SONIC DEATH: EARLY SONIC 1981-1983

 
UPDATE 07/31/24

 

 


 

We can do this one of two ways...

#1. "Hey, here's a long thing I wrote about the first three years of the band!"

#2. Oooorrrr indulge me in some slight backstory:

I think it was summer 2013 when I first posted the "EARLY SONIC" graphic teasing a theoretically forthcoming feature focused on the band's early days. It originally started while I was working on an article about Sonic Death for my defunct Tape Logs series, which examined self-released cassettes (previous entries covered Kurt Cobain's Montage of Heck collage and Sebadoh's original Freed Man). I've always had a fascination with Sonic Death, originally compiled by Thurston on cassette and released in 1984 on his new Ecstatic Peace! label. It was reissued as a 2-track CD by SST and Blast First, and when I was first getting into Sonic Youth circa '94, I would see it at this long gone CD shop in the mall. It was twice the price of most CDs and there was no clear indication on the outside of the package what exactly its contents were. And it wasn't one of those shops where you could ask to listen to the CD first (I'd previously dodged a bullet on TV Shit that way). It wasn't until the day I first saw Sonic Youth live, visiting a record store in another city, that I found the disc for a reasonable price. You can read that whole boring tale in the "05/20/95" Song of the Week entry, which also features tabs for all seven songs in the set list that night.

When I first heard it, I was perplexed but not turned off - I recognized bits and pieces of it (I didn't yet have the eponymous debut, which I soon found on cassette). For years I'd fall asleep listening to Sonic Death or The Freed Weed, and eventually I became familiar with every individual segment stitched into it. For the Tape Logs piece, I wanted to see if I could identify as many sources for not just the audio "tracks", but also the amazing early live photos included in the liner notes of the CD reissue. At the time - late 2012 - I also realized I had a wealth of unpublished information about this 1981-1983 period that I could possibly work into an entire feature. In typical webmaster Chris fashion, this ballooned into a project spanning the band's entire career, splitting their three decades of music into 15 separate eras. Each era would get a chronological deep dive, including all sorts of new pictures and bits of info, as well as guitar tabs and gear spotlights, oh and a podcast! And a big social media push to find more fans and gather more information! I designed a theme around The Sonic Lifeline, which wasn't a great name, and later became just "The Sonic Life Project". I became obsessed, but it turns out the autistic recluse with no social media savvy is probably not the guy to be reaching out from anywhere but the comfort of his own website. After I failed to launch in 2013, I considered a "Hello 2015" tie-in which went nowhere, then I purchased the soniclife.ca domain in 2017. Any day now!

During the 2020 lockdown I found myself with all sorts of time to catch up on these website projects, and was all primed to launch the first edition of Sonic Life to test the waters. I don't use Instagram, but I'd seen the band link to this soniclifearchive account several times, and they seemed to have a wealth of really cool stuff and a huge following. I didn't want to seem like I was jumping on their wagon so I reconsidered the name but decided it was fairly universal in the context of the band...and then Thurston announced HIS forthcoming book...provisionally titled Sonic Life. D'oh! I definitely didn't want to seem like I was leeching off that, so I pulled the plug again for potential rebranding. I'd lost momentum on this project, but still felt compelled to write about Sonic Youth. That led to the "Song of the Week" feature at the Tab Archive, which I started in 2022, covering 52 songs in the first year (though not one a week!). That gave me an opportunity to dial into all sorts of different eras of the band and really examine specific details or share things I otherwise hadn't incorporated into the page. Plus I packaged it with a complete transcription of each song's guitar parts, which became a burden that I still kind of enjoy the time-sapping ear-testing challenge of.

In June 2023 I settled on a mobile timeline design that just clicked, pairing concert dates with studio sessions, a large part of what I wanted to do with the Sonic Lifeline (revealed era by era). I wondered if I could knock out a version of the "Sonic Death" project (as I now thought of it) and launch them both together. I abandoned any previous design that seemed locked into an ongoing feature concept, and decided I could use Thurston's late 1984 retelling of the band's history as printed in the summer 1985 issue of Forced Exposure, punctuated with my own commentary and breaks for whatever other garbage I might have to offer. I have no interest in simply telling the band's story, you can consult any of the excellent biographies to get the finer details on that - I care first and foremost about the songs, the instruments they used to write them, the records they put them on, and the shows they played them at. One element I wanted to carry over from the Lifeline concept was including as many of the early photographs of the band as I could find, and determining which shows they were from (and if possible, who took them). I would love to see any live photos from this era that I haven't included.

Please contact me with any comments, corrections, additions, complaints, etc. I've been sitting on a lot of this stuff for a decade and it seems pointless to let misguided perfectionism squash potential knowledge. Thanks for reading, and please do let me know what you think. It should look good on mobile and desktop (I'm learning after 25 years...) xx Chris Lawrence 07/31/23

p.s. just joking about TV shit but come on

 


 

07/31/24 UPDATE: Happy Anniversary! I launched this feature a year ago, and I didn't expect to update it very often. It was researched heavily as I developed it, and beyond the wealth of information contained in Thurston's excellent Sonic Life bio, I didn't think there would be many more revelations (I personally thought that Red Milk set list was quite a monumental find, but I think I was alone there!). However, I got to glimpse at the iceberg beneath the surface, a chronological collection of annotated dates, notes, facts, and questions compiled by the band in preparation for Thurston's retelling. Lee kept a meticulous journal with dates and times of rehearsals, performances, recordings, and more for the multiple bands he was juggling in the early 80s, leading to a number of new Sonic Youth dates and rewriting everything I thought I knew about certain previously established ones. While you probably don't need to know that on October 14th, 1981, Sonic Youth rehearsed from 3:30-6:30 at U232, and then met with Glenn Branca at 7:30, I've done my best to take the most essential bits of this info and incorporate it into the narrative of this document, as well as the Concert Chronology and Timeline. You can head to the Concert Chronology if you just want to see a list of the updates by date, or read on and see what jumps out at you... Enjoy! (As always, massive thanks to Sonic Youth for letting me peek behind the curtain, not making peace with every hole in the story.)

 


 

01/24/24 UPDATE: When I wrote this I somehow completely forgot to mention the extremely brief yet noteworthy interview that Thurston, Kim, and Lee filmed for some kind of TV program in January 1983. It's available on YouTube, and it's pretty neat to see video of them discussing the band at such an early point (they had just returned from the second leg of the Savage Blunder tour, but had yet to start recording Confusion is Sex). Check it out!

I started a new Concert Chronology feature this year, called "THIS DAY IN SONIC HISTORY". It simply lists any shows the band played on a day-by-day basis, highlighting interesting notes and potential mysteries to examine along the way. Thanks to Chris Hartstonge, who runs the incredible R.E.M. Timeline, I've been able to add some dates from this era, including 01/22/82 and 01/23/82 (two benefit gigs at CBGB that are likely what Thurston was referencing regarding a show coinciding with Jack Henry Abbott's conviction). I've also added another post-Edson pre-Bert "Who's on drums?" gig on September 24th, 1982 at the Mudd Club, with Swans. He also found some of the itinerary for Glenn Branca's December 1980 Ascension tour, which Lee was a member of. A review of the Cincinnati gig has been added below.

Now, I have something else to share with you that I think is pretty fucking amazing. I didn't actually realize how amazing until a couple of days ago. I'd found a picture in the Sensational Fix book that showed a display from the actual Sensational Fix exhibit, containing numerous "Early Sonic" artifacts such as the Noise Fest cassette and memorabilia, Arcadians gig posters, etc. Something I hadn't seen elsewhere was a poster for the 12/17/80 gig at A's where Thurston and Kim's new project made its (supposedly disastrous) debut. There was some debate in the narrative as to whether they'd played this show as MALE BONDING or RED MILK, and the poster left no question: they bombed as RED MILK.

