Favorite Sonic Youth Live Moments?
 

It's as obvious as the sun shining during the day that SY are a force to be reckoned with live.Their shows can be so inspiring, inventive and mind blowing to watch.They'll probably had thousands of interesting live moments so lets not all reminisce about some of our favorite SY live moments.

First time I saw them live on the nurse tour in Boston in 2004 the band came out doing "burning spear" and started it by creating all this awesome feedback, Thurston was literally climbing the amps and grating the guitar against the ceiling.Loving every second of it.

When I saw them again this summer their show was so exhilirating.They did "teenage riot" and i absolutely loved how they extended it with this long noisy outro that stretched to at least 15 minutes.Also I was ecstatic to see them play "sklip tracer" live, i was screaming like crazy.

when thurston took this ladys bag and commented on it.

he said something along the lines of

' this is a very nice bag here, very nice. was this made here in holland? its very nice, i like how its cute but it also has kind of a wild edge to it'

i think it was like that

First time i saw them this past summer although i forget which song it was on, thurston shoved his guitar into the ceiling fan above him during the noisy section. And then later in the show, thurston showing the crowd his sweaty belly.

i think he said something like "that's a nice purse... red. is this made in holland? it could be. it looks kind of sophisticated but with a slight wild edge to it."

best thurston quote i've witnessed was during the murray street tour in paradiso, amsterdam. he was coughing and messed up the vocals to the empy page and then afterwards he excused himself saying "i'm sorry, i had a pubic hair stuck in my throat."

lots of moments,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RY7R-rm9n4

but that is the only one where a member of the band dropped the neck of his guitar onto my head

"Hello to you... fine... young... people"
That's how Thurston started in Paris, 1990.

Anagrama in Nancy, 1998, in a festival, with so many people paying no attention at all, a glass of beer in their hands.

This sign someone held at the band at the end of the Olympia 2001 show, saying "stay with us" while the band was building a wall of noise to protect themselves from the violent reactions from the crowd (booing, people leaving, yelling for a pay back).

Everything from the Saint-Brieuc gig in 2005; more specially the PCH intro : a drunken guy felt sick, sat down, and fell, as if he were hit by the music.

Touching Thurston Moore at le nouveau casino this April.

Too early?
Kim dancing in circles, for Jams Run Free at le Zénith 3 days ago.

http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/cc/030391.html
On the infamous tour opening for Neil Young, Sonic Youth played The Omni in Atlanta. Having been booed into short sets on previous nights leading up to this show by some backwoods classic rock radio-variety Neil fans, the Atlanta crowd pre-Neil was sparse, but supportive. Sonic Youth's set concluded with Expressway as the closer.
After a terrific build-up, in a locked-groove looping ending, Thurston rigged up his guitar through a folding chair mimicking the effect on the original LP, saturating us in sonic washes of chaos-pregnant feedback loops.

---
The '90 show at Center Stage was better overall, but the ending of the '91 show is memorable as a "favorite live moment."

I recall a Murray Street era bootleg where Thurston out of the blue starts singing
"Just take those old rekkids off da sheellfs!" Old Timey Rock & Roll By Bob Seager
Another show (11-01-1983, Austria) where those crazy Austrians start yelling "SUGAR BABIES SUGAR BABIES SUGAR BABIES SUGAR BABIES!"
Also, the attempted acoustic set was funny

haha! i didnt go to that show... sucks

Not necessarily live, but I laughed when I caught Thurston turning up at Glasgow's 04 soundcheck an hour later than everyone else. You could hear Steve pounding away as he got out of the cab.

I'll have to revist this thread a few times. I've seen them close to 30 times. Of course the best memory is still the fist time.

It was the Bad Moon Rising tour and they played the Gorilla Gardens, an all ages club that mostly mixed metal and punk shows (and consequently heavily influenced the birth of "grunge") in Seattle. The "post-punk" crowd in Seattle at that time was primarily "death rockers" the people who would later be called "goths" into Bauhaus, Cristian Death, and wearing loads of white pancake makeup. This made up 2/3s of the crowd with a few hardcorish kids.

