Fans drink deep from Sonic Youth fountain Band makes hits with guitar licks 03/21/98 By Teresa Gubbins / The Dallas Morning News AUSTIN - In a year that's short on buzz shows, the last-minute addition of avant-garde rock pioneers Sonic Youth, who performed Thursday at La Zona Rosa, gave the '98 South by Southwest Music and Media Conference the juice it needed. While Sixth Street doorguys touted two-for-one drinkspecials in an effort to get passersby into their clubs, the line for Sonic Youth had already begun to form at 4 p.m. Along with lots of unscrubbed fans, it included plenty of fellow musicians such as Austin resident King Coffey of the Butthole Surfers and all four members of Philadelphia band Delta 72. Showcasing selections from a new disc due for release in May, A Thousand Leaves, the quartet affirmed its commitment to the original rock 'n' roll instrument: the guitar. No keyboards, no samples, not much bass, either - in fact, bassist Kim Gordon played guitar most of the night with Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. Together, they created a three-way symphony of notes that ran from soft to loud, from massive to minimal and from screechy to gorgeous. The hour-plus set consisted almost entirely of new material - which is either a brave or stupid thing to do - but the audience was adoring and appreciative. One young woman in front reached up to place a string of Mardi Gras beads (handed out for free by a New Orleans booth at the convention center) around Ms. Gordon's neck. As the prestige act on Geffen and the rulers of the experimental underground noise-rock scene, Sonic Youth doesn't need to worry about selling records. The band's members have the job everyone else at the conference wants: They get to make art that is completely unfettered by commerce. Their influence could be seen and heard elsewhere at the festival in new bands such as Bardo Pond and Austin's ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. Mr. Moore even turned up during a Friday afternoon in-store set at Waterloo Records by Japanese band Buffalo Daughter. The quartet, which has a disc called New Rock on the Beastie Boys-owned label, Grand Royal, had Sonic Youth's girl-boy interplay as well as a savvy use of musical discordance to make simple notes sound intriguing.