Indie Selections For Your Erections: Sonic Youth

What an amazing show. I was surprised how different the show was from the time I saw them before. This time Kim was into it much more than Thurston- the polar opposite of last time. She often came out to sing on the moniters, inches in front of me. One time she put her hand on my head for support and did a little dance, then ruffled my hair and got back on stage. That certainly was something.

Wooden Wand opened the show, who I enjoyed. They normally do a full band thing, yet for this show it was just wand himself and one girl from the band, Heidi it could have been. It was chilly during their set so someone in the audience threw up on stage a pair of those Hot Hands chemical warmers. Those things are fascinating- I haven't seen them in a long time though. Where do you buy them, ski stores?

Around 10 PM Sonic Youth took the stage and blew everyone away. Like last time they had a projection screen with constantly rotating background footage, yet it was entirely new. They opened with a few Rather Ripped tracks, playing maybe about half the album over the show. The best of the bunch live was "Do You Believe in Rapture?" which was also my favorite of the album. The song itself is sparser than most Sonic Youth tracks, with the main guitar line just being two harmonic chords and Kim's bass reduced to a thumping with her fist. It works to their advantage in an unconventional way, and it gave an hypnotizing effect live. For older tracks they played: "Shaking Hell" and "World Looks Red" from Confusion is Sex, "Candle" "Providence" and "Silver Rocket" from Daydream Nation, "Mote" from Goo, "Bull in the Heather" from Experimental Jet Set... and then "The Empty Page" from Murray Street. I was incredibly surprised for the inclusion songs from Confusion is Sex. Over the encore when Kim announced that the next song would be "Shaking Hell" the previously steadfast crowd transformed into a tidal wave that continued through the next and final song of the night "Silver Rocket." With an encore that great, I was content with being smushed. Well maybe not during the noise breakdown session, that was lame. No need for pushing during that.. The crowd was typically decent, though there's the typical lame hecklers. There's such things as setlists...they don't get changed. If you yell for "Sunday" once and they don't play it, what makes you think by the fourth time they will? Another thing that pissed me off was one girl who was trying to give Thurston a CD. She was successful, but how she did it was so low and inconsiderate- basically pushing up to the front and waving the disc in the air. Your band or band you're promoting most likely sucks and will not be the next Be Your Own Pet. Shut up.

So today's song will be "Do You Believe in Rapture?" from Sonic Youth's latest. Enjoy.

Sonic Youth - Do You Believe in Rapture?