Green River (who would later split into Mudhoney and Pearl Jam of course) were the first opener, and had the crowd with them for a set of Stooges influence metal. Then German hardcore band Upright Citizens played and the crowd was into them too.

When Sonic Youth started, it looked like they were soundchecking and they went straight from tuning into quietly building feedback and then doing the Intro from Bad Moon followed by pretty much the entire record (minus "Justice is Might") plus one unnamed song Lee read that he said he wrote in a hotel room the night before. They ended with "Expressway to Your Skull". I was upfront burying my head into the monitor in ecstacy. When they completely finished and I turned around the room was essentially empty. There were like 5 or 6 people still there all with their jaws hanging open. They'd cleared the fucking house!

Thats a great story. I wish I'd seen them back in the day

I love that part. It has me rolling with laughter.......................................... ...


Well, yeah, that's a bootleg.
there's lots of moments from bootlegs ...











fdsadsafRDSFAGDAGASD

Thurston resting his balls on a security guy's head. Then they stop the show and the whole fucking band gets sued. Man, that security guy was pissed too.

Another great moment was in '90 on the Goo tour when just as they came on stage they played a sample of "We've Only Just Begun" by the Carpenters. It was such a cool statement, not only that the show was starting, but that this new era of Sonic Youth wasn't the end of anything, but the beginning of something more.

post more please!

Ahahaha, you always crack me up.

Actually, one of my favorite moments ever at a Sonic Youth show was when some stupid fucking dj from "The End" the horrible "alternative" station in Seattle went out on stage to announce them. This station almost always sponsors SY shows up there despite the fact they have maybe played the band ten times in fifteen years (and those were probably times they had Nirvana or some other band like that in the studio playing their favorite groups). When the guy said he was from The End, the whole crowd started booing so loudly I couldn't believe it. He had to walk off without saying anything more.

Probably when they played at a horrible festival in Dublin, right in the middle of Dirty-era grunge fever, and opened their set with Cotton Crown. I've never seen so many confused kiddies in my life :)

The first time I head Pattern Recognition and Stones live at ATP 2004 was pretty darn good.

09/12/95 - Paris, France @ Elysee Montmartre

Expressway to Yr Skull as first song... I'm going totally ballistic... The crowd is dancing... Right before the break launching the noisy part, I go crowd-surfing... I'm on top of people's head, surfing allright... The break is here, silence in the venue, and i'm still surfing... And the silence lasts... And Thruston doesn't launch the noise part... And i'm still surfing... After like 10 seconds I force myself down, and right after I land Thruston sings "... to your Skullll" and the noise starts and the crowd gets wild.

I'm 95% sure he waited for me to go down to launch it. I was half-pissed off, half delighted. :)

Tom Violence, Ineffable Me, Death Valley 69, Cotton Crown, Hoarfrost, Expressway, NYC Ghosts & Flowers, Brother James, Kissability, Schizophrenia followed by Teenage Riot at my first show, covering Calling All Girls, everything......

haha got a video of that?

yeah, definitelly first ones. when thurston climbed the amps during the pattern recognition in brixton acadamy in '04. best sy moment for me.

Seeing them do an all instrumental set of all new material (much of which would later turn into NYC Ghosts and Flowers with vocals, but some from the SYR records too I'm pretty sure) at Bumbershoot in Seattle. It was amazing because the crowd totally dug it and there was massive crowd surfing even. Too all new material without vocals! They actually did it again the next year and there wasn't nearly the response, but that first time was just amazing.

En español, porque hay mucho boludo que no va a enteder nada.
because, I remember a very good moment of SY alive.

Todo empezo de noche, de pronto una tormenta electrica se desataba y Sonic Youth salia a escena, los rayos, explotaban detras del escenario y los chicos de SY brillaban en sus instrumentos.
genial
Sean lennon tambien toco ese dia y no me acuerdo de su show
ahh si recuerdo que el boludo no entendia español y la gente le pedia que tocara alguna canción de la madre

dc, 6/15 of this year, early show.

kim: "were you at the show last night?"
me in the front row: "yes."
kim: "you had a different snoopy shirt on. snoopy rules."

fun fact--i actually died after that moment. all this posting, travelling to
england; that is in fact my soul doing all that. if you were to check me
for a pulse, you would come up empty. truth!

