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Pitchfork's Top 200 songs of the 1980s

Saw SY headline a club gig in Norfolk in mid/late 90s (support for Washing Machine I believe), and they were fantastic. I would imagine they are a much better small gig than arena show band.
 
At least they give credit to Michael's best song.

And phd has no room to complain about the list
 
Kim is the most irrelevant piece of that band. I don't know if they'd reunite without her, but they could. I think she'll get over it because at some point, money talks and people will want to hear her butcher Kool Thing. She doesn't have the talent to make $ on her own.
 
Here's p4k's commentary of "teen age riot," ranked 15th:
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However cheekily, "Teen Age Riot" attempted to capture the zeitgeist like this: "At the time, J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr represented our slacker genius," Thurston Moore once said of their guitar anti-hero—a long-haired guy who later turned down an opportunity to join Nirvana—"so in tribute we wrote a song called ‘Rock N Roll for President’ about him being president, which we eventually renamed ‘Teen Age Riot’."

Sonic Youth recorded 1988’s Daydream Nation, their major label debut and unequivocal masterpiece, that summer at a SoHo studio owned by minimalist pioneer Philip Glass; Public Enemy were there, too, working on the other board. For an album that winkingly took the form of a double LP with an embedded trilogy and fine art on the cover (that candle painting sold for over $16 million in 2011), its opening track, "Teen Age Riot", was deceptively simple. But it’s the kind of rock'n'roll song that makes you feel like you could change your entire life—your spirit, desire—if you listened, read, and watched hard enough, perceptive of Sonic Youth’s clues. It sounds like two songs—Kim Gordon’s free-associating dream logic pries it open, followed by some of the most conventionally-structured lyrics that Moore ever wrote—but inside was a sea of possibility. The song had the cool Warholian distance, the unconventional tunings, the dryly evocative turns-of-phrase that made Sonic Youth’s sound, but it had a rare looseness. You can still imagine yourself existing within this one’s world. Steve Shelley’s aerodynamic beat gave it a spacious sprawl, and those wistfully twinging chord changes at the end of each verse beckoned an affecting, reeling invitation: you’re really it.

To be clear, no one in Sonic Youth was a teenager when "Teen Age Riot" came out; everyone was in their thirties aside from 26-year-old drummer Steve Shelley. But what Sonic Youth rendered a "teen age riot"—the susceptibility to be galvanized, the openness of spirit, a willingness to care about music that much—was and is a wake-up call you can live at any age, at any time. This is crucial to remember as the narrative around Sonic Youth mutates. It was "Teen Age Riot" that gave Sonic Youth the mass appeal to wield real influence and power in popular and unpopular culture, and whether a guitar band will ever do that again remains to be seen. Now something Gordon said of this era in Our Band Could Be Your Life feels especially pertinent: "We were influential in showing people that you can make any kind of music you want." —Jenn Pelly
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EatLeadCommie said:
Kim is the most irrelevant piece of that band. I don't know if they'd reunite without her, but they could. I think she'll get over it because at some point, money talks and people will want to hear her butcher Kool Thing. She doesn't have the talent to make $ on her own.
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I don't think you understand the number of Sonic Youth songs Kim Gordon is vocalist on. They're not reuniting without her. It's always a safe bet that a band will reunite for money, but your hyperbole is selling Kim's role in the group short.
 
RedSoxFaithful said:
Here's p4k's commentary of "teen age riot," ranked 15th:
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"unequivocal masterpiece". Ha. Yeah I don't think it really equivocates.

And Kim is defs the better vocalist of the two, although that's not saying much. She was on the WTF podcast recently. Did not sound like they would be back together anytime soon. According to her it was a messy divorce.
 
EatLeadCommie said:
Kim is the most irrelevant piece of that band. I don't know if they'd reunite without her, but they could. I think she'll get over it because at some point, money talks and people will want to hear her butcher Kool Thing. She doesn't have the talent to make $ on her own.
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this is pretty far off
 
TheTwinAndreBen said:
"unequivocal masterpiece". Ha. Yeah I don't think it really equivocates.

And Kim is defs the better vocalist of the two, although that's not saying much. She was on the WTF podcast recently. Did not sound like they would be back together anytime soon. According to her it was a messy divorce.
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Yeah the way Thurston talks about it makes it seem like it's all fine, but the way Kim talks about it, it doesn't seem like they're on speaking terms at all.
 
Kim is not the better vocalist of the two. She is the worst of the three in the band, by far. It isn't even close. And yet somehow, even though she never really sings, her voice has become worse with age, both on record and live. Kool Thing and the opening to Teen Age Riot are about the only two songs where she is remotely in key. I happen to think her best stuff is on Dirty (Drunken Butterfly, Shoot, On The Strip... not because it's in key, but because the guitar atmospherics are outstanding on those songs and throughout Dirty, really. Thanks, Butch Vig), but they never do those songs live anymore. Basically, she's relegated to Kool Thing, Bull In The Heather, and whatever songs she sings on the latest album. Thurston and Lee are the brilliance in that band. Lee is criminally underrated and overlooked. Kim was relegated to bass (in recent years, token guitar) for a reason. Her singing was cool at one time and had its niche in the indie world, but she really sounds like an old woman croaking out words now.
 
EatLeadCommie said:
Kim is not the better vocalist of the two. She is the worst of the three in the band, by far. It isn't even close. And yet somehow, even though she never really sings, her voice has become worse with age, both on record and live. Kool Thing and the opening to Teen Age Riot are about the only two songs where she is remotely in key. I happen to think her best stuff is on Dirty (Drunken Butterfly, Shoot, On The Strip... not because it's in key, but because the guitar atmospherics are outstanding on those songs and throughout Dirty, really. Thanks, Butch Vig), but they never do those songs live anymore. Basically, she's relegated to Kool Thing, Bull In The Heather, and whatever songs she sings on the latest album. Thurston and Lee are the brilliance in that band. Lee is criminally underrated and overlooked. Kim was relegated to bass (in recent years, token guitar) for a reason. Her singing was cool at one time and had its niche in the indie world, but she really sounds like an old woman croaking out words now.
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Did she spurn your advances sometime?

Yeah, she's gotten older. She's 62 years old. Voices change. I don't think atonal vocals reflect poorly on a rock group that has experimented with those sounds for 30 years. Seems like a silly thing to point out.

The fact is that she's as much a part of the group as Thurston, Lee and Shelly. She's been with the group for three decades and pulls vocal duty on what seems like at least half (I haven't counted, but feel free) their songs. She has her role as a performer in their most popular songs, and her voice has noticeably aged, but that's not an argument against what she's contributed to the band in total. They're all equally brilliant musicians. There isn't a weak link.

I agree that some of her best material is on Dirty. In the seven shows they played on their final 2011 tour, Dirty was the fourth most played from album. Take all the setlist data of every song they've performed live and Dirty only drops to fifth place. It's not a marginalized album. It's clearly one of their best and the work she put into it shines through live and on record.

I'm also not sure what "relegated to bass" means. You have an interesting perspective on rock musicianship.
 
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