Wish POLLfillment: Sonic Youth's Dirty

You asked for it; you got it.

absolute best kim performances, vicious and totally confident

most production presence

biggest dumbest drums

sickest noises

most urgent riffing

best lee song?

CLOUD JAMS

i believe anita hill

'radio' songwriting fits in rather than sticking out

fat alt-rock bass

this is the best SY album forever

Really think Bob Rock would have better helped them realize their vision for this one.

THERESA'S SOUNDWORLD!

WISH FULFILLMENT!

SWIMSUIT ISSUE!

I love Shoot and Orange Rolls, and On the Strip...

I think the radio songwriting is a bit bad but otherwise this album owns completely. J. totally otm

90S RULE FOREVER FLANNEL 4 LIFE

WHERE YOU GOIN / WHERE YOU BEEN / MAKING WISHES AND WATCHIN' DREAMS

I believe this is the last album where Steve Shelley 'goes nuts'.

when this came out i bought it immediately and it was my first sonic youth album. to this day it is my fave. great to listen to with full speed on the german autobahn.

i think i heard some double bass drum pedal freakout action i never noticed before

if you haven't seen the video for 100% in a while it really deserves a revisit. spike jonze mourning the tragic death of jason lee while sonic youth plays a house party filled with extras bedecked in the grungiest of grungewear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3gN9Up6hmc

if you're lucky, youtube precedes it with a tequila ad starring perry farrell!

I just posted the Letterman performance of 100% on FB this morning...funny timing

I find the Dirty Boots and 100% vids unwatchable

tell like it is

still got a lot of love for this album

I'M JUST HERE FOR DICTATION
AND NOT YOUR SUMMER VACATION

Much love rest too much

I read one of the Soulwax-guys had the intro of "100%" as his phone´s ringtone. Not everyone around him liked that and he quickly changed it.

That sounds like a great idea actually

i think it was the opening bit of (delayed?) guitar at the beginning of shoot that MTV used for one of their commercials.. can't recall which commercial, but it was aired frequently

fuck, i'm bout to put on SILVER SESSION. there's great energy in this music. probably would've voted for theresa's soundworld, though not sure.. may have voted on it.

JC is sounding beautiful this morning.

The entrance of the second guitar at around 0.22 on "Theresa" is my single favourite part of this album

JC is the best

it's 8.30 AM and i'm putting this on

the secondary guitar right at the beginning of JC sounds like some wild distorted horn.. i get a sort of a tv crime story image from it.

"and all you men are slime"

lol

I believe this is the last album where Steve Shelley 'goes nuts'.

yeah. i blame his post-dirty suckiness on overemployement (two dollar guitar, cat power, raincoats, christina rosenvinge et al) plus he started putting on some weight, always a bad sign for rock drummers

that is the stupidest thing i've ever heard

haha why?

and btw thurston and lee got also super duper lazy with their chops, they almost sound like semi-virtuosos on dirty

because his playing, though it absolutely changed and got less bombastic after the early '90s, did not get "sucky," and the idea that playing in multiple bands (or gaining weight) would suddenly just wear a drummer out and make them incapable of rocking out satisfactorily is an incredible facile simpleheaded "theory."

I could be wrong, but my theory is that Shelley was still copying Bert and Sclavunos (both extremely good and original, though not conventionally talented, drummers) for a while, but at some point he just went over to what he does best, which is buh-buh-cha-buh-buh-cha. Basically a krautrock drummer in an art rock band, and that's why SY went downhill so badly. It's like they started off working with interesting received Branca+interesting drumming and as those influences slowly wear off the band goes to hell and all that's left is echoes of Kim Fowley and early-90's teenage feminist catchphrases.

went down what the fuck hill

some dude otm. i dont see any deterioration with Shelley's drumming after Dirty

see hear whatever

they still played a fair amount of pre-93 music right up through SY's last tours and there was certainly no sense that Steve was struggling to play the old fast stuff. .

Just playing The Eternal now to make sure I'm not insane. Every single drum track is buh-buh-cha, buh-buh-cha. I'm willing to bet that 90% of what he did was buh-buh-cha, buh-buh-cha. Shelley was an incredibly uncreative drummer, in a band that really needed a creative one.

why?

Quite the opposite: with their tunings and those singer-lyricists I want a super-steady drummer.

dude is pretty great at buh-buh-cha, buh-buh-cha, underrated drummer skill

Probably not coincidental that Bert is the only one of the group who was in a great band *after* SY.

Kind of imagining how easily Shelley would have ruined Halloween, for example.

his drumming on Murray Street leaves me cold, his grooves feel well-rote at this point. especially with 'rain on tin', one of the more interesting tracks, his drumming is accommodating (serves the music, whatever), but i find it pretty dull. 'disconnection notice' is a basically rehash of the self obsessed and sexxee groove (not steve's fault), and the noise break of 'dude ranch nurse' remarkably recreates the "instrumental break" of becuz.. compare the drumming, it's uncanny.

I almost wrote something up around this, but nah. I would be repeating like 20 statements made on dozens of SY threads. Simple breakdown: I am glad that I am not bored by late-period Sonic Youth.

Alfred otm: Shelley's rock-solid presence has been greatest asset p much since forever. Also, surely whoever said Bert was the only one in a classic band post-SY surely meant Sclavunos, who ended up in the Bad Seeds (assertion is total bullshit as far as I can tell, and highly debatable besides)

When I think of Shelley I think of almost Keith Moon sorts of fills, like, wtf is this super-steady take on him? Esp. on Goo and Dirty, he's all rolls and fills. The first thing that pops in my head, in fact, is Kool Thing, and that is total Moon.