Okay, great! I cropped it out as best I could, and saved it to a folder with a few other things I'd found since launching the "early sonic" feature, figuring I'd add them when I had enough to justify an update. I was checking out some of the articles Chris had sent me, and happened to look at the thumbnail for the A's poster. Something jumped out at me...was there writing on the back of the poster? I flipped the image and yeah, I know a set list when I see one. I could make out some words but nothing seemed too familiar, until the two words that confirmed what I had found: "TEENAGE MEN". That was one of the few confirmed Red Milk songs, so it seemed to be Red Milk's set list. Other visible titles that I'm confident I've deciphered correctly are "Left Right" and "Bang Gang". I think one is "Bed Times", one could be "Opposite Girl", one is "Children on _____" and there's a couple that seem damaged by a stain. Regardless, it's thrilling to imagine all of these unheard songs (and also wonder if any are the Noise Fest mystery tunes). You can read more below and check out my attempt to trace the letters in each word - I would love to hear any other opinions on what these titles might say!

 


 

10/31/23 UPDATE: Thurston's SONIC LIFE memoir is out and I've eagerly devoured the chapters that pertain to this "early sonic" period for new information. I'd strongly encourage you to go out and buy it - he really goes into detail, particularly about this era - but I've made some updates to this document based on key points that I thought were critical. Anytime I've updated something based on his book, I've added an orange Sonic Life tag, so if you've read this site already you can skim for the updates. To summarize:

  • Thurston talks at length about the process of playing with Miranda and then Anne and then Kim. When they were rehearsing at Anne and Vito's loft, Thurston and Kim would play the Harmony and Drifter guitars, suggesting that Kim was not always rooted to the bass. In fact, he suggests that everyone took turns playing bass.
  • Supposedly "Cosmopolitan Girl" and "Teenage Men" were Kim compositions that she brought to the group early on.
  • It sounds like everyone had song ideas, so there may be more Arcadians material than expected. Release the tapes!
  • The band's original name came from a piece Kim wrote called "Trash Drugs and Male Bonding"
  • Thurston now acknowledges that they played their notorious disaster debut as Red Milk.
  • The story basically tracks the same as the Forced Exposure telling: Dave Keay left, Richard Edson joined, both Anne and Edson left soon after, and then Thurston and Kim began rehearsing with Lee on unamplified electric guitars at White Columns, writing songs for their debut at Just Above Midtown/Downtown Gallery...
  • ...on July 24th, 1981!! Yes, Thurston dug up the date of their first show with Lee!
  • He talks about the Stilwende gig, and recording at Noise New York (supposedly they ran through many songs, not just "Where the Red Fern Grows"). He says Glenn Branca dropped off four cheap guitars so they could explore alternate tunings with greater ease.
  • He places the 2-day recording session for the Sonic Youth album as directly prior to the CBGB gig on December 13th, which is interesting. He also says there was a release party for Just Another Asshole after the sessions finished, and talks with surprising detail about his track "The Fucking Youth of Today".
  • Vague CBGB & Tin Pan Alley gigs are mentioned in winter 1982, but he does say they played CBGB on the day Jack Henry Abbott was convicted, which was January 21st.
  • He discusses working with Lydia Lunch on the In Limbo project, and says one of the four songs he wrote (on bass) was originally an idea he'd considered for Sonic Youth.
  • He also talks about playing a gig with Swans at CBGB and then running to Tramps to play a set with Even Worse. He considered Sonic Youth, Swans, Even Worse, and Branca's ensemble as equally serious bands he was devoting his time to.
  • The hanging chimes seen on Lee's side of the stage during many early gigs were found in the street, and later lost the same way while loading up after a show.
  • Perhaps most surprising to me, Thurston claims that Tom Recchion played one additional gig after his fabled Mudd Club stand: December 10th, at Maxwell's. This conflicts with what I thought was an mp3 of "The Burning Spear" with Bob on drums from that gig, which he'd posted on his old website. Hmm!
  • Though the Confusion is Next book cites "Shaking Hell" or "Making the Nature Scene" as potential b-sides to the Confusion is Next 7", Thurston says they'd recorded a version of "Inhuman" for that purpose. It sounded so good that everyone was encouraged to continue recording for a full-length.
  • "Freezer Burn" apparently does have some additional guitar feedback mixed in to the cooler sounds they captured on their recordable walkman.

    There's so much more! So after you've finished reading this page again, why don't you go read Sonic Life?

     


     

    09/30/23 UPDATE: Just a couple notes...I updated the "Blooze Blurrr" section with notes from Lee. I confirmed the date of the Kill Yr Idols back cover thanks to Bob Bert. Oddly, I was listening to the August 27th, 1985 Austin gig and noticed they played one of the "bell tape" segments from Sonic Death (complete with traffic noises) between "Death Valley '69" and "Making the Nature Scene" (in a very rare instance of them interjecting a Thurston bass song into the flow of the Bad Moon Rising set - odd choice, and odd to hear that same bell tape!) So I updated that track's notes.

    Perhaps the most exciting find comes courtesy of Raj Paden, who sent me another 1983 article from Terminal! issue 14, which you can find on archive.org. It's a great interview with Thurston, Lee, and Kim and actually clarifies a couple of mysteries, including why "She's in a Bad Mood" is tagged "version" on the Confusion is Sex label. It sounds like the interview was done in summer 1983 when the band had come back from their first European tour. It was conducted around a CBGB performance, which is also reviewed with partial set list data - possibly July 16th or September 14th, or another undocumented date. It suggests that both Kim and Lee take turns on vocals, which is curious since aside from his "Freedom!" support in "Confusion is Next", there isn't really a Lee vocal in this era...except for "Blooze Blurrr". Huge thanks to Raj for informing me about this, and please send me any cool old SY interviews you might find buried on the internet!

    After posting this I shared a Song of the Week mini feature to complement this in-depth look at the "early sonic" era by doing something I neglected to do in this article - discussing the songs themselves! That piece looks at 8 songs that were mostly unique to that era. I'll take a closer look at some other songs in future articles. Enjoy!

     


     

     


     

    The CKM song "Cosmopolitan Girl" was played at least once by Sonic Youth, at the September 18th, 1981 show which appears on the deluxe reissue of Sonic Youth.

    Initially, Thurston was jamming with Miranda on bass and Anne DeMarinis on keyboards. Miranda lost interest and Kim took over, then they enlisted Coachmen drummer Dave Keay. They would rehearse at the loft Anne lived in with her boyfriend Vito. In Sonic Life, Thurston suggests that he and Kim were both playing guitar (a Harmony, likely the Bobkat, and the Drifter, which we will discuss at length later). Anne played keyboards, the three of them sang, everyone contributed song ideas (including "Cosmopolitan Girl" and "Teenage Men", which he credits to Kim). He also says they took turns playing bass, so perhaps Kim wasn't strictly on bass as I'd imagined.

    Thurston suggests here that they made their debut as Male Bonding, but Confusion is Next specifies that they'd already changed their name to Red Milk for their first (horrible?) gig at A's on December 17th, 1980. Thurston's quotes in I Dreamed of Noise reinforce the idea that Male Bonding played one disastrous show at A's before changing their name to Red Milk. However, in Sonic Life, he now attributes the "lousy debut gig" to Red Milk. A gig poster confirms they played as Red Milk, and also reveals a little more...

    The song "Teenage Men" remains a mystery, though a lyric sheet was published in the Confusion is Next biography.

