Official Sonic Youth/Scientists Sydney Enmore 18/02/08 thread
 

Holy fuck it kicked ass. The venue really was sold out (I could barely move) and my friend and I were the closest people to Lee. They whole set was unbelievable, I noticed they even added some new parts to songs. I saw Mark Ibold backstage near the soundboard headbanging during Eliminator Jr. One of my few gripes was that they didn't acknowledge the crowd much, they didn't even say "Hey" or anything, they just walked on and played Teenage Riot. Also I didn't run into any SYG members.

Scientists were fantastic too! But all I could hear was the bass because of where I was standing.


Anyway, it was great when Mark came on for the encores! It was pretty cool to see him again now that I'm a Pavement fanboy.
Encores:

• Incinerate
• Jams Run Free
• Reena
• Drunken Butterfly
• Pink Steam

I was glad they played the best songs of RR and Drunken Butterfly was a welcome bonus (mosh wise).

Anyway, I want to hear yr stories, I know a few of you attended. Oh, and Dan, make sure you can sneak into the Perth one, it's worth it. I'll post pics when I get home.

(Excuse the spelling, I'm using school computers and am very tired from, getting home at 1am)

Wow, Drunken Butterfly!

i think that may be a common theme of these DDN shows, they barely said a word at the brooklyn show last year during the Daydream songs, sans for maybe a few from Lee introducing his songs, so i think it was more due to the nature of the set and not with the venue or something like that

hey zero
what was the venue you went to?
how was it set up
did you get a wrist band or stamp?

congrats on going to your first gig

It was amazing, and it wasn't too loud. Though I think The Scientists were too loud (but they were still great). They extended the instrumental bits in the songs (the noise part in Silver Rocket went for a while).
I was in the seated area, and I had a perfect view of Thurston and Steve, but I couldn't see Lee or Kim. The vocals weren't very good, they made Thurston and Lee sound a bit cartoonish.
My Iron Maiden loving friend didn't really like it. He hated The Scientists, and he hated the noisy, screechy bits in SY's set. He looked relieved when Rain King finished, and I told him "Just 2 more songs to go." He didn't know Trilogy is a 15 minute song. And he hated how they did 2 encores.

Twas my second Sonic Gig. It's a shame that you couldn't have gotten standing tickets, Death & the Maiden as it was so cool up the front. I got Lee's pick at the end and one of their waterbottles too.

I bought tickets the day they were released, so I could have gone to the standing area, but I didn't want to. I knew it'd be crowded, and I wouldn't get to sit down, and it would be too loud.

Does Kim change clothes?

As promised, crappy camera phone pics:
Scientists

 

Lee

 

Kim

 

Bad quality Mark pic

 

 

No good Thurston or Steve ones due to where I was standing.

I took loads of pictures, but I don't think any of them were any good. The stage was too dark. But I did get some good video. I recorded Teen Age Riot (1 minute), Silver Rocket (1 minute) and Candle (2 minutes) on my camera and phone. All of the footage I got was of Thurston. My friend got some good footage of Kim Salmon.

Thurston was doing some mean headbanging the whole time.

Yeah he was, and Kim was dancing during the encores.

Steve is an amazing drummer. My friend was disappointed to see that he didn't have glasses on. We listened to DDN on the car trip there, and he looked at the album notes and thought Steve looked like Harry Potter.

This has been mentioned on Uncyclopedia numerous times, funnily enough. And yes, Steve is fantastic, and I feel sorry that most of the fans focus on Lee, Kim and Thurston.

Absolutely fantastic. I was right in front of thurston with six of my friends, and i know this sounds like gay fanboy talk, but when he said 'you guys were awesome' he pointed down at us! I also got me a setlist.

The rather ripped stuff sounds much better than it did 2 years ago aswell.

Haha I didn't see the appeal of the setlist. I demanded a water bottle.

What you gonna do with the water bottle? You could get some of T's DNA off it and clone him.

Haha, nah just keep it as a memento

steve was on jjj this morning, made starting first day of uni so much better ;)


unfortunately i only caught the last 5 min, something about him cooking falafels :D

what do you mean you asked for the water bottle? and how am i supposed to get picks????

I thought the concert was great but I also would have liked a bit more recognition of the crowd, a little hello or something at the beginning would have been nice. I think it was only at the encore that they actually spoke, apart from that they were just going silently from one song to the other which I thought was a bit weird. Lee looked like he was in a good mood though, did anyone else notice that?

Lee actually always seems to be in a good mood. Well, at least on the 4 Sonic Youth concerts I saw he definitely was.

Have they also not really communicated much to the audience at the concerts you've been to?

Here's some of my pics, they're all quite crap though cause I was in the lounge area and have just a normal digital camera:

in August 2002, it was a completely different story.
in September 2007 I was to three gigs:

Prague - wonderful interaction with the audience, lots of talking, great atmosphere
Vienna - almost no interaction, all except Lee looked grumpy
London Roundhouse - during the DDN set no talking at all, however during the encore Thurston talked a lot about his amazement with Roundhouse club etc etc. Then they said the Londonese were the greatest audience (which I doubt, compared to the crowd in Prague)

this is where Kim went a bit crazy with the dance moves woohoo

They didn't talk much here in italy too, they looked much more "relaxed" during the encores.
I think they probably "need" to be more focused focused to "get this thing done" with the full ddn setlist... and, when they'll release a live dvd+triple cds set, there won't be references to specific cities/places to ruin the flow of the performances picked to compile the release, ah ah ahaaaa. No, seriously, the "no talking" sets might be the ones recorded(??) maybe.

Yeah we basically got nothing until the first encore, then they seemed to relax a bit more. During the encores Thurston spoke a bit and the only other communication was a couple of waves and a word or two from Lee.

I don't mind though, it just struck me as odd that they were so serious, after all it's always good to hear bands random comments etc in between songs

Hello, Kina. Glad to hear you enjoyed the show as a whole. Let's face it, we don't go to SY shows for the between-song chatter, do we, we go to RAWK!!!!! :D

What did you think of The Scientists?

Hey Sonicl, yeah the show was great!!! I was totally impressed with how they sounded live and I also really liked the creative way they staged the show, the lighting was done in a very cool art installation kinda way which really worked in that venue and ofcourse I appreciated that Thurston did a whole lot of jumping and Kim danced heaps during some songs which was awesome too. I did notice people in the audience seemed to get bored towards the end of the concert though, and some left before the first encore, I'm not sure why, I didn't find it boring, I wanted them to keep going but after the second encore Thurston said "Goodnight and see you next time" or something to that effect and the lights came on :(

The Scientists were good but there was something wrong on the audio side of things I think, they seemed to be too loud or not clear enough or something. But apart from that technical side of things they were great and I was very impressed, although I didn't see them start as we arrived too late for that which is a shame.

Haha... From my experience of The Scientists, that's how they always sound!

hehe I didn't realise this was their unique selling point

Kim Salmon's guitar was too soft.

ahhh ok. finally back in my crappy little home town and in front of a computer.
ummm, second night. i think silver rocket was longer. the crazy bit in the middle i'm pretty sure was longer.
encore was same except they added do you believe in rapture and played kool thing instead of drunken butterfly.
have to go now, very busy. maybe more later.

Damn I wanted to see Kool Thing

Did anyone else think there was something wrong with Thurston's and Lee's vocals?

No I didn't notice that actually