[wills123]

it is out in uk now - just bought it.

[uhler]

i just bought it today.

[syouth69]

I also have just bought it... While I wait for that I arrive, I ask the following thing for those that already they read it, by way of advancement. Because really quit Jim the band?
Thanks.

[uhler]

i wouldn't know. i'm on page 41 right now.

[✌➬]

I am half way the book. God it is an amazing book. It was due.

[Moshe]

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/....asp?id=130841

[GrungeMonkey]

i NEED to get this book.

[Moshe]

BOOK REVIEW
'Goodbye 20th Century' by David Browne




[COLOR=#333333! important]Sonic Youth redefined alternative rock.[/color]
[COLOR=#999999! important]By David French, Special to The Times
June 5, 2008 [/color]
SONIC YOUTH roared to the front of the underground music scene in 1988 with "Daydream Nation," a double-LP still regarded as their masterpiece. Oozing with detuned guitars, hoarse spoken/sung/shouted vocals, near-abstract lyrics and crescendos of noise, there was nothing to compare it to. They sounded like they'd come from the future -- or the hippest, grittiest block in New York City at the very least -- on a mission to change rock 'n' roll. Rolling Stone presciently described the album as "the sound of the New Rock Nation rising." David Browne's biography of Sonic Youth, "Goodbye 20th Century," is as much a chronicle of the combustion of music and popular culture they helped ignite as it is an earnest portrait of the band and examination of their work.

"Daydream Nation" garnered ecstatic reviews and sold well for an independent release. Sensing the Next Big Thing, Browne recounts, the major labels swarmed the band. After a lot of wooing from executives, Sonic Youth went with Los Angeles-based Geffen Records, in part because Geffen would allow them complete creative control. As one friend of the band noted, "They wanted it on their own terms, and their own terms are completely askew from what pop music is." When Kim Gordon, the band's bassist, sometime singer and full-time arbiter of cool, called the label to let it know the papers had been signed, she also offered a piece of advice: The next band they should sign should be a group called Nirvana.

It was Nirvana, of course, who turned out to be the real Next Big Thing. In 1990, Sonic Youth released their major label debut, "Goo," with the single "Kool Thing" to encouraging sales of more than 200,000. A year later, Nirvana's fist-pumping anthem "Smells Like Teen Spirit" fully roused Generation X from its slacker slumber. The album it was on, "Nevermind," sold millions and loosed a torrent of rough-hewn bands on mainstream America, igniting the grunge craze that reinvigorated commercial radio and the flannel industry. Almost overnight "alternative" was the most powerful marketing buzzword in the country.



Grunge pioneers

Sonic Youth were not a grunge band, but they had played a decisive role in breaking open the underground music scene. Throughout the '90s, they rode the wave as revered pioneers of alternative rock, headlining the massive Lollapalooza tours, getting the full major label push for their grungiest album, 1992's "Dirty" (get it?), touring with proto-grunge icon Neil Young and even appearing on "The Simpsons." But by the end of the decade, much of the steam was out of alternative rock, and Geffen and the band adjusted to the reality that Sonic Youth's chance at the really big big-time had passed.

So Sonic Youth went back to what they had been for the six years before "Daydream Nation": a cult band, albeit now a much bigger cult band. To some extent, this seems to have been a relief for the musicians. By letting go their pop-star ambitions and the expectations that went with them, they were free to be artists again, free to pursue ridiculously uncommercial projects such as "Goodbye 20th Century," an ambitious two-CD set filled with the band's interpretations of works by new music composers, including John Cage, Steve Reich and James Tenney.

Compared with Browne's previous music bio, "Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley," his subjects here offer little personal drama. In his introduction, he warns his readers, "Don't expect any sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll," meaning that, despite their edgy image, the members of Sonic Youth have led lives about as tumultuous as those led by members of the local PTA, of which, now in their 50s, they might even be members.



On a nostalgia trip

Nonetheless, if you can remember how deliriously new and untouchably cool Sonic Youth sounded the first time you heard them, Browne's book will suck you in. It is a nostalgia trip for those who recall peeling the plastic off Sonic Youth LPs, and a vibrant life and times of one of the most bracingly original and influential bands in rock history. Particularly enjoyable is Browne's account of the group's early years: mixing with the New York art scene, gigging at CBGBs, touring with the über-gloomy Swans in the back of a smoke-filled van and recording fast and cheap to create music that was close to art, without letting go of the joy of rock 'n' roll. Browne sheds light on their sound by tracing the band's influences from the Velvet Underground and Television to the No Wave movement and Glenn Branca's alternately tuned guitar orchestras. He also fleshes out the personalities and occasional tensions behind the band's deadpan image.

Harder than recording the band's history, though, is delineating their influence. Browne's book is the first bio of the band in 10 years, so he has the advantage of perspective. Even still, Browne flounders at times, giving more ink to Sonic Youth's involvement in the careers of B-list celebrities than their influence on other rock bands. Browne's difficulties stem from how much a part of the zeitgeist Sonic Youth have been, touching such diverse worlds as art, fashion, film, free jazz, poetry, television and zines. But he gets the big picture right. Now that "Daydream Nation" is on the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry, Browne says, Sonic Youth have become "elder counter culture statesmen . . . keepers of the music-art-literature flame even as, in the culture at large, that flame seemed to grow dimmer with each passing year."

