[daydreamtshirt]

I wrote a review of the Berkeley Daydream Nation show for Rock Beat Stone...which recently was put up here:

http://www.rockbeatstone.com/rockbea...nic-youth.html

The end includes a bit about the Starbucks deal, for those of you who haven't gotten enough yet.

Text follows... so far I've noticed one typo:

In 2006, Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation was one of fifty recordings added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry, a list of sound recordings that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." Along side Edison's first phonograph recordings, Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech and a Carnegie Hall performance by jazz man Benny Goodman, is an album which helped give birth to a "teenage riot" called grunge rock. To celebrate the album's already legendary status (hailed on 'best of all time' lists by Rolling Stone and Spin magazines), and a 2-CD/4-LP re-issue (surprise!) filled with live tracks, covers and a demo, Sonic Youth took the orchestrated noise fest out on the road, performing the album in its entirety in a small handful of cities in the US and Europe this summer.

Thundering into Berkeley's Community Theater (attached to Berkeley High School), fans of the Youth delighted as they were treated to a band rekindling a sound that for many, represented the embryo of what would become their grunge rock revolution; the seeds of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the Pumpkins. Music nerds like myself get giddy when their favorite bands do indulgent things like this.

This week also marked the beginning of The Smashing Pumpkins eleven night "open rehearsal" at the Fillmore on the other side of the bay. Between the two shows I caught, there were 38 different songs over six hours including many unreleased numbers, extended jams and improvisations. You know I was salivating. It's because when you read in your rock history books, stories that Pink Floyd used to play 'Interstellar Overdrive' for forty-five minutes, or that they used to play Dark Side of the Moon while they were still writing it, I am so curious to know what that must have been like. By taking fans out of the normal Pavlovian response of yelling at a band for a two hours from one end of a football field and getting beer spilled on you, the band's desire to foster creativity becomes one in which they engage their audience in very process of creation itself. The only problem is that when it's Sonic Youth, and it's Daydream Nation, you already know it's going to be awesome, and you know it's going to be exactly what Sonic Youth has been known to deliver, a noisy and raucous adventure.

While the band played the album dutifully, masterfully and heartfully, there was little to distinguish it from a normal Sonic Youth set. Somehow the idea that Daydream Nation was a National Recording Registry monument didn't translate through their spotlighting, though the performance overall was a fantastic reminder of why the Youth themselves are monumental.

Not to discredit Daydream Nation's creative genius, but the opening track tricks the listener into automatically believing Daydream Nation is one of the best things ever dedicated to tape. 'Teenage Riot' opens with a sweet invitation from a wispy Kim, then dives head long into riff rock that says "Hey America, this is called a mosh pit!" At that point the listener is dubiously hooked, and there's no turning back. Upon its arrival in the auditorium, the crowd responded with the excited bounce of brand new doc martens, though the seats in the auditorium made it impossible for any actual crowd surfing to occur. The usual mix of a couple songs sung by Thurston Moore, then his wife Kim Gordon, a couple noise jams, then the rare song by the quiet/poetic member Lee Ranaldo, was exciting and proper for the occasion, but other than the song list, there wasn't much in the way of relating Daydream Nation's power and influence in modern rock, or anything to show how the Youth have grown since the album's release in 1988. While Sonic Youth continue to perform experimental music, are always interested in searching new ways of expressing their styles, and have a wide breath of types of music they've created, their actual sound hasn't seen much volatility through their career.

I don't think this concerns them as much as just ensuring that they make music that they love, which is why their sound has been so enduring. Highlighting Daydream Nation alone doesn't quite give that perspective, or serve for much beyond having an excuse for a Sonic Youth show. Perhaps if they extended their stay to three nights and performed their albums following Daydream, 1990's Goo and 1992's Dirty, then that might tell a more impactful story about how Sonic Youth became the backbone of rock. All pop-philosophizing aside, what makes Daydream Nation so perfect is that so many perfect pieces are on it (it's the only Sonic Youth album to have more than two [always perfect] Lee compositions- three), and to hear them all performed by a band who still clearly loves them and rocks out to them like their still 18, is a real treat to befell the Berkeley High School and all the fans there to indulge them. But the real magic didn't occur until the encore, a string of numbers from their current album, Rather Ripped:

Kim Gordon dancing.

There aren't many things I think I'll ever see on a rock stage that will excite me as much as Kim Gordon dancing. A 54 year old bleach blond mom, she shimmied in her striped one-piece mini and flailed her arms like a sex windmill.
For the final number, she even leaped off stage and danced with the audience on the floor. With Sonic Youth, you'll always be rewarded like this. For every fifteen minute noise drone they dish out, there's one song to accompany it that is the dance on the dance floor and the kiss on the cheek. And though they tried to make Daydream Nation the reward, it's really them, Sonic Youth themselves, for all the energy, smiling and down right noise they tirelessly create, they are the reward. They seem to recognize this though, that they are some kind of reward for popular music, as they look back and continue to reissue their classics, ink "best-of" deals with Starbucks, and continue to make records for Geffen.

Kim's on-stage quip of "Well, we're on Geffen, and Geffen is a much bigger corporation than Starbucks," to an audience cry about the recent deal was a sweet reminder that while the Youth have their fun, they'll make it available to mainstream outlets, and continue to reward the fans with the ability to years from now be able to say "Yeah, I saw Sonic Youth the time they played Daydream Nation in its entirety"...on their way to Starbucks.

[Bollocks_to_Pop]

Liked the review. I was at the show too. I'd have to say though they were a lot more talkative and energetic playing the Rather Ripped songs. It was an awesome show though.