Its really hard to say I've been to 24 shows. I guess the biggest thrill for me was meeting them. TM KG & LR in Austin 2004 and SS in PA in 2004.

you forgot to use the term cool for describing said meetings.

saw the yoof for the first time this past weekend at the state x show. fucking awesome obviously! . .. and loving these threads too. my view of the stage and band was sublime, if u know the venue i was on the left lower balcony right up front. a position in which not only could i read the setlists but could also reach down and grab a lock of lee's hair . . . should i wish. i didn't. however, from this vantage point i witnessed a spectacle that will remain with me for perhaps as long as the show itself will. that of a man having the spirit of the sonics in him . . . rushing on to the stage . . . spinning in a wild circle . .. uncontrollable . . . and throwing his 6foot+ frame in to the unsuspecting audience below . . . which, in turn, horrified, moved en masse in differing directions to allow the excited chap the full freedom of the floor . . . slapping down hard to many an oooh/aaah . . .. not only this but i continued to spy his return back to his mates head down a little ashamed i imagined him to be . . . . whereby he was followed by a rather scarylooking and baldheaded fellow who took it upon himself to land a slap on our excited youngster's face and return back to where he was so rudely interrupted. . . . stagediver man looking around wondering what had happened . . . me half pissing myself half pissed at this commotion distracting my first sy gig . . . . but priceless nonetheless and certainly worth sharing on this thread.

Sorry it was COOL

My favorite Sonic live moment was just seeing that the band could and would still go on. It was a couple days after their gear got stolen. I drove down to Austin but the show had already been sold out but luckily I ran into Steve at a record store and he put me and my friend on his guest list. Outside listening to the soundcheck it didn't sound so hot. They had rented gitars/amps from a local store. But when they opened up with Schizophrenia it sounded as great if not better than any show I had seen by them up to that point. So it was great to see that their great musicianship came out of them and not just some fucked up sounding guitars as some were saying. But to pinpoint a certain part of that show Thurston's rented amp wasn't handling being pushed beyond the sonic threshhold too well so Thurston stops and starts messing with it and says "I don't think my amp is digging what I'm doing'.

sonic faith

Sonic Youth 04 - toronto

Thurston climbing on amp during pattern recognition and scraping the guitar on the amp head

I like the guitar sword battle that Lee and Thurston do all the time

So many moments: I've been listenning to them for so long that shows have become part of memories of certain times of my life. I guess various shows in Cetral Park stand out the most: Independence Day, 1992: with good friends, hanging out all day, digging the soundcheck, seeing Sun Ra get wheeled out to the piano in a wheelchair, having Thurston dedicate Teenage Riot to the "Central Park hardcore scene", thinking of friends from that summer, when I discovered Slanted & Enchanted, Unrest, Crazy Horse Malt Liquor, etc...
Fast-forward to the next decade. Digging on another free concert, sitting out in the grass on a beautiful summer day w/my (now) wife, reading the paper, eating fruit. Then, on the Sonic Nurse tour, back in the park, a picnic dinner, my wife pregnant with our son. Sun setting as we walked south, cutting thru the playground... You may think it's dumb, but it puts things in perspective for me.

At the Milwaukee show in August, Thurston came out and took off his shoes. He said they were from a fan and were too hot or something. So for the rest of the set he walked around in socks AND STEPPED ON MY HAND! AHHHHHHH HE HAS SEXY-FEELING TOES.

When I saw them this past summer, Thurston had some Nike shoes on. After opening with Schiz, he took them off and said something along the lines of "Nike is politically bogus." Also, before Rats, Thurston touched my friends fro and laughed. Kim did the same during What A Waste.

picture? i think i know what you mean, but maybe its something else

SY in Ballmer
 

Saw SY back in like 1991 in this weird mall near the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. Was walking to the show and saw SY hanging out with Fugazi. Very cool moment.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Kcj0rn_N4t4
Look around 3:40