why do sonic youth play only 1and half hour shows?
 

ive been thinking about this for a while.
whys that?
they always play EXACTLY one and half hour shows!
(except if its an improv gig)

cure often do play for 3 hours.. (not that i like them)
nick cave played for 2 hours here in budapest
many rock bands play much longer than 1andhlaf hours.
even fuckin kyle minogue plays for 2and a half - altho its not a fully live gig its more like a show,
but she fuckin dances for 2and a half hours nonstop! (not that i care tbh its just an example)

sonic youth do have millions of songs to play.. why so short then?
its acceptable on a big festival but not on a 'solo' show..
c'mon guys do some more!

because i can't stand up and dance for any longer.

I guess it's because they don't like rehashing a lot of their older material. Other bands will go through their back catologue and play all their hits and popular songs, and therefore they have much longer shows. Maybe SY want to be a forward moving band who are showing that they still have a lot to offer?

I think maybe its because they play a lot and so to do three hours every night is hard plus most places have a cerfew so they are limited with time etc.

don't lie to yourselves, it's because they're old.

Could it be a throwback to their early days? To a band with no-wave origins, a scene where the average show would probably be no more than twenty minutes, even a ninety minute show must be almost an act of selling out.

selling outs the new punk, man

Not sure, 'cause during the RR tour, most of the time they didn't play any songs from their "not so old" albums like A thousand Leaves, NYC Ghosts and flowers, Murray Street, Sonic Nurse...
Maybe I'm wrong, but they don't look to enjoy playing songs from their 00's era like they are for their older stuffs.
Yeah, they've grown older. It's life.

1 1/2 hours seems like plenty...

tbh as much as I'd love to see the cure live, I don't think I have the patience to stand there for 3 hours (probably more with a support band), not because I wouldn't enjoy it, but because I get uncomfortable standing around for ages, and I'm an athlete! I think an hour and half is just right.
If you look at the setlists from SY's tour history you'll find a lack of older material in the majority of their setlists, I noticed that when listening to a sister bootleg.

exactly. I wondered wtf the topic of this thread meant, like why do they play for so long or something? then yr comparing them to the Cure and Kylie Minogue?!

I remember reading an interview with Kim after signing to Geffen where she said one of the main differences about being on a major label was that they had to play longer sets.. like it wasn't necessarilly a good thing..

this is my reason too

the more songs they play the more guitars they have to travel with, especially for older songs.

Dirty tour had shows shorter than an hour and a half :)

yeah even with sonic youth i wouldn't be able to stand there for even an hour and a half.

thats not true! the stones are old not sonic youth!
they are around as old as nick cave and robert smith and his band mates..
and when they were younger they didnt play longer either.

im not saying they should play 3 hour long shows.
but 2 was superb!!!

I can speak only for the Daydream Nation gig i saw in September, but thats enough time for me. That gig was £30 or so, and lasted 2 hours (as well as being a "special occasion" of sorts) with encores. And i dunno how much you pay for a 3 hour Cure gig, but its a different kettle of roundabouts.

theyre getting old. thats it.

I have seen them play a bit longer, but when you really think about it, over an hour for a single set is grateful dead territory, and it takes certain artists to be able to take their art that far night after night. I saw this reggae band, groundation, last friday, they always play two sets, an hour and half each, and it is just so much fucking energy it is insane, it takes a lot out of you to participate with that, especially if you are not a wallflower.

i rather leave wanting to see them again rather than get sick of them playing for too long.

repped for exactness

I didn't know that was their standard length.
I thought the show I saw was short because of the venue's strict time limits.

yeah the shorter the set the better. i think an hour is just fine for any band.

I cant either, thats why you need to learn to dance!

i can't dance for more than two hours.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Cantankerous again.

Thurstons pushing 50 and i don't think i could rock out like he does for an hour 1/2 without dying and i'm 20. they probably want maintain a certain energy level throughout their entire show and maybe a hour and a half is as long as they can go.

It might be a lot to do with venue sometimes too, Pitchfork I know had a time limit. Hour and a half seems right though, not including encores.

there is an awesome recording of that set. I'm sure they'll release it on CDr at some point.

I once asked Lee if SY would ever think about playing really long sets, in the context of The Dead or Led Zep, who would play 3 hour gigs. He laughed and said he didn't think the fans would want to hear that much. I told him this fan would definitely like to hear long sets. 90 mins is a long time, no matter how much adrenaline you get going.

Interesting topic. I remember the NYC Ghosts and Flowers tour shows were about 70 minutes, which I thought was a little less than satisfying, but I was primarily basing that on the "Thousand Leaves" tour sets which were usually about 100 minutes, if I recall. Long songs from the album + SYR tunes + couple of obscure oldies in the encore + buncha noise to finish it off. Those were great shows, but... same 13 songs, every night, for the whole year. Seemed really insane to me at the time. Still kinda does. And yet, if you saw one of those shows you certainly felt satisfied.

Those of you who collect live shows will certainly notice that most of SY's pre-98 recordings will fit on a single CD-R. After the oddly short NYC Ghosts tour in 2000 (where the songs did start getting jammed out a little more as they went, plus they were teaching Jim new songs on the road, I think), the Murray Street + beyond gigs have all seemed like a suitable length to me, and yet, many artists of SY's stature do seem to have a 2-hour set list. I think SY accomplish a lot in their full-length sets, which are usually pretty cookie cutter across a tour, aside from the rare triple encore or whatever. I certainly wouldn't be disappointed if they played more songs, but I guess I don't feel like I'm being short-changed by most full-length SY shows I see. Are their ticket prices still pretty decent? I definitely expect more if I'm paying $50+ for a show...

i think it was $35 for the nashville show they did in april

All told, the tickets were $30.50, which average to $2.46 a minute for SY (I didn't include the opening band, no idea how long they played), which I feel is more than a fair price.

I don't think that argument stands up when they are touring and playing Daydream Nation in its entrity 20 years after they made it.

Why do Sonic Youth play only 1 and a half hour shows? Maybe because three hours shows suck. I mean really. Except in case of bands like Godspeed who has 20 minutes compositions so I can understand, really I think I would get fucking disguted at a Cure show for instance: seeing a band playing all their hits has no interest for me. I prefer seeing a band, knowing that I won't hear some song but will be surprised about other songs. For instance when I saw Animal Collective I was thinking they would play Grass (they play it again) or We Tigers, but they didn't - hearing Grace and Nomorerunnin' was fantasticly surprising on the other hand

i think their live shows are fine the way they are. that being said, i wouldn't bitch at all if they played longer.