     

     


     

    It's certainly pretty cool to see a gig poster for their first live performance, particularly to set the record straight regarding their name. However, I noticed that there was something on the back of the poster, so I flipped the image around and took a look. At first I wasn't sure I had anything useful, until the words "TEENAGE MEN" jumped out at me. And that's when I knew - I found a fucking Red Milk set list, presumably from this very gig. There appear to be nine songs in all, in Thurston's handwriting. Sure, it's not entirely legible, but I can make out at least two or three other titles in addition to "Teenage Men", including "Bed Times" "Left Right" and "Bang Gang", which was apparently the encore. Others may be "Opposite Girl" (not "Cosmopolitan"!) or "Children on something". Wheels? Who knows...I think the first song probably starts with "Napalm" though the diagonal stroke of the "N" would not match any of the other ones. Imbalm?! I've made a reference where I've outlined the letters I see, but I'm very open to ideas. What looks like a "W" might be an "N", etc. There may be a stain in the center of the page, obscuring songs four and five. None of these titles immediately connect with any of the four tunes later played at Noise Fest, but you never know. In Sonic Life, Thurston recalls that they only had four or five songs. This would seem to contradict that, though they may have cut the set short due to the issues on stage - all anyone could hear was drums, and nobody could follow what was going on. Fortunately, they didn't give up...they just changed their name.

     


     

    So they went from Male Bonding to Red Milk, and then became The Arcadians. There are a handful of known Arcadians dates, including January 20th, 1981 at Inroads. I'd previously reported that they were joined onstage by Lee Ranaldo and David Linton, who were currently members of Plus Instruments. Based on Lee's quite detailed diary, it would seem that this actually took place at a later Inroads gig, on June 9th (at which point I believe they were playing as Sonic Youth). Lee played half of Ann's keyboard and David played some percussion. This is technically the first time Lee performed on stage with Thurston and Kim. The last Arcadians date I have documented is March 11th, 1981. You'll note that the poster for this show uses a drawing by Kim that would later go on to be the cover of both Confusion is Sex and Kill Yr Idols (and grace a few more gig posters, too).


    In the I Dreamed of Noise biography, Thurston confirms that he has tapes of the Arcadians. It would be delightful to hear these recordings somehow! (It's possible that some of the unknown tracks on the Sonic Death cassette are abandoned Arcadians tunes.)

    Though it's glossed over in the interview, Lee was keeping very busy with Plus Instruments as well as Glenn Branca's ensemble, both of whom toured Europe in 1981 (he also joined Branca for a December 1980 tour, detailed in the review below). Lee and David Linton made their premiere with Plus Instruments on February 6th at Inroads, and also played February 17th opening for Pylon at Blitz, and the next night at Club 57 with Ut. Lee flew to Europe on February 27th to begin a tour with Glenn Branca, hitting Geneva, Bologna, Ravenna, Vienna, Munich, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Appeldoorn, Eindhoven, Dusseldorf, Groningen, Berlin, and finally Rome on the 21st of March. Just a few days later, Plus Instruments were recording in Amsterdam, and began their own tour within the Netherlands and Germany. Plus Instruments planned a return visit to Europe in the summer, but Lee and David Linton bailed on that tour (and the band) in order to support the Noise Fest.

     


     

    Though the Noise Fest is often cited as the first Sonic Youth gig, there's evidence of at least three warm-up shows (now that the June 9th Inroads date has surfaced). On May 8th, 1981 they played Club 57. This may have been the first gig with Richard Edson on drums - it's not clear if Ann was out or "back in" by this point. As you'll note, there are two versions of the gig poster. Both feature Kim's drawing, but one identifies the band as "FUCKING-YOUTH".

    It's not referenced in this interview, but in 1981 there was a compilation called Just Another Asshole. It was produced with the assistance of White Columns, the future venue of Noise Fest. While it may have been compiled after Sonic Youth's formation, it features each individual member contributing their own track: Lee's "Shift", Kim and Miranda's "Working Youth", "Radio Song" by Ann DeMarinis and, of course, "The Fucking Youth Of Today" by Thurston Moore.

    So, the "FUCKING-YOUTH" bastardization of "SONIC-YOUTH" could be a reference to this track, and was certainly called back later in the lyrics for "I Dreamed I Dream" (which repeat both "fucking youth" and "working youth"). Thurston elaborates extensively on "The Fucking Youth of Today" in Sonic Life: With Lee's assistance, utilizing a reel-to-reel tape deck he had been making tape-noise experiments with, I put together "The Fucking Youth of Today" - a piece in which I asked Kim to speak a bit of snatched conversation, whereupon I would tickle her, causing her to laugh at the end of the phrase. I hoped the line would sound as if it were lifted from a film. The track romps into a repetitive bass and guitar riff, soon superimposed with police sirens and the recorded barking of our dog, Egan. It ends with my voice, bored and sneery, declaring - Well, you know how I feel about scenes

    The "SONIC-YOUTH" version of the poster is instant history, as this is the exact script which appears on the Confusion is Sex cover. They simply scrawled over "+ DOG EAT DOG" from the March poster, which provided a perfect place for a future album title. The hyphen between "Sonic" and "Youth" proves to be an arbitrary addition that pops up here and there, just like "The" as a prefix (dig Sister where both are utilized: "THE SONIC-YOUTH"!).

    On June 3rd, Sonic Youth opened for Glenn Branca at Great Gildersleeves. Lee was in Branca's ensemble that evening, as well as two weeks later at the Noise Fest. Lee also appeared at Noise Fest with David Linton, as a duo called Avoidance Behavior. Elements of this performance (which included live tape loops of guitar/drums) appear on Lee's East Jesus LP as "Walker Groves".

    On June 18th, 1981 (the day after Avoidance Behavior played) Sonic-Youth played a four-song set. A pretty good tape circulates - it's the earliest known recording of the band that does - and all four songs appear to be unique compositions, not linked with anything that SY would play in the future. Of course, with Thurston on guitar and vocals, Kim on bass and vocals, and Richard Edson on drums, there's a lot of hints towards the material that would end up on Sonic Youth, but with Anne on keyboards and chanting in unison with Kim, it's definitely not the Sonic Youth we know and love. That would require a man named Lee Ranaldo.

    The third song of SY's set was released by ZG Music on a cassette compilation called Noise Fest in 1981. Unfortunately, the track is untitled. I assume these four songs are all Arcadians leftovers that they taught Richard Edson just to have something to play, but it's possible they were cooked up specifically for this show. At the very least, none of them are "Teenage Men"!

     


     

    Exit Anne DeMarinis and Richard Edson, enter Lee Ranaldo! It seems like Edson was pretty busy with Konk but stepped in to help out for Noise Fest. For a few shows, however, Sonic Youth would remain a trio (though Barbara Ess may have played bongos at rehearsal?).

    At long last, Sonic Life has provided us with an exact date for the trio's premiere appearance at Just Above Downtown/Midtown Gallery: July 24th. We also surprisingly have a recording. They play two songs: an early version of "The Good and the Bad" still called "Loud and Soft", and a very embryonic version of "She Is Not Alone". "Loud and Soft" is essentially exactly as it appears a couple of months later at the Music For Millions show, with Thurston's funky bassline a little more rigid than the looser feel it has on the Sonic Youth recording and beyond. Lee's soft spoken word is present during the droning breakdown, but not as developed as the Music For Millions show (and indeed would be removed from "The Good and the Bad" altogether).

