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Sonic Youth
Walls Have Ears
1986, So Blast First put out a live album against the band's wishes so it was pulled almost immediately. It's hard to really know why they didn't want this out there, though. Walls Have Ears is almost legendary now. It's really a pretty important little snapshot of the band's transition from Bob Bert to Steve Shelley for instance. And it's an excellent live show with good sound quality and intense performances. Maybe the band even gets that now considering they included it in the discography section of their Sensational Fix book. What's really neat is that it was a double album (in its original vinyl format - it's since seen several CD bootleg releases...) which compiles two separate performances. The first half of Walls features Steve on drums and even features a couple of tracks that would soon appear on Evol, while the second has Bob on drums and focuses on earlier material. Hearing both of these drummers on one release, and scanning the tracklisting which runs through material from the self-titled debut, Confusion, Kill Your Idols, Bad Moon and even touching upon Evol stuff makes this live album absolutely invaluable.