what is the point of a teenage riot if it gets you OUT of bed??!!

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DO YOU SEE??

mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 13:59 (twenty-one years ago) link

'coz john l/noel g was only gonna START a revolution from their bed, and or something like that? they didn't specify where they were going to end it (one assumes in another bed).

Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 19 November 2002 14:05 (twenty-one years ago) link

Dio's 'Rock 'n' Roll' Children is the only song that comes even close to Sonic Youth's 'Teenage Riot' when rating the best songs about being a teenager. Vitamic C's 'Graduation (Friends Forever)' and Britney's 'Not Yet a Woman' are the close runners up.

toraneko (toraneko), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 14:19 (twenty-one years ago) link

Oh oh, and 'At Seventeen' by Janis Iain fits in there somewhere near number 2.

toraneko (toraneko), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 14:20 (twenty-one years ago) link

Hearing "Teenage Riot" live and DANCING to it w/my FELLOW TEENAGERS was the only time I really loved being a TEENAGER! Teenagers spend more than enough time in bed already. I spent nearly a year in bed at 19 or so, really.

Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 14:24 (twenty-one years ago) link

Isn't that the point? "It was so great, I actually GOT UP!" One of the points, anyway. Besides you don't like this record, grr, talk about something you do like.

Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 14:29 (twenty-one years ago) link

All I wanted when I was little was to be a teenager, then I was a teenager and it fucking rocked and then I got old things started to sUx0R but at least until I was about 26 I passed as a teenager so I could pretend it was all still good and now in two days I turn 29 and I'll be OLD and I don't like it and I don't get asked for ID anymore when I go to the bottleshop and it SUX0R!

Teenage Riot reminds me of being a teenager (specifically of being 15) and therefore is the best song in the world, for the next couple of days anyway.

toraneko (toraneko), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 14:31 (twenty-one years ago) link

teenage riot is one of the songs i do like

what's so great abt getting up? bed is better than outdoors!

mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 14:33 (twenty-one years ago) link

Oh it is, that's ok then... I prefer bed to outdoors to, but the song says "it took a teenage riot to get me out of bed..." ie. he'd normally stay in bed but WOOOO there's a teenage riot going on! That's even better! What songs don't you like? Tho as long as you like this one I can't say as I care that much.

Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 14:38 (twenty-one years ago) link

"I'm Eighteen" by Alice Cooper is better.

sundar subramanian (sundar), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 14:41 (twenty-one years ago) link

I meant "too", believe it or not

Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 14:44 (twenty-one years ago) link

mark s is right as he always is. yes this is why i really want shot of the day job, so i can just lay in bed all day and write even more mentalist pieces for a wide range of publications and GET PAID FOR IT!

(admittedly the "wide range" of publications would probably need to go into triple figures to sustain a living wage, but then again - BAH! i will get all my records for nowt therefore living costs will be MINIMAL especially if i stay in bed ;-)

Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 19 November 2002 14:47 (twenty-one years ago) link

teenage riot is apparently about j mascis from dinosaur jr. and i can see why ... he's SO lazy (well, he's hard-working, but he y'know SOUNDS SO lazy).

fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 15:08 (twenty-one years ago) link

Aaargh! I don't even LIKE D Jr!

Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 15:11 (twenty-one years ago) link

Dio's 'Rock 'n' Roll' Children is the only song that comes even close to Sonic Youth's 'Teenage Riot' when rating the best songs about being a teenager.

Bah, "Bastards of Young" deserves mention.

Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 15:16 (twenty-one years ago) link

admittedly the "wide range" of publications would probably need to go into triple figures to sustain a living wage, but then again - BAH! i will get all my records for nowt therefore living costs will be MINIMAL especially if i stay in bed ;-)

Marcello, my friend, I do believe you've described a form of heaven here. ;-)

Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 16:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

what about anti-sleep anthems like like nas "NY State of Mind" where he says "never sleep 'cause sleep is the cousin of death", or "no sleep til brooklyn", motorhead's hardline antisleep stance eg "no sleep til hammersmith" or their self-titled theme song, or any number of trucker songs like dave dudley's "six days on the road" or del reeves' "loking at the world through a windshield"? fuck sleep.

Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 16:50 (twenty-one years ago) link

never sleep 'cause sleep is the cousin of death

"Listen, man, sleep gives you cancer, EVERYONE knows that!"

Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 16:54 (twenty-one years ago) link

eggzackly!

Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 16:55 (twenty-one years ago) link

(n.o.u.'s 13-point program = tr's autotelic anti-slack answer-record)

jones (actual), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 17:11 (twenty-one years ago) link

yus

actually one of the things i dislike abt daydream nation is its faux-slacker pandering, mostly in the rhythm section => it's a draggy record, i think

mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 17:14 (twenty-one years ago) link

But.. but.. the album is called "Daydream Nation"!

o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 17:21 (twenty-one years ago) link

yeah, what i mean is, SY aren't actual slackers themselves, and their beat-inflected hommage to the world of so-called slackerdom feels a bit forced and false

trust me, i know fake laziness when i hear it!! these guys couldn't not get out of bed if you paid them!!

mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 17:29 (twenty-one years ago) link

b-but pitchfork have said its the best alb of the 80s. how can you possibly go against them?

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 17:37 (twenty-one years ago) link

I don't think it's forced. Especially when I was a slack teenager, I found it quite genuine and moving. I can see now that it must have taken them some effort to seem effortless and slapdaisical, but I think there's a genuine empathy, or at least a love-hate feeling, for slackness in the record.

o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 17:45 (twenty-one years ago) link

i agree that the drowsiness is a bit inauthentic, it only gets going after they admit that they've showered and brushed their teeth on side 4 w/ eliminator jr

Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 17:47 (twenty-one years ago) link

i don't think it's forced in the sense of a false allegiance, quite the opposite: in fact one of the reasons i think the record is overrated is that the sentiment behind it is true, and tremendously likeable

mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 17:53 (twenty-one years ago) link

Did you see what I did there? I just coined a word: "slapdaisical". Search for it - no matches on Google. If it catches on, I want my name in the dictionary, darn it.

o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 17:53 (twenty-one years ago) link

(slapdaisical = slapdash + lackadaisical, obv.)

o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 17:58 (twenty-one years ago) link

it's a nice word

the youth shd do a song called it

mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 17:58 (twenty-one years ago) link

They can't have it. It's my word! MINE!

o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 18:01 (twenty-one years ago) link

you'd love it nate.

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 18:11 (twenty-one years ago) link

Of course, they never would do a song called that. It kind of puts the lie to their whole charade, no? Or at least it adds a polarizing charge to an issue that they prefer to play both sides of.

o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 18:15 (twenty-one years ago) link

yeah i don't think it's a false sentiment either - if it rings that way it's maybe a dissonance between the continued teen themes and the band's natural erm mellowing-out? nothing new there (sudden adults fixating on teen-age), except this one had the misfortune (?) of heralding/coinciding with the bullshit "slacker" zeitgeist shift, which rather than bucking instantly SY and their contemporaries more-or-less fed for a decade

jones (actual), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 18:33 (twenty-one years ago) link

i way prefer yre second way of say saying it, o-nate: i don't think it waz a charade at all, i think it wz somewhat confused thinking, abt what constituted the us underground in the late 80s (in which black flag and the grateful dead were obviously co-extensive, as it were)

mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 18:34 (twenty-one years ago) link

thinking i think i at that time shared, i might add: yet i always found DDN a let-down

mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 18:38 (twenty-one years ago) link

so are you saying that 'slacker' type stuff was faked in a ''bad'' way?