    "She Is Not Alone" was originally conceived with a different groove, possibly with all the instruments detuned. They still played it this way at the September Music For Millions gig, but by the December recording sessions for Sonic Youth it was in its final form (well, final form for the early 80s). Thurston still sings but the lyrics are sprawling and unclear, not concise like the final version. Thurston may be hitting a drum during the song.

    I'd previously listed a summer Stillwende show played by the trio version of Sonic Youth, as described in Confusion is Next. New data places this show on December 5th - after Edson had joined - perhaps because he was unavailable. Per Thurston, they only had ten minutes to play, so they did a wild version of "The Burning Spear", where he banged his guitar with a drumstick, and Lee used a power drill that he had rigged with a contact mic to blare through a wah pedal. Both the drumstick and the drill would be critical elements of the song's sound on the Sonic Youth album. (In Sonic Life, Thurston reveals he also applied a contact mic to a crash cymbal, which he would strike while playing guitar!)

    The trio also apparently played Folk City five days after their debut, on July 29th. Beyond that, I have no dates until Richard Edson returned to play drums for their September 18th gig at the New Pilgrim Theater, the Music For Millions festival. This show appears in its entirety on the 2006 reissue of Sonic Youth, confirming the source of at least three clips from the Sonic Death cassette: the long segment of "Loud and Soft" that opens the tape, the weird alternate version of "She Is Not Alone", and a looped snippet of "The Burning Spear".

    All five songs from the Sonic Youth record are played. "Hard Work" (later "I Don't Want To Push It") is mostly complete, as is "The Burning Spear". "Where the Red Fern Grows" was the working title for "I Dreamed I Dream", and though the album version is pre-Eternally noteworthy with both Kim and Lee trading lines, this version features only Lee, and is mostly instrumental anyway. Lee also gets his verse on "Loud and Soft", which had the "funk" section tightened up and reprised after the droning now-midsection when it was finalized as "The Good and the Bad".

    The other two songs are "Cosmopolitan Girl", a CKM song discussed above (with Thurston on bass and Kim on guitar, I think) and "Destroyer". Ah, "Destroyer". In the Confusion is Next biography, "Destroyer" is described as a song where Thurston and Lee tuned all of their strings to slack for a super heavy effect. For 12 years, that mythical description could only taunt the imagination, and then along came the deluxe edition of Sonic Youth to clear everything up...sort of. "Destroyer" as it appears at the gig is an upbeat, bass-driven instrumental in standard tuning. Assuming that no errors were made when the deluxe disc was put together (and I think evidence of the accurate working titles suggests that the recording was properly labeled), I'd say the description of "Destroyer" was wildly inaccurate. In fact, it reminds me far more of the early version of "She Is Not Alone" (or, my original theory, one of the unknown segments of Sonic Death).

    They played the 2+2 Club a week later, on September 25th. In mid-October, they spent two days at Noise New York, making their first serious attempt at recording their material in a studio.

    We'll get back to this Tom Recchion business...

     


     

    The Sonic Youth album was recorded on 24-track at Radio City Music Hall in NYC. They started on December 11th, and likely continued on the 12th. In Sonic Life, Thurston talks about attending a release party for Just Another Asshole after they finished the recording session, then playing CBGB the following day (the December 13th show). They mixed the five songs on January 3rd, 1982. As far as I know, no additional material was recorded during the session.

    After its initial March 1982 release on Neutral Records, it was reissued on CD and cassette by SST in 1987. The CD featured just the five songs, but the booklet had some cool old poster reproductions. The cassette, for whatever reason, featured the entire album backwards - which evidently delighted them enough to include in its entirety on two separate web-only mix tapes!

    When DGC started reissuing the band's back catalog in 1993 through 1995, Sonic Youth was supposed to be included. A compilation of their 80s material, Screaming Fields of Sonic Love, contained "I Dreamed I Dream", and marketing for the compilation promised the forthcoming eponymous reissue. Nevertheless, we waited until 2006 for the fabled reissue, but it was worth it! In addition to the five original songs, it featured a very well recorded, noteworthy performance of theirs in its entirety - September 18th, 1981 at the New Pilgrim Theater in NYC, for the Music For Millions festival. Early versions of all five songs are played, some notably different, and two others: "Cosmopolitan Girl" by Kim's old band CKM, and the instrumental "Destroyer". This is the only known performance of both of these songs, although Sonic Youth set lists from this era are quite rare.

    The 2006 reissue (on Geffen/Goofin) is rounded out by a single demo from October 1981 at Noise New York, "Where The Red Fern Grows" (an instrumental version of what would become "I Dreamed I Dream"). Curiously, this version features the 2-note bassline backwards - Kim plays E to F instead of F to E. And yes, it sounds wrong!

    In Sonic Life, Thurston does suggest that they recorded multiple songs at Noise New York, but being unfamiliar with the studio environment, the results sounded stiff and unlike the live presentation. Regardless, I wish they'd included more songs on the eponymous reissue!

     


     

    Let's take a moment here to look back at 1981. It's unfortunate that so little is known of the Arcadians and their earlier incarnations. I assume they had a handful of songs, at least? That Red Milk set list suggests at least nine! "Cosmopolitan Girl"" and "Teenage Men" are the only titles that I've seen confirmed, both being Kim's. I suspect that the four songs Sonic Youth played at Noise Fest were leftovers from the Arcadians, since it was basically the same group with a new drummer. That said, it's possible they wrote some new material after Thurston coerced Anne into returning. There's also the tiny chance that one of the unknown tunes on Sonic Death date from the pre-Lee days. I would really love to know how many songs they had and how many tapes exist!

    There's a very interesting website that's worth digging through for Noise Fest memorabilia. While there are pictures of many bands that played there, I couldn't find any of Sonic Youth, but there are some of Thurston playing (an unknown) guitar in the performance space. Check out the website for more cool stuff!

    They whipped up a pretty decent set in the three months between Noise Fest and Music For Millions. It's a shame that more tapes don't circulate. It's thrilling that full recordings exist from three 1981 dates - Noise Fest, Just Above Midtown/Downtown Gallery, and Music For Millions - capturing very different states of the band. And of course, the full 24-track studio recording from the end of the year is a pretty solid document in itself.

    On December 13th, they played an afternoon set at CBGB. It received a positive review from Mark Coleman in the New York Rocker. Pictures from this gig tell an interesting story. One of the most fascinating aspects of early Sonic Youth is that you can almost always tell what song they are playing in a photograph. Every song had a different instrumental configuration, as well as relatively unique chord shapes or hand positions (or drumstick position, or screwdriver position, etc). I have four great photos from this show, and you can make a couple of deductions...

    First off, Thurston with a drumstick under his strings, attacking it with another drumstick, tweaking the first one with his left hand...that's "The Burning Spear". Lee holding a power drill with a contact mic duct taped to it? Yeah, that's "The Burning Spear" too. The picture of the full band is interesting - there's no drumsticks, so it's not "The Burning Spear" or "She Is Not Alone". Kim is playing bass, so it's not "The Good and the Bad". Based on the chord shape that both Thurston and Lee are making, plus Kim's low position on the fretboard, I would lean towards this being "I Dreamed I Dream". It would be interesting to know if they ever played this song with both Kim and Lee doing a vocal part, but unfortunately the Music For Millions set is the only circulating live version.

    Let's talk gear. While the band is legendary for the quantity of instruments they bring onstage, such was not the case early on. In fact, Thurston had a Harmony Bobkat, Lee had a thinline F-hole Telecaster with a Tele Deluxe neck, and Kim had...some black Les Paul copy? Also, dig Edson's bongos, which supposedly startled the band when they first arrived to jam with him. Also, at this point in time all of the songs were still in standard EADGBE tuning, even when there was a drumstick shoved under the strings.

