When the dust settles on Kim Gordon's Girl In A Band, what shouldn't be forgotten is that above all, Sonic Youth were a band that for three decades, fearlessly expanded and enriched the vocabulary of rock and roll. Their legacy includes classic albums, a rich and ongoing influence on today's musical landscape, and a sprawling archive of live performances.
Perhaps reflective of guitarist Lee Ranaldo's Deadhead past, the band has always had a laissez faire attitude toward the proliferation of unofficial live tapes—there's even a section on their official message board entitled "Sonic Sharing" that encourages such activities. A deep dive into Sonic Youth's various onstage eras serves as a potent reminder that the band left behind plenty of "screaming fields of sonic love" for fans to explore.
"Making The Nature Scene" - Le Chapiteau, Poitiers, France, June 26, 1983
One of the earlier Sonic Youth clips circulating online captures the band on their first European tour, the primal spawn of New York's No Wave movement. Moore handles the relentless one-note bass, drummer Bob Bert thunks out a pummeling beat, Ranaldo strangles his guitar, and Gordon bellows out the lyrics in a possessed, terrifying manner. It's an invigorating noise, but the band was likely asking itself: once you and your peers have applied the wrecking ball to rock and roll, what do you do next? Well, you start rebuilding it from the rubble.
The Metroplex, Atlanta, Georgia, September 16, 1987
Sonic Youth spent the remainder of the 1980s in the rebuilding mode, flirting with more conventional song structures, inching towards classic rock moves (The ZZ Top-isms of Goo), while still developing a unique arsenal of lacerating feedback and alternate tunings. This video showcases the band at an onstage peak, as they blaze through songs from the just-released Sister, as well as choice selections from Evol and Bad Moon Rising; the interplay between the band borders on the telepathic.
"Kool Thing" - Hangin' With MTV, New York City, July 29th, 1992
They may have helped usher in Nirvana and others, but it seems obvious that Sonic Youth were never going to fully break into the mainstream. But coulda-been-contender songs like "Dirty Boots," "100%" and "Kool Thing" that demonstrated the group's flair for high-energy, hard rock. Gordon's snarl providing a center of pure, righteous rage as her band whiplashes all around her.
"The Diamond Sea" - Germany, 1996
A few years later, Sonic Youth headlined the Alternative Nation's wake—AKA Lollapalooza 1995. The epic they closed every Lolla set with, the elegiac "Diamond Sea", was the perfect funeral dirge, often drifting past the 20-minute mark, the band conjuring up wave after wave of feedback and cacophony. It marked the end of an era, but also a new beginning for SY. They'd spend the next 10 years rediscovering their avant garde roots, collaborating extensively with Jim O'Rourke and inaugurating the experimental SYR series. Sonic Youth were seasoned veterans of the underground but there was still plenty of life left in the band.
The Williamsburg Waterfront, Brooklyn, August 12, 2011
Sonic Youth's final show was weird. Just a few weeks after Gordon and Moore announced their separation, the band played a large outdoor festival in São Paulo, Brazil, surrounded by corporate banners, sharing a bill with Duff McKagan's Loaded, Megadeth and Alice in Chains. A more fitting finish to the band's onstage life can be heard on a recording of SY's last Brooklyn gig via NYC Taper. Kicking off with a ferocious "Brave Men Run" from Bad Moon Rising, the setlist is a wide-ranging retrospective of the band's work. The closing "Inhuman" may prove to be the last blast of noise Sonic Youth sends out into New York City, but the echoes will reverberate for some time to come.