Colossal Youth

So I was up at 9 today, in order to buy tickets for the only-announced-yesterday, slighty-secret Sonic Youth gig at The Scala (http://drownedinsound.com/news/4136650). Since I now have the tickets, and am struggling to stop myself frothing with excitement (seriously, I'm struggling to wipe it all up), I thought it only fair to write some words about one of my favourite bands.

Sonic Youth were, in fact, my absolute favourite band between the ages of 17 and 19 (they came inbetween ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead and Talking Heads in terms of favourite bands, if you were wondering). I actually own physical copies of more albums by them than of any other band (10), since downloading was much less possible when I was really, really into them and I've been a bit more naughty with The Fall. I can remember buying Daydream Nation based on seeing it get a good write up in various places, and having no idea what is would sound like, except that Trail of Dead (my favourite band at the time, you see?) were heavily indebted to them.

I can very vividly remember putting the album on at my friend Pat's house and being completely blown away by "Teen Age Riot". It was the first track on my first Sonic Youth album, and from then on I was hooked. I have some great memories of that album, including listening to the whole thing end-to-end on a particularly long journey back from a dentist's in Wimbledon (I don't often listen to the whole thing, because it's pretty long and often challenging, but that worked really well), and getting pretty freaked out by the noise jam in "Total Trash" while walking back from Pat's alone, in the dark. From then on, I bought as many albums as I could, quite often from small record stores in foreign countries while I was on holiday, for some reason. I learnt as much about them as I could (this website is a brilliant resource for anyone as nerdy as I am). I think it's fair to say that the 'Youth properly introduced me to more avant-garde and experimental music, so I will always be especially fond of them for that reason alone. I even almost bought Goodbye 20th Century, apparently their most difficult album in their more experimental SYR series (there was a lone copy in the CD Warehouse in Ealing for years... I wonder what happened to that CD).

But you may have guessed that my interested in SY has waned a little over the past few years. The rabid album-buying, even downloading, slowed down quite considerably, although I did discover that their version of "Superstar" by The Carpenters is one of the best songs ever, and I was an idiot for not listening to it sooner, 'cause now people will think I only know about it through Juno. I even missed the opportunity to see them perform Daydream Nation, in it's entirety, in 2007 because I thought it was too expensive, and becasue I was my usual dithery self. I guess I was just listening to too much other stuff to give them the attention I used to. But every so often I give them a listen and they still make me feel as excited as they always did.

That's why I'm so excited about the Scala gig: I've never really done the whole "seeing a band you love for the first time ever", except for The Fall, and that was a bit different. They're all getting on a little bit as well, but I reckon they can still rock pretty hard. And it's a pretty small venue for them, which is nice.

Anyway, so I don't feel like I'm rubbing it in too much, have a hastily-compiled Spotify playlist of my favourite Sonic Youth songs:

http://open.spotify.com/user/corpsey/playlist/1xMJbpt4rJRMogI56rfymW

Not on there is the Peel Session where they only cover Fall songs, which I really, really love, for obvious reasons. Check it out. Also "Sonic Nurse", which I didn't put any songs from on, but only because I don't know which ones are best.