I have read all three and 20th is the best one. Psychic is well done but draws heavily upon internet sources.

I found 20th to be a tad more scholarly....

I find PSYCHIC similar to CONFUSION IS NEXT.

this biog "Goodbye 20th century" is so good it aches.
i'm fucking psyched!

actually, its unfortunate they both were released at the same time. Becuase one might be deemed better. The fact is there is alot of overlap in the two. I read Psychic second so I suppose I am bias.

They both delve heavily into the bands relationship with Paul Smith & Gerlad C. Which probably slid under the radar for most fans...I fould the part about SY ordering toast in the North of England to be quite amusing....

you got a thank you in the book? cool !

what did you do or contribute?

im gonna pick this up. a mate of mine highly recommended it to me above the stevie chick book......

Just finished reading this, way more in-depth info than Psychic Confusion and a more satisfying conclusion. Doesn't rush thru their later years so much. Highest recommendation...

Parts of PSYCHIC CONFUSION feel like it's actually a bio of Paul Smith. ha.


Also, I feel like too much gets glossed over. Though, I am enjoying it, I'm looking forward to GOODBYE.

A bio of Paul Smith would have the potential to be quite interesting, methinks.

from what i understand stevie chick didn't actually interview SY for his book, is this the case?

That's right. He just read Confusion is Next and paraphrased it, then rushed through everything post that book very quickly in the hope that no-one would notice that he knew very little about his subject.

Yeah I'm sort of pissed, because I'm on the part about WASHING MACHINE (in PSYCHIC CONFUSION) and there's very little left of the book. I guess Sonic Youth didn't do much for the last 13 or so years, so there's not much to say, huh?

Again... I look forward to GOODBYE.

I'm on the part about WASHING MACHINE (in PSYCHIC CONFUSION) and there's very little left of the book

Which is a pity because alot of fans could use to know what they done since 1998 on...

Did anyone go to the Q&A with Thurston and David Browne this Thursday?

Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth

stumble digg reddit del.ico.us news trust huffington_post:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew..._b_113108.html

Posted July 16, 2008 | 02:05 PM (EST)




Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth

By David Browne
(Da Capo Press)

Rock lore abounds with stories of pivotal yet scarcely attended happenings. It's said that of the few who bought the Velvet Underground's debut record all went on to start a band - the same of the sparse crowd that witnessed the Sex Pistols' first show at the Manchester Free Trade Hall. The history of Sonic Youth has no such eureka moment. The band's members arrived in New York at the close of the '70s - the decade when rock and roll in all its forms arguably peaked. And their journey, meticulously documented in Goodbye 20th Century, unfolds much like a Sonic Youth song, slowly and deliberately, over the span of 27 years, 14 albums, and 5 drummers.
From Sonic Youth's early evolution in New York's avant-garde downtown arts community through its present-day status as revered alt-culture icons, things like record collecting, married life, and long studio hours fill the bulk of the band's time, and Goodbye 20th Century. Browne follows the band's business dealings with dodgy overseas managers (who at one point release a record without the band's consent), their steady hobnobbing with New York's cultural elite (Sophia Coppola, Spike Jonze, everyone famous in the '90s, etc.), and the various awkward peaks like Lollapalooza and the band's "grunge" years.
Take note: Sonic Youth's story is largely unglamorous. And rightfully so. While excising rock from its blues roots, SY also managed to create a new paradigm of the rock star - a tempered, even conservative, approach that ultimately rewarded the band's consistent stability and output. Flaubert wrote "Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work." Sonic Youth, echoing that sentiment, is all of the above.
Browne digs deeply into the band's democratic decision-making process, which gives each distinct personality ample voice. As with any band, tensions do inevitably arise, but disagreements here don't last long. Maybe it's because the members of Sonic Youth are so unwaveringly likable. And they're all characters in their own right: Thurston Moore's continuous joking; Kim Gordon's focused creative input and reserved demeanor; Lee Renaldo's technical prowess; and Steve Shelley's stabilizing influence. It's almost impossible to hate the underachievers now crowned by many as the kings of rock. (Former-Voice critic Robert Christgau called Sonic Youth "the best band in the universe" only a few years ago).
But even obvious Sonic Youth devotees like Browne acknowledge that much of the band's edge came from its ability to crib the prevailing theories and sounds of the early '80s scene into a relatively salable package. Glenn Branca, the avant-garde composer who enlisted both SY guitarists in his guitar-drone orchestra at one point, quips, "Sonic Youth gave [the public] what I had, but sugarcoated it." Several other contemporaries - from Lydia Lunch to Rhys Chatham- could make the same claim.
Branca's comment also brings out the underground-mainstream tension behind Sonic Youth. That the band has been on both SST and Geffen, a major label, (and even more recently released its only 'best of' to-date through coffee-overlord Starbucks) speaks to its complicated DIY/corporate ethics. Both Moore and Shelley maintain their own independent record labels, which continue to release notably weird and underground records (ecstaticpeace.com and smellslikerecords.com), not mention the band's SYR series of experimental collage, noise, and improv recordings.
As much as they took from the scene, Sonic Youth have been giving back ever since. It would be impossible to miss Sonic Youth's influence on albums like Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, mixed by Jim O'Rourke, who served as Sonic Youth's bassist and recording engineer during the early '00s.
It could also be argued (as Goodbye does) that Sonic Youth's style - the "uncool" cool - is nearly as important as its music. Browne notes that anyone who's ever worn an ironic t-shirt owes a debt to Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth. As such Goodbye 20th Century is a worthy history for most, if not all, t-shirt wearers. As Sonic Youth progresses, I hope David Browne keeps up in subsequent editions.

"Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth" reading.

Where: Barnes & Noble, 106 Court Street, Brooklyn
When: Wed., July 23
Time: 7-8 p.m.

Directions by subway: A, C, F to Jay St.–Borough Hall; M, R to Court St.; 2, 3, 4, 5 to Borough Hall.

just got it today.... had a quick flick thru and looks the business i have to say!!!! now i just have to learn to read properly

my copy just came in.

So, what's the story about genetic being left off dirty?

...

YA HAV TA REED DA BUU K!11111111111

"Genetic" is definitely my favorite Lee song. And it totally should've been on DIRTY. Sooooo good. Probably the best song from those sessions.

read the book, lazy arse
it's nothing extraordinary
ego shattered by the rest of the band
that's it
that is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ordinary


this book "Goodbye..." is a gem.:D
It took me 5 days to read it.
very comprehensive

its a shame that whole Genetic shit happened. it seemed to have broken Lee's confidence in his 'ordinary' songwriting style. i think he needs to get back into that. hopefully his upcoming solo album isnt just a noise bomb but real songs that delve deep into his musical roots.


also, i love reading the part where Lee suddenly becomes enamored with noise after playing at the noise festival. it really became heavily influenced by those events

just got it today...
read the intro, and it seems to be a really good one.
the pictures are ace I think

I enjoyed reading about Thurston's amazing father, George Moore, and hope someday his modern classical music will be recorded.


Think the bit about the botched "caper" involving Thurston and his bad company buddy, Mark, is a real scoop.

...just starting out on this one...I'm reading several books right now...

at any rate, this is about the only current thread that's amounts to more than a heap of dung, so thought I'd post...

I'm 100 pages in and loving it.

Founding a Daydream Nation

Whether you've heard of the band or not, whether you're a fan or only dimly aware of their 25-year existence, you've probably felt the effects of Sonic Youth. For a band that never reached popular success or put out a top 10 album, Sonic Youth made themselves known in the art and music worlds as cultural icons during the 80s and 90s. If the names Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo, and Steve Shelley don't ring a bell, then Kurt Cobain, Beck, Sophia Coppola, Spike Jonze, and Chloe Sevigny might. Like Gertrude Stein to the lost generation, the four members of Sonic Youth either directly paved the way or actively encouraged the young careers of the grunge generation.
As biographer David Browne makes clear in his new biography, Goodbye 20th Century, this is a band whose passion for music and the arts inspired others to achieve more recognition and success than the band themselves would ever know. Some might view such stagnation as tragic or, at the very least, frustrating, except for the fact that the band's muse-like power was based in an unwavering sense of integrity. As one record label executive put it, "I don't know if [mass recognition] was necessarily important to them. Or all four of them at one time, let's put it that way."
Though the band's obsession with uniquely innovative sounds (the noise coming out of a deli refrigerator was once recorded for a song) was considered too chaotic by the mainstream public, Goodbye 20th Century shows how their personal lives were as traditional as their music was revolutionary. Browne, a longtime music journalist, warns in his introduction that, "You also won't find the usual litany of rock-star foibles here: no car crashes, drug overdoses, hotel room trashings, and other tales of excess that sustained Behind the Music for years."
Sound boring? It would be if it weren't for Browne's ability to portray the band's very "lack of cliche" as such an exceptional feat. In Browne's words, it's a story of "stability and relative well-adjustedness, of creating chaos onstage but not off it. In its contrariness, it's almost, well, punk." Few other bands can boast that. --CHLOE KAMARCK
http://www.mensvogue.com/magazine/bl...ng-a-dayd.html

Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth

by David Browne

Perseus
May 2008, 422 pages, $25.00

by Kirby Fields
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/...-browne/print/

read it in 2 days over the weekend. a great bio for sure.

wow! so steve said that washing machine was a piece of shit(he sort of took it back but not really). he said he loved the experience but thought the album was their weakest.

I like that it discusses them as pretty normal ppl. I mean like how they hung out with Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern and all those ppl, but at the same time they weren't really like that... how they were actually more conservative ppl at home and just got crazy on stage. It just sort of made sense when I thought about it.

hi all, i've just finished reading chick's "psychic confusion", and i'll be starting on browne's book asap.

i have to admit that i was pretty disappointed with the chick penned biography. i agree that chick does a pretty good job on the early years of sonic youth. i enjoyed reading his somewhat grim account of the new york no wave scene that "spawned" the band, and i think he did pretty much a great job on most things sonic youth pre-EVOL. interesting interviews with collaborators and bob bert! if anything, i'd like to have even more info on various artists around NY at the time; some tips and album recommendations perhaps (that would be more interesting than all these "[this guy] left [this band] to play [a certain instrument] in [another band]" tidbits). in that respect, i think everett true did an awesome job in his recent nirvana book; pouring from his encyclopeadic knowledge of the pacific north-west scene, he made me check out lots of bands i'd never even heard about. that's what a great bio on SY should aim for as well, in my opinion!

chick gets pretty sketchy from here on in: he's relying heavily on the testimony of e.g. paul smith, and large chunks of material from 85 - 89 are based on his accounts alone. i'm really missing more input from the band. to me, chick really fails to convey the personality of the band members, instead resorting to cliches, like "kim's the artist of the band, thurston's the forever-young teenager etc." i'm really hoping browne's got more stuff to tell us, especially since he's got some fresh interviews with them.

also, what's the deal with chick really fast forwarding everything after 1994/1995? to me, that's the period that really needs documenting in the first place, since we already got the foege bio of the early years... chick = lazy? i think chick does a pretty good job when it comes to putting some of the albums into a historical/political/musical context however.

it was a nice read, but i was ultimately quite disappointed how it turned out. here's to hoping browne's got it right (and, judging by several of the posts here, it seems he did get it right) :)

Has anyone ever seen a picture of Ann Demarinis? With everyone in love with her cuz she was an alleged cutie I'm just curious. This book is definitely a lot of fun to read.

Maybe its just me but I have noticed when reading this book that there are several references and or comparisons of Sonic Youth to U2... kinda weird to me as really the two bands don't share much in common, except The Edge "used to experiment with more or less outsider guitar sounds" (i say used to because the U2 now is nothing like the U2 of 1980-83) but not even remotely close to the level of being as adventurous as Sonic Youth.

I wish my friend would finish reading this so I can have a borrow of his copy!

i got two spare copies of browne's book, so if anyone would like to trade for e.g. some DVDs of sonic youth (or other cool indie bands), send me a PM!

god I hate this thread being stanked up by mentions of fucking U2

I couldn't agree more, every time the author mentioned that loathsome band it irratated the fuck out of me. I think that David Browne favours a much more traditional 'rock' orbit.

found a photo in the New York Noise book, which was sitting next to the pile of $20 signed No Wave books at the Strand.

there was a sentence that said something like "Steve saw Cat Power open for Liz Phair at a Raincoats concert". If its a Raincoats concert, Cat Power opened for Raincoats.

Also, the MEcht Mensch 7" is Acceptance, not Zombie.

Great book. One of my favorite moments is p. 392 when the New York Times arrives in Northampton the day after CBGBs closes. Browne writes that Thurston picks it up, "looks at it, studies it." It is a nice segue into a reflection on the band's relation to CBGBs.

i just finished it. it was fucking cool!
what more to say, except browne did his work great.