     


     

    Since the interview jumps from the first album to Edson leaving and the Swans tour, I wanted to address a few notable shows during his tenure. Sonic Youth played the opening weekend of Danceteria on February 6th, 1982. I'm almost positive this picture from the Sonic Death liners is from that show, since they painted the green pillar a darker colour shortly thereafter. In this picture you can clearly see the black bass Kim is playing, as well as the rack of bells that Lee kept at the side of the stage (he would bang them during "The Burning Spear"). In Sonic Life, Thurston says they found the hanging chimes in the street, and later lost them after a gig at the Pyramid when they forgot to load them into the van and left them in the street where they found them. This may have been the October 27th, 1984 gig.

    You can see a duct taped drumstick peering out from Thurston's guitar, which is confirmed by another picture taken within moments, published on SY's instagram. Also, Edson has ditched the bongos for a roto-tom. Progress? Based on Kim's hand position and Thurston singing with a drumstick under his strings but not in his hand, I'm pretty sure they're playing "She Is Not Alone". Another note about those early Sonic Youth tunes - the person singing did not play while they sang, with very few exceptions.


    There are gig posters for a number of Mudd Club gigs between February and April 1982. However, many of these dates are crossed out in Lee's meticulous journal, so I've removed them: February 19th and 20th, shattering any notion that these were Richard Edson's final gigs, and also March 31st. That leaves April 1st for the fabulous set of pictures that I've determined are probably all from the same Mudd Club gig. A promotional poster for Sonic Youth was made featuring individual shots of all four members, and three of them are taken from this same gig (Lee's is the classic drill instruction from CBGB '81). Some of these pix were in Sonic Death and some accompanied early magazine interviews. Kim is now playing a white Fender Mustang bass. Thurston also played the Mustang bass when he would join the Swans onstage, like in this example from a CBGB gig, likely July 5th - and hey, Mike Gira is playing the black Les Paul style bass that Kim was using before! Perhaps they'd just borrowed it (see another Swans gig where Gira is playing the same bass).

    Now would be a good time to mention one of my personal heroes, with whom this entire exposé on early sonic could probably not exist: Catherine Ceresole. Her and her husband were early fans of the band, and were responsible for taping many gigs and taking countless photographs, providing a level of documentation that may have otherwise not existed. They also helped immensely with financing tours and recording, and their Swiss home served as a base for the first European tour in June 1983. But we're not there yet! I just wanted to emphasize how important her photography is to decoding the early sonic puzzle. When I started this project, I didn't yet have access to her essential Beauty Lies in the Eye book, and had to piece together many venue/date combinations based on whatever clues I could identify. Getting her book confirmed a lot of what I'd already determined, but also delivered so many unseen pictures that added a whole new dimension to the story. I realize that I'm reprinting a lot of her photos in this piece, and rather than scan the images from her book I've chosen to just use pictures I took of the pages. I really think if you're a fan of Sonic Youth, you should consider grabbing a copy of the book.

    Hey look, she even snuck on stage with Rhys Chatham, who was also joined by Thurston! These three pics come from April 14th, 1982, back at Danceteria. Still has the light coloured pillar. Not so in these four pictures from yet another Danceteria gig, now confirmed to be May 9th. They're still using the Tele, the Bobkat, and the Mustang bass. Based on this configuration, they are most likely playing "The Good and the Bad" in all three band pix, and "Burning Spear" in the solo T shot (is that the Drifter behind him?).

    There's a picture in the Sonic Death liners that I'd always assumed was Thurston playing with another band - he's clearing hitting a standard tuned barre chord, and someone that is definitely not Kim is playing bass. However, looking a little closer at the drummer peeking out above Thurston's hand, that is the face of Edson. And I didn't know it at the time, but the bassist is Mike Gira! Thurston was known to join in on Swans sets, but I wasn't aware Mike had played with Sonic Youth. Based on the fresh cut, another picture from Sonic Death looked like the same show, with Thurston at the mic and Lee off to the side. Eventually I stumbled across another picture from the show that possibly offered more questions than it answered. It was printed in the phenomenal I Dreamed of Noise book, which I waited far too long to seek out as a fan. It's a really great series of interviews tracking the entire history of the band up through the recording of Dirty (with a slight Jet Set reprise), and it's full of awesome pictures like this one! Which was helpfully dated "May 1982". Also, you can now tell it's dark pillar Danceteria.

    So, it's May 1982, and Richard Edson is still clearly on drums. Mike Gira is playing bass, Thurston and Lee are both playing guitar, and Kim is singing with no instrument. At this stage of the game, there are very few options as to what they could be playing - in fact, my best guess is "I Wanna Be Yr Dog". Though Thurston would play bass when they eventually started covering it, it would be easy enough for him to follow along on guitar (and likewise easy enough for Gira to sub on bass). Another piece fell in place when I was sent a picture of an advertisement for a White Columns benefit at Danceteria on Thursday May 27th, which would have been 1982. Could this picture have been from this show? Well, I dug a little deeper, and found another pic in I Dreamed of Noise - this time of Branca's ensemble, featuring Thurston and Lee, also from Danceteria, also from May 1982. They are set up on the floor, and you can see the amps from the Sonic Youth pictures on stage behind them. So I'm fairly confident these pix all come from May 27th, 1982. (It's worth noting that Catherine Ceresole chose this as her favorite show in the I Dreamed of Noise bio!)

     


     

    The next known gig is yet again at Danceteria, and does seem to be Richard Edson's actual final show. This is June 18th, 1982 - a full year after Noise Fest. A number of photos from this show are available, and many were used in early promo materials. In the picture with Kim on bass, you can see Thurston wiggling the drumstick under his strings, and Lee and Kim's hand positions match "She Is Not Alone". The pictures of Lee and Kim playing guitar are most likely "The Good and the Bad". In the Sonic Youth reissue booklet, there is a collage of pictures from this show cut and pasted to look like a continuous stage shot (the rototoms have grown) which we'll be coming back to discuss later. Hey, there's even a few pix from backstage! Mike Gira can be seen playing a Kent guitar that would become a prominent fixture in Lee's arsenal one year later - actually, it can be seen onstage behind Lee in the first pic! Was he already using it? I thought it had first appeared for "Brother James" circa July '83...

    So, if June 18th was Richard Edson's last gig, how many shows did the band play with interim drummers, and who were they? Very little info is known, but David Keay likely returned for a July 3rd gig at the 9:30 club in Washington DC. They rehearsed with David Linton and Fred Maher, as well as Richard Skinner, but probably only played live with the latter - on July 12th at Tramps in NYC. In addition, R. Kane from Fakir (who appeared at Noise Fest) allegedly played one gig with the band at the Mudd Club. It's possible it was this July 31st show, but there is no confirmation.

    They made another appearance at the Mudd Club on September 24th, with any of the above mentioned drummers potentially manning the throne. I had previously listed their November 3rd CBGB gig as Bob Bert's first gig, but new info about an old date that I'd previously deleted has prompted me to reconsider it. Years ago, Bob Bert had an mp3 of "The Burning Spear" on his website, supposedly from October 10th at Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey. Given that they also played December 10th at Maxwell's, I began to consider this a mislabel - encouraged by Bob's admittance that the date could be wrong. However, Lee's journal evidently does contain this date and venue, so despite other claims I have to strongly assume this was Bob's first show with the band. He suggests that the sparsely attended Maxwell's show may not have felt like a real debut.

