Bad Moon Rising
 

i only just got this a few weeks ago but its fucking amazing!
i dont know why i never picked it up before, but there was always something else i wanted more.
but it sounds incredible, i love Brave Men Run, I Love Her All the TIme, Haloween, Flower...beautiful! And of course Death Valley 69

but the thing i love most is the sound of the album. it sounds so much better than EVOL and DDN to me. so much fuller.

love it

I don't know if I can agree with that EVOL statement.....'cause well...I think it's the best album ever...



But Badmoon is definitely awesome.....I love it 'cause it feels really raw...the sound that is.

One of my favourite albums actually.
So raw and punkish, pretty dark aswell.

Ugh...

it (and sister) are my favorite SY albums. and it is the one that i still listen to the most.
it sounds the best on a hot and humid summer night.

Totally essential Sonic Youth...

This album was truly out t h e r e when it was originally released.


Sorry SonicBebs I don't mean to be pedantic but these songs weren't on the original release. They were included on the CD reissue. It is true however that they are beautiful... along with one of my all time faves Satan is Boring :)

If I absolutely had to choose a favorite Sonic Y record, it would be A Thousand Leaves. However, thankfully I don't have to choose because Bad Moon would come in at a very, very close second place. I've gone through periods, sometimes lasting 2-3 weeks at a time, listening to nothing but Bad Moon. It's definitely amongst their darkest material...all that Charles Manson imagery and talk of geniuses and drugs and sex addicts and Indians running away from scary foreign settlers. Love it.

In my opinion it's way better than Evol (which I believe was there first stab at experimenting w/ "pop" concepts). Evol has a brilliant album cover (love Lung Leg), and a few songs, but it's never been one I go back to often. I just think they did far more interesting stuff in the 80's. I prefer BMR to Daydream as well. I love Daydream and believe it deserves all the credit it gets...but it was never one of my favorite albums either, which is odd because it does feature some of my favorite songs...but whenever listening to it I skip around from track to track a lot. W/ Bad Moon Rising (much like ATL) I just put the fucker in and press play and it's amazing from beginning to end. Like a big story. A bunch of songs that blend together so frickin' nicely.

Gorgeous record. Congrats on buying it.

Been listening to ATL alot recently too

It's not my favorite Youth record, it's my favorite record by anyone ever. Period.

So damned good I can't even put into words why I love it so much. Heaven knows I've tried.

Hah, Wild Flower Soul on my last.fm radio now.

ATL is easy top 5 SY albums.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to EVOLghost again.

I love very many albums that is a kind of crossline of some band, I mean there´s something old and something new (best examples The Who Sell Out, Pink Floyd Atom Heart Mother). BMR is also that kind of album. But I think in Bad Moon Rising SY haven´t achieved that full greatness, what is in EVOL and later albums. Of course it´s very great album, greater than many albums in the world. I ordered BMR, EVOL, Sonic Death and Dirty at the same time, if I remember correct it was summer 1993. And you can quess I listened EVOL quite a lot that summer!

I wish I could get into ATL as much as most people, but I just find it very boring. EVOL and BMR emanate their best atmosphere in my opinion. I remember first listening to EVOL on a rainy day... it was strangely one of the darkest days I could remember and it just clicked perfectly. I've been saying for years that their earlier records (especially the two I've mentioned) convey this nightmarish sort of mood that I'm drawn to more than anything else they've done... yet if I had to choose a favorite album I'd probably lean towards Daydream Nation, actually. Choosing a favorite with this band isn't quite necessary though as many of them suit various moods. I've got BMR on vinyl... one of my favorite albums that I own.

I don't wish I could get into ATL...I know what it is and I also find it very boring. IMO, NYCG&F is SY's weakest album and ATL is not that far behind.

On the other hand, BMR is a beast! It's not as fully realized as EVOL or Sister, but the shadow/mood it conveys is a dark one. Vintage SY for sure.

That´s one reason why I love vinyls so much! It´s just so great end in BMR with Death Valley and also EVOL with Expressway. I prefer more listen Flower/Halloween from that single (very great single) and it doesn´t matter to me that I have Bubblegum only in c-cassette (i think it´s ok song, but very much mediocre comparing the material in EVOL). And Satan is Boring...well it´s also ok in the end of Death Valley-e.p. but I sure could live without that song.

YAY!!! Other people love ATL as much as I do it sounds like!! :)

But yes Bad Moon Rising is absolutely essential, and it sounds better today than ever!! I've been listening to this albums for fifteen years, and it's never grown old for me. Though i'll admit, I had it for a few years before I really started to notice its specific type of charm. It's just a blissful, turbulent, nighmare-vision quest odyssey and I love it.

Dood Murmer and ScreamingSkull...what you say is blasphemy.

I just don't think there's much on it that I can't get (to much better avail) with some of their other... more complete albums. I remember thinking that some of the tracks sounded as though they could've used more development. The vocals are unbearable on certain tracks too... which is something I rarely give a shit about. I don't know... I'll admit I have listened to it just about 5 times I'd guess... so maybe it'll grow on me the more I listen to it.