(OK maybe I should get the lyrics sheet from some web page and 'study' it)

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 18:45 (twenty-one years ago) link

Well, if SY's thinking in DDN is confused thinking, then it is confused thinking that was shared by most social observers at the time and later. Witness the great mass of pontification on "Generation X": the generation of irony, alienation, apathy, and cynicism about cultural institutions; the hardest generation to market to. As recently as last week, an article in the NY Times, "This Generation Gap is 38 Million Strong", perpetuates this image.

o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 18:50 (twenty-one years ago) link

kind of what i meant, o. nate, except "the hardest generation to market to", which i don't even know where to begin disagreeing with.

jones (actual), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 18:55 (twenty-one years ago) link

Actually, you might even say that SY were especially keen social observers, since DDN pre-dated the popular analysis of "Gen X" by a few years.

o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 18:57 (twenty-one years ago) link

except "the hardest generation to market to", which i don't even know where to begin disagreeing with

Well, read the Times article I linked to. That's where I got the idea from.

o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 18:58 (twenty-one years ago) link

the SY confusion = to say that 68-ers and "gen x" are seamlessly at one w.one another in their opposition to The Straight Life, plus on top of this attempting to mimic j.mascis-style slap-daisicality in their own groove (ie how mascis wd have done sonic youth), which in fact doesn't quite come off

ie they're not wrong to say, there's a lot of foax out there who aren't in sync with the mainstream, but they somewhat sentimentalise the cohesion of thsse foax, and the objective correlative in their actual play doesn't work (i think bcz it actually excludes THEM: they were applauding observers pretending to be participants AT THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT... what's interesting is how quickly they refashioned themsleves back into being activists and enablers)

(ie what they stumbled on was reverence and awe and hope and wishful thinking)

they (correctly) transvalue the affectlessness, as the idealistic disillusionment it largely is — a good deal more accurately than most of the subsequent slacker blather — but then i think mis-cue the link as a sedimented 60s laidbackness (via lee's dead fandom), which they then fondly — but in retrospect also clumsily and confusedly and unconvincingly — mimic, as a sign of allegiance

on DDN SY said "yay the kids" and the kids have conistently said yay back, but actually i think this mutual admiration loop exactly excludes what SY are good at (which there's more of in sister and in goo)

a film which iconified the "no values" affectless generation pretty early = river's edge (1986)

mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 19:56 (twenty-one years ago) link

the SY confusion = to say that 68-ers and "gen x" are seamlessly at one w.one another in their opposition to The Straight Life

I don't think is a confusion so much as an aspiration - a daydream, if you will. "Teenage Riot" is poised on the cusp of where teenage alienation turns into action. There is an aching for action, but at the same time, a hesitation and doubt that the action will ever take place: "It better work out/I hope it works out my way" - notice the undercurrent of desperation - "it better work out". The song is not an announcement of imminent revolution, as we would have had in '68 - it is a revery on the state of perpetual revolution that is adolescence: "So who's to take the blame for the stormy weather/You're never gonna stop all the teenage leather and booze".

o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 20:29 (twenty-one years ago) link

eight years pass...

the thread that got me way into River's Edge

symbol of the paramount chaos (Drugs A. Money), Monday, 13 June 2011 01:32 (twelve years ago) link

seven years pass...

Randomly came across this webpage: https://americansongwriter.com/2015/10/lyric-of-the-week-sonic-youth-teenage-riot/

(the 2nd “comment” is kinda funny)

underqualified backing vocalist (morrisp), Saturday, 15 December 2018 19:51 (five years ago) link

seems like it's paywalled and I can't see the comments either. Judging from the intro though it would be a good candidate for the terrible music writing thread

longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Sunday, 16 December 2018 03:49 (five years ago) link

Weird, you’re right — it wasn’t like that earlier today.

The writing is fine, when you get past the intro... it’s basically a long discussion/analysis of the song’s lyrics. And the second comment is Thurston himself (posting via Facebook) — plugging a book, correcting “booze” to “cooze,” and posting the song’s complete lyrics.

underqualified backing vocalist (morrisp), Sunday, 16 December 2018 04:11 (five years ago) link

Anyway, I didn’t know the song was a pseudo-fantasy about J. Mascis running for President in the 1988 election.

underqualified backing vocalist (morrisp), Sunday, 16 December 2018 04:44 (five years ago) link


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