    I'm sure they did audition a handful of other drummers prior to Bob, possibly even earlier in the year with Edson showing up if he had to. Edson reveals in the Sonic Youth liner notes that recording sessions for that record went long, and when he arrived late for a Konk gig he was forced to choose one band - however, this doesn't seem to track with photographic evidence. In fact, I've learned that the February 27th gig at CBGB was performed without Edson since he had a Konk gig at the Mudd Club! One drummer that does get mentioned throughout the retelling of this tale is Tom Recchion, but his role is possibly the most confusing...in the Forced Exposure interview, Thurston strongly suggests that Tom played with the band in summer of '82, after Edson but before Bob. The problem is that a tape of the Mudd Club gig with Tom on drums circulates, and it is dated December 7th, 1982. I made multiple attempts to force a July 12th date on to it, which would make all the sense in the world, but have had the December date confirmed by several independent sources. Huh! I suppose we're not technically there yet...

    It's frustrating that so few recordings from early 1982 exist, since it would be interesting to see when they started writing new songs after that initial batch. I suppose it may have been hard to convince Edson to work on new material when he already had one foot out the door, but there is a very peculiar recording that I want to discuss. I originally downloaded it off of a now-defunct FTP for Sonic Youth recordings, and the only identifier was "NYC, NY @ the Mudd Club", no date info. The recording is only three songs (well, two and a half), but it has heavy implications. The tape cuts in during "Confusion is Next", then they play "Shaking Hell" and close with "The Good and the Bad". Here's the thing - you can hear someone in the crowd talking during the long downtime between songs, and they specifically refer to the drummer from Konk. Now, maybe it was some other guy in a baseball cap, but it really does sound like Edson, particularly his groove on "The Good and the Bad". That would, however, mean that the band had already started writing Confusion is Sex material with him. Could it be?

    There were a handful of other early shows shared like this one - mp3 only, and with "Radioaufnahme Kassette by (FERFI)" in the tags. Somebody is heard introducing them (for Sonic Life Radio?), and this (pitch altered?) voice mentions "May 1982 at the Mudd Club". Unfortunately, I can't be sure that they're referring to these three songs, but it's entirely possible they'd started adding new songs by May. Which brings me to another puzzle...take a look at these pictures from the Sonic Death liners:

    If you compare the light fixture and the amps, it looks like the Lee picture is taken at the same time as the Kim picture. I can't tell what venue it is, but when I see that many rototoms I think "Richard Edson". Unfortunately his face and potential ballcap are blocked, so I can't be 100% sure, but I can be 100% sure that if Lee is playing a zither, and Kim is playing guitar, then they are playing "Inhuman". This opens up the possibility of three Confusion is Sex songs being in the set list prior to Edson's departure, though I admit the tape could be misdated and that may not be him in the last pix. Intriguing though, considering that the story was always that they wrote the bulk of that material when Bob joined. And yes, Lee plays a modified zither on "Inhuman" (on the album and live until late '83). We'll talk a bit more about that later!

     


     

     

    Bob Bert responded to a "SONIC YOUTH SEEKS DRUMMER" ad and played his first major gig with the band at CBGB on November 3rd, 1982. There are two very cool pictures which reveal a few more details. This is the first photo I've seen of Lee with a screwdriver under his strings, which was a trick he used on "The World Looks Red" and "Confusion is Sex" (plus later tunes like "I Love Her All The Time" and "Flower"). Since Thurston is singing with no instrument, it must be "Confusion" (he plays guitar with a drumstick throughout "World" - except, of course, when he's singing). You can also see a new instrument on the floor - a guitar that would become a staple of the sonic arsenal until its theft in 1999 (come to think of it, the Telecaster Lee is playing was also stolen - and then recovered!). That new guitar is (most likely) a blue Jazzmaster copy, possibly with some real Fender parts. It was constantly modified over the years, played by everyone in the band early on and then settled into Thurston's F#F#F#F#EB guitar for the 90s. The other pic depicts Thurston playing bass with a slide, and singing - 100% "Inhuman" (not to be confused with the Inhuman "100%" they played in Portland in 2002). "Inhuman" was actually the only song that Thurston played bass on and also sang lead. You can see Lee's Tele and Jazzmaster laying behind him, because off camera Lee is playing a modified zither (and somewhere Kim is probably playing the Harmony Bobkat). Oh, check out their new bass - an Ovation Magnum that would provide the low end for Sonic Youth until 1988 or so. (Thurston actually used it with Lydia a few days earlier, but they're telling the story out of order.) And wait - are those...rototoms?! Indeed, Bob confirmed that he used his childhood kit complete with rototoms for his first SY gigs, making a potential mockery of my earlier "Inhuman" theorizing (Bob maintains that the bulk of Confusion was written with him, but that earlier mystery Mudd recording is very curious...).

    The Savage Blunder tour began its first leg in Chapel Hill, North Carolina at Cat's Cradle, a venue they'd return to many times. Fortunately for us, an excellent tape circulates, capturing a powerful six-song set focusing primarily on the developing new material destined for Confusion is Sex. They opened with "Inhuman", followed by an early version of "(She's in a) Bad Mood" that features Thurston playing a different guitar part, and singing a final reprise of the title after the song's climax. "The World Looks Red" came next, with lyrics courtesy of Mike Gira. This was followed by the only "old" song, "The Burning Spear". You can hear Lee playing his bells during the intro (the drill was sadly long abandoned - I wonder why?). Then came "Confusion is Next", and Thurston returned to bass for the closer "Making the Nature Scene". I'll be honest - it's awesome to hear, but the songs can be quite plodding. I can understand why Bob Bert would have seemed like a drastic departure from Richard Edson, though he obviously got his shit together pretty quickly!

    The next night in Raleigh doesn't circulate in full, but "I Wanna Be Yr Dog" was used on Confusion is Sex, and some chatter is used to end the Sonic Death cassette. They played four more dates and returned home. On December 1st, they played with the Meat Puppets at Folk City. Thurston tells a great story about this gig on the Meat Puppets' Alive in the Nineties DVD. There is a recording that might be from this show, but there is also a recording confirmed to be from 10 days later at the same venue. Except...the band does not think the December 11th Folk City date is correct, leaving two recordings of different shows, with the same set list, both claiming to be Folk City, December 1982. I wish I could solve this one!

    We'll discuss Tom Recchion and December 7th below, but on December 10th they kicked off the second leg of the Savage Blunder tour at Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey (a venue where they would later premiere Bad Moon Rising, Sister, and Daydream Nation). There is some debate that Tom may have also played the December 10th show, as a sign of good faith after bailing on the tour, but Bob Bert has pretty clear memories of this particular date. Apparently there was no show on the 11th, but the 12th found them busy in Michigan with two performances - in the afternoon they filmed four songs at Group W Cable Studios in Dearborn (as did Swans). Sadly the video seems to have been destroyed, but somebody was thoughtful enough to tape the performance on a boombox, offering a decent recording of "live in studio" versions of "Confusion is Next", "Shaking Hell", "Making the Nature Scene", and "The Burning Spear". The gig in Ann Arbor later that night remains unsurfaced.

    I have no shows on the 13th or 14th, but the 15th found them in Minneapolis, Minnesota for a show presented by the Walker Arts Center. This seems to be the target gig for this second leg, as they were invited to play for a reasonable sum of money. After years of speculation, one song from the video of this performance has surfaced: "Confusion is Next". I previously thought this was the end of the tour, but evidently they played Chicago the next night, at Club Exit.