I got into them chronologically, for the most part, and I have to say BMR is still probably my favorite. There's nothing like it, really.

Who said they didn't like the guitar tones on EVOL? Wtf? It was the '80s!

Yes, "Tom Violence" could easily be a Pornography-era Cure song, but what's wrong with that?

I got into BMR whilst playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Its still the most mysterious album in the catalogue, the references it contains (Not Right by The Stooges at the start of I Love Her all the time, the fact Society is a hole was a misheard Black Flag lyric) give it an unreal feeling.
It doesnt feel like it was made by the people playing it, more that they found instructions to make the album "Bad Moon Rising" in a cave somewhere and then set about making it happen.

I think also EVOL-guitars are straight from the heaven! (also the production). And I don´t find any link of Cure Pornography and EVOL, although I really love both albums!

They started playing their fucked up guitars better on this one imo.

Well I think I understand what you mean. But I think it´s also great, kind of creepy and heavenly same time, almost too much in my mind :) ! I have listened cd-version one time and I don´t remember that I have payed any attention about the difference of the sounds comparing the vinyl. But commonly I think vinyl sounds better, maybe little softer than cd:s, specially eighties cd:s sound often very lousy because cd mastering wasn´t that time enough advanced.

yes.

Bad Moon Rising

I love DDN the most of any album ever, but BMR is to me the quintessence of SY.
They went for something HUGE and they succeeded so perfectly that the album still SCARES people upon first listen.
Other "difficult" records do not hold the air of "strangeness" that BMR contains. It may very well be the one album SY is lauded for in a century, when all the others have been forgotten.

It contains the multiverse.

I love BMR

Well put. BMR is a halcyon-mescaline autumn mystery trip.

That just came out as I was writing. :)

for this recording as a group it is the one of their early era that has alot of influence in my music, its more about sound and the guitars as sound generators than say power chords that burn into your brain (except a few tracks like death valley)

So nobody else thinks EVOL kinda sounds like '80s goth pop? I mean, relative to BMR and Sister... I remember the first time I heard it, loving the intro to "Tom Violence", but thinking "there's no way this is Sonic Youth!" Maybe it doesn't sound like the Cure exactly, but that's what I thought when I first heard it.
I think EVOL has a completely unique place in the SY discography, and that no other album sounds quite like it.

Oh yeah, this is a BMR thread. Sorry :)

Of course there are something same all after-punk bands, but I still think SY is quite different than for example Joy Division, the Cure and Bauhaus in same time. If you compare for example EVOL and Pornography, there is something very despair in Pornography and something very hopeful in EVOL. Although BMR and specially CIS are very dark albums, I don´t think they also have anything that is typical in goth pop. I think there is something hopeful also in BMR music and CIS is more raw than romantic in it´s darkness. Maybe it´s SY has always been musically kind of realistic band when goth pop is full of romantic style.

Maybe this is something to do with the difference of British and Us bands. I think Us bands are more raw and realistic, when British bands have more elegance. I think only Us band that sounds British is Love. And three albums I´ve heard from them only Forever Changes is sounding British, the first album and Four Sales sounds also Us.

listening to this album on a mescaline trip in a forest was one of the most epic experiences of my life

Gila Monster Jamboree is a way cool (pre-burning man) generator powered nighttime desert live set from BMR era, totally goes with the feeling of the record, was SY's west coast debut (i think), and should get released on dvd (its vhs only & oop right now).

i love this album very organic sound, but what's fucked up guitars?

fucked up guitars meaning their non standard use of tuning and playing (i.e. behind the bridge, drumsticks), and also that at that point in their career they used cheap guitars.

I just put on my blast first copy of bad moon. It's just a brilliant album.

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oh shit I just found a bunch of flyer/ticket/map/liability release scans from this show and posted in the poster/flyer thread:

http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/sho...p?t=80&page=11

most of the old timers here will be familiar with it, but if anyone hasn't seen it, here's the BMR-centric clips (courtesy of sonicCHOUT):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WkuTqrHGBw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ5cZED6dkA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrxASw3HYTw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf16HwsAQZg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Foc2KjNzIdc

Okay now I'm getting kind of obsessed, which happens when I have too much school work and I start procrastinating. According to the Psychic Confusion book, this guerilla gig happened at Skull Rock. According to the Joshua Tree National Park site, Skull Rock is located at Jumbo Rocks campground, which also has a small ampitheater. Might go visit over spring break, really need some time to unwind, and I've been meaning to go out there for a while anyway. If I do it I might bring a F#F#F#F#EB tuned acoustic guitar. If I was gonna get all Center For Land Use Interpretation on it I'd make a brass plaque and install it myself.

I have the VHS of this show ripped to iso somewhere if anyone wants it(PM)?

Also, looking at the map, I dont think it was at skull rock. I was there last May (super fucking cool!), and its in the middle of Joshua Tree Nat'l Park, Victorville (which i see on the map for the show) is about 100mi away. I would definitely go to Joshua Tree if you get the chance!

Scary album. Didn't Kim date someone connected to the Manson Family murders?

I remember her saying in some documentary that her brother dated a girl that was killed by the Family.