Damn, this is a problem.

excluding Puerto Rico????

fuck!!!!! My Rican compatriots will be stuck with Calle 13 reggaeton! (my cousin plays drums for them! ha!)

ive heard that they love sy. their b-side Permenant Daylight off the iron lung single, is supposedly a sonic youth tribute song.

and i beilieve it. because that song has sy-ness all over it

why would anyone think the guys in Radiohead did NOT like sonic youth?
they sound like exactly the type of dudes that grew up listening to sonic youth!

thanks for this. i must find this song then.
greets.

well, this might as well be my ever-favourite Radiohead song. The first thing I ever bought by Radiohead was this EP and just couldn't get enough of that song.

Here, try it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6rqUhEyzGM

hmm i dont like early radiohead, but this song is good.
the bests are kid a & amnesiac for me.

i dont like radiohead but i like that song, it clearly has that sonic youth sound, similar to anagrama, sunday, rain on tin (almost sounded identical when it first started) etc.

It's a shame i won't be able to get a copy of this compilation since i live in the UK, oh well, i'm hoping somebody will upload it.
I wonder if world looks red will be cleaned up a bit, and whether the evol/sister songs will be remastered etc. I can't wait to hear the new album.

Anyone needs a copy? I got Rob so far.

Oi!

I didn't put the "Hits" in the title, they did, to be all ironic about not having hits though this is a compilation of their best known and promoted songs (i.e. videos, singles, college radio charts, etc). I'm cool with that irony, it's even mildly amusing. I just don't buy that the songs were actually chosen by the artists without some major prodding from industry schmucks.

Radiohead (and we're to assume it was the whole band sitting around playing Wii games who decided in consensus) "picking" "Kool Thing" is the perfect example of the fabricated hype. I actually think Thom Yorke is a pretty cool, intelligent guy, and I like their music. I could see him picking "Providence" or "Unwind" or some other nice little oddity, but no we have the very best known and radio played song by SY instead. Of course "Radiohead" and their "radio song", it makes perfect sense!


Hey dude, I'm chillin' like a frapucinno! None of this matters at all, and if some thirty-something mocha drinker who has somehow made it to that point in their life never having heard of Sonic Youth picks it up and next thing you know is playing in a band opening for Wolf Eyes, then I guess it will all be worthwhile...

Thing is, living in the NW, I see plenty of people in Starbucks who know about this kind of stuff. When I lived in Oly, Justin Trosper's roommates at the Lucky Seven house all worked at Starbucks, and some went on to management. The select stores this will be in will be geared to a hipster market without question, and they're definitely hoping a few people who would normally be at the local independent coffee shop will come into pick it up and buy a four dollar drink while they're there.

The reality is that the post-punk and slacker generations are now becoming a middle age and middle income demographic. I remember a few years ago driving home and listening to NPR and they were talking about Wire on All Things Considered and thinking, wait a minute, they used to talk about Joni Mitchel, but now they've figured out I'm out here listening, and I'm a demographic. Such is life. Indie culture is relatively mainstream these days. Rolling Stone reviews bands and compares them to Big Black even though when Big Black was around they completely ignored their existence.

This compilation is for Starbucks customers and Sonic Youth fans and most specifically the people who happen to be both. All I was ever pointing out is that I don't buy the songs were really picked by the people that is says picked them.

maybe its just that the people who are now running Rolling Stone / NPR (is that a radio station?) are into good decent music, and so are pushing that because of the position they're in. Its not allways "big corporation bad. little man good"

the people who grew up listening to Big Black, and Sonic Youth and The Butthole Surfers are older and working at spin and nme and rolling stone and all tat shit

sonic youth is fucking almost THREE DECADES OLD as a band

meet the new boss, same as the old boss

hey thats what i said! Only you said it better...

'The reality is that the post-punk and slacker generations are now becoming a middle age and middle income demographic. I remember a few years ago driving home and listening to NPR and they were talking about Wire on All Things Considered and thinking, wait a minute, they used to talk about Joni Mitchel, but now they've figured out I'm out here listening, and I'm a demographic. Such is life. Indie culture is relatively mainstream these days. Rolling Stone reviews bands and compares them to Big Black even though when Big Black was around they completely ignored their existence.'



when SY were starting, folks like us would have said it was rubbish that there was no mainstream recognition of underground music. now the underground has become the mainstream and still we complain because now its not the same.

be careful what you wish for

I didn't really spend a lot of time complaining that the underground didn't get recognition. It wasn't until Sub Pop and the first wave of grunge that I began to realize it even could, and then the bad side raised it's head pretty quickly.

I'm glad Sonic Youth get as much recognition as they do, because they deserve it as incredible musical innovators. I must admit, I'm also kind of glad that they are still of a level of popularity that I can almost always see them for under twenty bucks and often walk right up to the front of the stage. It was pretty sad having Nirvana get so big that it became impossible to ever see them in their proper element again.

It just seems lame to me to see publications that completely ignored what happened when it was going on now reference it as if they were part of it (Rolling Stone is the biggest example, but then I guess the did write positive reviews of Husker Du and the Replacements, so maybe I'm overstating the case, Spin had Sonic Youth in the first issue, so they were never so bad). Rob makes a valid point that the people writing for them now aren't the same people who wrote for them in the late '70s and early '80s. Rock is dead, long live rock...

for me, the trouble with 'the underground' is that i never get to hear anything about the bands. The genius of Crossing Over is that people like me get to hear about bands. I'm not cool, i'm no where near Down with the Kids. I'm not gonna lie, i would never have heard of Sonic Youth if it wasn't for Sugar Kane and 100% getting played on MTV and I've never heard The Jesus Lizard.

So the thing to do for these bands is to get the music and ideas and philosophy (it is a philosophy) (its spelt wrong but it is) across to as many people as possible, and the mainstream is the way forward. Whats the use in a Revolution if only 3 people know about it?

'whats the use of a revolution if only three people know about it'
would have been a great title for a sonic youth best of.
the ugly truth is that without nirvana getting big enough to play the moon every week, hundreds of thousands of people right now would not be listening to sonic youth or the vaselines or all kinds of bands.

i dont care about issues of underground credibility at all. i just like stirring shit.

From the press release:




New York, May 27, 2008 – On June 10, 2008, Universal Special Markets and Starbucks Entertainment will co-release Sonic Youth’s Hits Are For Squares. The limited-edition CD features Sonic Youth fans from music, film and literature selecting their favorite recordings from the band’s voluminous body of work that dates to 1981. It also includes a new, exclusive track from Sonic Youth, “Slow Revolution” recorded last year with longtime producer John Agnello.

The album will be available exclusively at select Starbucks locations in New York , Los Angeles , Chicago , San Francisco , Seattle , Boston , Philadelphia and Washington , D.C. as well as online at www.starbucksentertainment.com.




....so most of us will have to order it I guess.

limited edition? at starbucks stores? isn't that a contraddiction? ah.