     


     

     


     

    Let's take another moment. This two-month period was the source of much confusion for me as I tried to piece together the varying accounts, and the biggest question mark was always that damn Tom Recchion Mudd Club gig. In this interview from late 1984, Thurston seems very clear that Richard left the band for good, they tried out Tom Recchion, but Tom didn't want to do the upcoming Swans tour, so he bailed and they found Bob. And then there's a tape of this gig with Tom Recchion (clearly introduced at the start), labelled December 7th, 1982. (I discussed potential date reversal above, but the December date seems firm.) The problem is that the first leg of the Savage Blunder tour ran from November 14th to November 21st (yes, they returned to DC!). The second leg ran from December 10th til the 16th (barring any unknown dates). This Mudd Club gig falls right in between, so...did they kick out Bob after the first leg, give Tom a try, then ask Bob to come back for a show in Hoboken three days later? That actually seems to be the case!

    Ten years ago when I first started digging deep into this era of the band, I sent Bob Bert a message asking if he could clarify some of this mess. He provided a very enthusiastic response, and helped cement some of the finer details. He says he got a call from Kim firing him just before the Mudd Club show. He then goes on to mention Jim Sclavunos, who we'll get to, but his first show wasn't until December 27th, which leaves that whole second leg of the Savage Blunder tour (which Bob confirmed he did). I get the impression that Bob was very easy going and probably didn't hold a huge grudge over his multiple dismissals, so maybe when Tom wasn't willing to do the second leg of the Swans tour, Bob just stepped up. If the date of that show is December 7th, that's basically the story I have to go with. Sonic Life supports this version. Curiously, he suggests that Tom also played the December 10th gig at Maxwell's to make up for bailing on the tour, and Thurston convinced Bob, who'd come to see the show, to join for the second leg of the Savage Blunder tour which started the next day! As I mentioned above, Bob has specifically said he remembers playing Maxwell's at the start of the leg, so I think Tom just did the one gig.

    The tape of the Mudd Club gig is fun. They open with "The World Looks Red", burn through "The Burning Spear" "Confusion is Next" and "Shaking Hell", before being joined by Jeffrey Lee Pierce from the Gun Club for the sloooowwweessttt version of "I Wanna Be Yr Dog" ever ("special meditation version", he insists). It's cool to hear the songs played by another drummer, particularly "Shaking Hell" which everybody seemed to have a different approach to. While looking up a photo of Tom Recchion I realized there's actually a picture from this gig in the Sonic Death liners - two, in fact! A third picture showing Jeffrey Lee Pierce also exists.

     


     

     


     

    Before we move along, let's hash out those two Folk City gigs. Here's the deal - I found files listed "NYC, NY @ Folk City" and dated 12/11/1982 on the same SY FTP where the "May 1982 Mudd Club" was. They had the same "Radioaufnahme Kassette by (FERFI)" note in the tags, and I would really like to know who originally uploaded these and what the "Sonic Life Radio" being promoted by a slightly disguised voice was all about. This set of files contains a show with the same set list as 11/14/82, but it also has a bizarre instrumental track as the first song. While it sounds decidedly Sonic Youth-ish with its rolling toms and slicing harmonic strums, I'm not sure of its origin. I think I ran it past the band at some point and they shrugged, but I could be mistaken. In any case, this studio recording is clearly separate from the live show, as is evident when the audience kicks in, giving way to much dead air, tuning, and zither wizardry before they finally start (a slow plodding version of) "Inhuman".

    The "problem" arose in 2020 when, during a massive flood of Sonic Youth torrents, somebody shared a lossless copy of the 12/11/82 Folk City show. Only...it wasn't the same show. Same set list! Very very similar gig. But different dialog, different performance. In both shows, the songs are all basically in the same shape as the 11/14/82 Chapel Hill gig. I took a guess and changed the date of the old FTP version of 12/11/82 to 12/01/82 (a poster confirms this date for Folk City), but I really wish at some point in the recording Thurston shouted out the Meat Puppets or something just to make the date a little more reliable. No clues could be discerned (by me, at least) from the on stage dialog at either show, except...on the "new" 12/11/82 recording, Kim dedicates "Making the Nature Scene" to Thomas Jefferson. Why is that noteworthy? Because on the Mudd Club recording, she dedicates the Jeffrey Lee Pierce coma version of "I Wanna Be Yr Dog" to Thomas Jefferson. This might actually be fairly strong evidence that the Mudd Club and Folk City gigs were indeed in close proximity...

    But what about that first recording? I really don't know. I can easily buy it being from ten days earlier, but it could just as easily be a misdated Savage Blunder tour show (though I'd expect some dialog acknowledging that they're from out of town). Not that it helps at all, but here are three pix supposedly from the December 1st Folk City gig. They're not particularly useful since no guitars are visible (okay, you can see the Ovation, and I actually think Thurston's headstock is the Knox and not the Harmony, as the Knox probably did appear sooner). And there are those rototoms again...

     


     

    The In Limbo band was Lydia, Thurston on bass, Richard Edson on drums, Pat Place on guitar, Kristian Hoffman on piano, and Jim Sclavunos on saxophone. They rehearsed at Mike Gira's space, as did Sonic Youth and of course Swans. Thurston wrote four of the six songs on the EP, including one bassline that he had apparently been considering for Sonic Youth. In Sonic Life, he discusses the Halloween show at the Peppermint Lounge in NYC, and the crowd's intense reaction to that particular song. Here's a pic from that gig:

    I guess when they got back from the midwest leg of the Savage Blunder tour, they went ahead and fired Bob again? Because on December 27th, 1982 they played at The Kitchen in NYC with Jim Sclavunos behind the drums. Two songs from this show were actually released on the From the Kitchen Archives No 3/Amplified: New Music Meets Rock, 1981-1986 compilation, set opener "The World Looks Red" and a really fucked up version of "Shaking Hell". Fucked up in the sense that Jim had not finalized his beat and was still "shaking" it up far more than needed. If anything, that's my one observation from recordings of Jim vs Bob - Bob is very tribal and drum heavy, while Jim utilized cymbals much more. I haven't heard the full show, but I was given the set list and they did six songs: "World" "Bad Mood" "Burning Spear" "Confusion" "Shaking" "Making".

     


     

    In the Confusion is Next bio, it specifies that they only played two shows with Jim Sclavunos (which I think will prove to be just slightly off), one of which was at the Kitchen. Jim pops up in a few of the Sonic Death liner photos, and while I was trying to identify the various venues seen in those pix, I realized that one of Thurston and Kim was from the Kitchen. That strongly suggested that the other pic of Lee and Jim could be from the same gig. Later, Catherine Ceresole's Beauty Lies in the Eye book confirmed my suspicions, and also offered some new pix! In the new pic, Thurston is clearly playing "The Burning Spear". Lee probably is too. In the Sonic Death pix...brace yourself for a whole new can of worms...introducing the Drifter.

    The Drifter (actually a model made by Conn) took on a mythical status in the Sonic Youth canon. Legend has somehow rebranded it as Thurston's first guitar, though it sounds like it was initially owned by David Bowes, an associate of the Coachmen. He'd left it at Jenny Holzer's loft, where Kim had stayed at some point and taken the guitar with her. When Thurston first visited Kim's apartment on Eldridge Street, he was surprised to see this guitar he'd had a previous history with. It would go on to be an essential tool in the Sonic Youth arsenal, sadly suffering the same fate as Lee's Tele and the blue Jazzmaster, all stolen in July 1999. It is best known as the "Eric's Trip" guitar, having been stripped of its frets, strung up with bass strings, and attacked by Thurston with a drum stick (although the 4-string conversion already took place before its use on "Marilyn Moore"). Back in '82 though, the Drifter had a different purpose, as explained by Thurston in Confusion is Next: "'She's in Bad Mood' is basically just this Drifter guitar with a smashed black cowbell behind the twelth fret." Okay, cool! The Sonic Death liners actually feature two pictures of Thurston from separate dates, running a cowbell up the strings of the Drifter. "She's in a Bad Mood", right on! Exceeeeppptt...