Nearly three decades after forming, Sonic Youth are still together, still releasing new music, still pursuing an impressive array of fringy side projects and still superstars in the narrow slice of American culture that -- accept the label or not -- remains alternative. Last year, they toured to a wave of nostalgic press and sold-out concerts in support of the CD reissue of "Daydream Nation," recreating the entire album live for audiences, some of whose members were too young to have tied their shoes when the album was released 20 years ago.

Reflecting both on their longevity and their cult status, lead guitarist Lee Ranaldo suggests with the kind of half-irony typical of Sonic Youth: "We're the Rolling Stones or Grateful Dead of our generation, or something."

David French is a regular contributor to Down Beat and JazzTimes.

http://www.latimes.com:80/features/b...,4373683.story

[Moshe]

http://www.villagevoice.com/books/08...458763,10.html

[Moshe]

NPR radio interview:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=91461342

[✌➬]

Great Book, made cry at the end. Well written as well.

[greenlight]

just got mine copy from HMV. I'm on 80th. page right now. I like it so far (way it's written). it's their first ep period...guess what I'm listening to right now. I think I'll be listening from first SY album to the last one as the time line evolve in the book. it's great.

does the European copies have different cover? mine's not the one with them sticking out their tongues.

[whorefrost]

Seems there is a hardback and paperback with different covers

[CHOUT]

finished it about 4 days...very detailed...i love sy tidbits i hadn't heard before.

[o'connor]

so why are there 2 SY biographies out at the same time? i'm reading the psychic confusion one right now and as good as it is that stevie chick dude writes too much about other bands and people. and he uses too many big words dammit. i'm dumb and want that shit in "lamens" terms.

[Moshe]

http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle4179019.ece

June 20, 2008


Three books to mark the 25th anniversary of Sonic Youth



The Times reviews by Jesse Jarnow


div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited {color:#06c;}THE RELENTLESS networking that partially accounts for Sonic Youth's quarter-century as immeasurably influential art-punks was, to begin with, literally hardcore. From the release of their first album in 1983, they have been a nexus in the American DIY underground, their connections to filmmakers, 'zine editors, visual artists and other musicians cemented through a discographical universe of 7in singles, jams and collaborations. Their music - which employs battered guitars-turned-objets to create a psychedelic cool - is also rather gorgeous.
Perhaps the only bridge between Nirvana (whom they helped to sign), Sofia Coppola (who designed a fashion line with bassist Kim Gordon), painter Gerhard Richter (whose art graced their album Daydream Nation), avant-garde composer Glenn Branca (whose guitar orchestras included Ranaldo and frontman Thurston Moore), and Starbucks (where the compilation Hits Are For Squares is currently for sale), the untangling of the Sonics' tentacles is taken up by two new biographies.
A good deal can be surmised about Stevie Chick's Psychic Confusion and David Browne's Goodbye 20th Century by their treatments of the first meeting between Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, the husband-wife tandem who formed the band in 1981. “He was immediately smitten,” is all Chick says, while Browne provides rich descriptions of the summer evening, the New York venue, and the height difference between Moore and Gordon: “Since she was a good foot shorter than he was, he had to bend down to say hello. Even when did, it was hard to see her petite, lean face.”
“Sonic Youth's is a New York story,” Chick writes, but he is never fully present inside the cramped rehearsal spaces and Chinatown apartments. Browne's book, however, is a purposeful, detailed pleasure, describing the day jobs and the tensions, and animating the real story: how a group of smart twentysomethings repurposed half-broken instruments and thrived by feeding back - just like their amps - into the world around them.
One testament is The Empty Page, 22 short stories inspired by Sonic Youth songs. Presenting the band as “some sort of a unifying theory”, a wild array of approaches result, from Tom McCarthy's Kool Thing, or Why I Want To Fuck Patty Hearst, kaleidoscopically magnifying the band's obsessions with Sixties dystopianism, to Shelley Jackson's tongue-twisting My Friend Goo.
Perhaps Sonic Youth's truest influence, though, is that they never disengaged. Hovering on the edge of the mainstream they are constantly spitting out homemade cassettes, books of poetry, new bands, old bands, and art exhibits - and will probably continue to do so, till sonic death do them part.
Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth by David Browne
Omnibus, £16.95; 400pp
Buy the book

Psychic Confusion: The Sonic Youth Story by Stevie Chick
Da Capo, £16.99; 320pp
Buy the book
The Empty Page: Fiction inspired by Sonic Youth edited by Peter Wild
Serpents Tail, £8.99; 256pp
Buy the book

[greedrex]

i got the book in the mail two days ago
nice hardback . I wasn't expecting this at all
and it's also quite thick
what i have already read is really excellent.

[deflinus]

the amount of respect and love for sy went off the roof after reading this book.

they're insanely inspiring to me. i just cant put it to words.

[batreleaser]

i had the choice between this and the no wave book, i went with the no wave book. ill get this very soon though.

[noisereductions]

I'm gonna wait until I finish PSYCHIC CONFUSION (which I'm reading now) before I get this one. But I am looking forward to it. PSYCHIC is pretty good, though I think I'm gonna enjoy GOODBYE even more... certainly better than the DAYDREAM 33 & 1/3rd book!