shelley joined?

I know it was sometime in '85 when he joined, that seems about right.

This is the first Sonic Youth release I'm excited about in 20 years. Looks great.

haha! yeah i love live 80s SY. the Hold That Tiger fan club CD from the sister tour is probably in my top 5 SY releases.

Looks very similar to Walls Have Ears (which is great, I love that album!) That was recorded in November with Shelley so he should be on this too.

Shelley joined in June of 85 so it'll be him.

and yeah, he's the guy who looks about 9 years old in that cover pic

Awesome! I still have this on tape from years ago -- one of my favorites. This is the version of Expressway I hear in my head when I think about that song.

First clip is out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2dpbiO7dZk

Sounds way better than the boot I have. Day one purchase.

That sounds pretty great, definitely excited about this. Love the setlist, and these days I just cannot hear enough versions of Expressway. Such a cool song.

I generally like the live version of BMR songs better than the album so I'm excited for this.

Yeah, that is what excites me most about that setlist actually. Feel like those songs take on a whole new life outside of the studio that is really cool. Would love to have seen the tours supporting/around BMR.

Listened to BMR yesterday. Great for this season.

white power sneakers

http://www.bizrate.com/mens-shoes/white-power-sneakers/

my friends have big heads

There must be a club for people whos first SY album was BMR.

Still an amazing album in so many ways (from someone expecting 8 version of 'Death Valley 69'), they could never do it again (literally = Bert/Shelley)

i'm in that club though i've never met a fellow member. i still clearly remember buying it not long after it came out (having only heard death valley '69) and the guy in the record shop who sold me it being crazily excited that someone had bought a copy. he built the record up to such epic proportions that i was sure it was going to be a huge anti climax but of course he was exactly right and it wasn't.

The first 2 songs of BMR essentially boils their entire career into a short 5 minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ2fjLD45WQ

Everything you need to know is all there, the long spacey passages of Daydream Nation, the catchy "almost-pop" of the 90s, Kim playing tough, tape-loops, free-form noise dro, prepared guitar, open tunings for days, the (proto-)Steve Shelley shuffle, squalory whale calls of feedback, metronomic bass...

There must be a club for people whos first SY album was BMR.

*raises hand*

Somewhere upthread I talk about seeing the cover on the wall of a store that summer and being super intrigued, when I went back to college that fall ('85) one of the first people I met was a super cool girl who had that (and Alien Soundtracks, and other excellent records). I listened to my tape of it every day for at least a month.

The Smart Bar Chicago 1985 record is fucking amazing.

That's all.

yeah it's so cool hearing one of the first Shelley shows, a couple early performances of EVOL cuts, when they announced i thought it was gonna be a Bert era show and was like "whatever, I've already seen Gila Monster Jamboree"

I wouldn't mind having a nice version fo Gila Monster Jamboree, too! I love this stuff.

I'm also afraid this is going to get overlooked on end of year lists. Which would be a shame.

why?

it's practically a reissue, show had been around as a bootleg forever

why do I think it'll be overlooked or why is it a shame?

To answer the first, it's never been released, so shouldn't be considered a reissue, but because it's old and a live show a lot of people will dismiss it out of hand.

For the second, it's one of the best things to come out this year, and I would argue one of the very best things in Sonic Youth's catalog. It deserves to be recognized.

archival live records are rarely going to be looked at in an 'album of the year' way and i'm fine w/ that tbh

Led Zep's How The West Was Won made top 40 of Pazz & Jop, and rightfully so. It's about release date, not recording date.

yeah that was what i was thinking of when i said 'rarely.' 3-disc Zep is kind of understandably a diff't deal.

I understand why Zep did so well, but to dismiss archival first releases in general is weird. I don't expect this to be even a blip, though maybe with Sonic Youth inactive/kaput it'll get some sympathy. I'm just saying it should get more consideration than it will, because it's awesome.

this new Smart Bar Chicago 1985 show album they released is fucking great

is it streaming anywhere?

it's on spotify but i need to cop this SY jawn ASAP

ok found it -- funny the tape starts out all rough, i was like man they really put out a bootleggy sounding tape! but it improves after about a minute.

yeah i didn't know if i was gonna listen to the whole thing at first but overall the sound is pretty god

Yeah, they actually address that issue in the liner notes. The guy who taped the show at the higher quality apparently didn't start recording right away, so they patched in another, lower fidelity source for the start of the set. They liked the way it sounded, as if the band like really kicks in.

Listening to this now on Spotify. God, when Steve tears in on "Death Valley '69" it's just amazing.

ha, yeah, this rules.

http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1162221683055318405EaXRzv

eh? wrong thread?
anyway, this is kinda bumming me out that i'll (probably?) never see SY live again! oh well, last time i saw 'em they closed with an epic "expressway" so i guess that's as good a way to go out as any.

Should add I was a member of the Bad Moon club.

"Just buy me the album with the best cover".

I have my grade 6 art students design album covers every year. I've got a girl who arrived from China a couple of months ago--very good artist, not much English and close to an elective mute on top of that, so sometimes I let her copy existing art rather than come up with her own ideas. She did a really nice job copying the Bad Moon Rising cover. Just finished putting it and a dozen other covers up on a bulletin board, and noticed for the first time she renders their name as Song Youth.

It may not be their best album (that would be either Evol or Sister...probably Evol) but "I Love Her All the Time" is their best song, no contest.

My favorite Sonic Youth albums are Daydream Nation and Goo because I imagine a world where Sonic Youth were a pop band and it's a glorious world, I assure you.

Evol. It's the one that shows they could have done everything and been a band beyond category

(xpost) My student was probably trying to make the same point with Song Youth--that she likes their melodic, poppier side better than their arty stuff.

still BMR. forever.

good stuff here: http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2015/06/08/wax-wonders-sonic-youth-singles/

Tthanks for the link; that version of "Kill Yr Idols" rules! i saw them on about 6 or 7 dates of the Evol, and Sister tours and would repeatedly (and no doubt annoyingly) shout for "Kill Yr Idols" from the front row to the band's evident annoyance. They never played it.

Ooh been looking for that kill yr idols single since high school