http://www.smh.com.au/news/gig-revie...234114355.html
When Thurston Moore, singer and guitar strangler with Sonic Youth, was first approached about performing the band's seminal 1988 album
Daydream Nation in its entirety for the Don't Look Back series of concerts, he didn't really want to do it.
"I didn't have a problem with the idea of it," he says, from the home he shares with his wife and bandmate Kim Gordon in Massachusetts. "I did have a problem with spending time having to rehash something rather than working on something new. Time is precious, man. I'm going to be 50 this year. I don't have time to play
Daydream Nation for the rest of my life."
But Barry Hogan, the enthusiastic 35-year-old Englishman behind Don't Look Back, is a persuasive man. Eight years ago he instigated All Tomorrow's Parties, a British music festival whose line-up is chosen by a guest curator each year. The inaugural year was curated by cult Scottish band Mogwai; in 2003, Hogan branched out to the US and got Matt Groening to program it. Three years ago he came up with the idea of a series involving bands performing one of their best-loved albums, playing the tracks in the original order.
"In the current age of digital downloads, people tend to neglect albums and just handpick tracks," Hogan says. "I think there are so many great records that you should listen to from start to finish. Like the Stooges'
Fun House. You put that record on and you can't take it off. And if you can there's something wrong with you."
In fact,
Fun House was his first choice and the Stooges kicked off Don't Look Back in 2005. Since then participants have included Slint doing
Spiderland, Belle & Sebastian with
If You're Feeling Sinister and the Dirty Three performing
Ocean Songs. But Hogan really wanted Sonic Youth on board and turned up at gigs across the US and in Berlin and Paris to badger them.
"I admit that they were reluctant at first," Hogan says. "I had to convince them that this was a worthwhile thing to do and people would really want to see it."
Moore, Gordon, guitarist Lee Ranaldo and drummer Steve Shelley finally agreed but it was a daunting task putting the show together. Some of the songs on
Daydream Nation were never played live and, as the band uses unconventional guitar tunings, relearning the songs wasn't easy.
"I don't even remember some of the songs existing," admits Moore, laughing. "I'd have a vague memory of the title and then had to think, 'How did that even sound?' And sometimes I'd listen to what I was playing on the recording and think, 'I have no memory at all of doing this, let alone what tuning it's in.' "
Daydream Nation is often on lists of the greatest albums of the '80s, a touchstone for the entire alternative rock genre. Moore feels it should have sounded heavier than it does and "although it was more extrapolated song-wise and it was pretty audacious to bring out a double album back then, we certainly didn't think of it as some kind of grand statement".
Still, when the band played their first Don't Look Back shows in June - they've now performed it 18 times in Britain, the US and Europe - something clicked.
"By the fourth or fifth time we played it live it became something I really enjoyed," Moore says. "It brought me back to the space I was in mentally and psychologically and musically back in 1988 and I liked that."