    I don't think they're playing "She's in a Bad Mood". I can't prove it, but as I reviewed early tapes and photos, something seemed off about this claim. I don't know the date for the other pic, but there's less duct tape on the guitar than the Kitchen pic. It almost looks like it's from the same series as this picture Bob Bert took during the Savage Blunder tour (which I think looks a bit staged - perhaps at a rehearsal space or soundcheck for one of the gigs? Bob probably wasn't sneaking a shot in from behind the kit, but maybe?). In any case, the pic of Thurston and Kim pre-dates the other pic of Thurston and Kim, which is from the Kitchen on 12/27/82. That Bob Bert photo is not entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand, as I believe that is the "She's in a Bad Mood" setup. The guitar seen in that pic is the Knox.

    I have to bounce around a bit - in late '82, the future Confusion songs were still being formed, and some of the arrangements were different enough to be noteworthy. For example, "Bad Mood" did not feature Thurston's clanging open strings, instead he played a continuous rhythm that sounds palm muted. This is until the song's ascending climax, where he slowly runs a tool up the strings while the band crashes around him. It's one of my favorite passages in any Sonic Youth song. In the early versions, Thurston would sneak one last "She's in a Bad Mooood..." as the song was winding down. By the time the album was recorded, the song had a slightly new arrangement - now Thurston opened the track by harshly strumming all of the open strings of his guitar, and definitely not in standard tuning. This was one of his first notable uses of an "anything" tuning - a tuning with rough guidelines towards pitch but not tuned to anything specific. I wasted many hours trying to figure out the exact notes using multiple live recordings and it seems to shift subtly as the guitar suffers more abuse each night. Anyway, this is what you need to know:

    She's in a Bad Mood (early version, late '82) - stick count to bass/drum intro, Thurston plays palm muted strings through most of the song (including while he sings!), slightly slower, longer, and has a reprise of the title at the very end.

    She's in a Bad Mood (final version, early '83) - Thurston plays open strings to start the song (though some live versions continued to start with a stick count and bass/drums), does not play while he sings, and uses a slide for the climbing section at the end.

    For Confusion is Sex and subsequent live performances, Thurston used the same guitar for "Bad Mood" and "The World Looks Red". It was a cheap model by Knox, and was one of his main guitars until early '85. It was an "anything" tuning, but you can tell on the album that the opening "chord" of "World" are the same open strings in the random strumming that opens the album. I also think Kim used it for "Inhuman" and "Shaking Hell" in the same tuning, though I do believe "Protect Me You" may be a different guitar. But we're jumping ahead!

    So, the Knox was used for those two songs on the album and for the remaining '83 shows. Of course, he could have used the Drifter originally, and then switched to the Knox. I actually think that's exactly what happened...but not for "She's in a Bad Mood". Going back to the Kitchen pictures, we have Thurston playing the Drifter with a cowbell, and playing the Harmony with the "Burning Spear" setup. We know the full Kitchen set list, and Thurston plays bass on two songs ("Shaking" and "Making"). He does not play guitar on "Confusion is Next". We know he used the Harmony Bobkat for "The Burning Spear". This leaves us with the first two songs of the set, "The World Looks Red" and "She's in a Bad Mood". Now, "The World Looks Red" from this show is available to listen to on that compilation, and I won't pretend to be able to discern between the sound a cowbell makes against guitar strings versus a drumstick in the same situation, but to my ears the pre-song tweakin' and opening chord Thurston plays sounds more like something is stuffed under the strings than open strings ringing (or being prodded with a drumstick, which became the approach in '83). I believe he made subtle changes to his guitar parts for both songs, originally using the Drifter/cowbell for "World Looks Red" but later switching to Knox/drumstick. I think the Bob Bert pic might show Thurston (staged or not) in his "Bad Mood" stance, holding the (metal?) stick he initially used for the end of the song, later replaced with a slide.

    Do I have solid proof for any of this, or just flimsy circumstantial evidence? Mostly the latter. However, in the Kitchen pic, Kim's hand position circa the 3rd/4th fret matches the repetitive riff of "World Looks Red", and is not really a note she'd play in "Bad Mood", which is mostly droning low E with high notes added, until the crunchy chord at the end. The pic of Lee with the Tele and screwdriver has to be "World" or "Confusion", and "World" seems likely as it opened the set. So, are we seeing Thurston deep in concentration slowly dragging the cowbell up the strings for the climax of "Bad Mood", or are we seeing the end of "World Looks Red" when he's jerking it back and forth? Well, I still don't know, but here's one more fun piece of conjecture...

    In the collage of pictures from the June 18th Danceteria gig that appear in the Sonic Youth reissue CD, what guitar is Thurston playing? That certainly looks like a black Les Paul shape with white trim to me (and Kim is using the Fender bass already, so it's not that weird black Swans bass). And...do my eyes deceive me? Am I just seeing what I want to see? Is that a fucking cowbell under the strings at the 12th fret? Probably not, but consider the implications - could "The World Looks Red" have also been written with Richard Edson? Thurston is clearly not playing while he sings, which matches "World" but not the early version of "Bad Mood" (of course, any early version played with Edson could have had an even earlier arrangement, so this is not exactly evidence of anything than my overactive imagination). Howeveeerrrr...

    Have you listened to Sonic Death lately? If not, what's wrong with you? If so, you surely remember the oddball chipmunk version of "The World Looks Red" that features very early on. It's not the most thrilling listen, but have you ever slowed it down to something resembling proper speed? The artifacts from the tape speed make it only slightly more enjoyable to listen to, but we can pick up some clues. The section between the two verses seems to go on longer, and the very end has some pretty raucous drum fills, very unlike Bob. Obviously I can't confirm who's playing drums on the chipmunk version of "World", nor can I confirm that the Drifter pic is them playing "World", but there's enough going on to make me wonder.

    As a side note, I'll spare you too much of my dumb theory that the Drifter body was actually the same body from the black "Swans bass". It seems to have the exact same knob/pickguard configuration (and obviously would have had the 6-string neck from the real Drifter attached at some point), but it's not exactly a unique design. Still...a little strange, and also curious that the Drifter ended up with four bass strings anyway. But yeah, just a dumb theory!

     


     

    On January 8th, 1983 the band filmed a very brief interview for a program called Videowave. Lee, Kim, and Thurston were present, being questioned by a last minute replacement for a no-show who may have been a little more enthusiastic and discussed the bullet points promised in the preamble: "We're gonna be talking to them about their recording deals, and their touring, and the book they've been doing with Lydia Lunch, and their new drummer." I suppose they touch upon some of that. Thurston says they've just returned from a midwestern tour, which wasn't as good as the southern leg. Lee mentions a video from their performance in Minneapolis (which would have been December 15th, 1982 at First Avenue). Kim says it was filmed by a friend of hers, Tony Oursler (as mentioned above, one song surfaced in 2023). They talk about "professionalizing" the band, getting together some business management. Thurston also reveals they're getting ready to record a second album, that they have a new drummer Jim Sclavunos, and they'll be playing around NYC in February. It's wrapped up all too quickly, a shame given the rarity of a 1983 interview, let alone one on film. (I wish Kim had discussed the video she apparently worked on for "Making the Nature Scene" in January 1983, which I have no further info on!)

     


     

     


     

    Confusion is Sex was mostly recorded on 8-track at Wharton Tiers' studio in NYC, where they would often return if they needed to cut a quick cover for a compilation. The initial plan was to record a simple 7" - likely "Confusion is Next" backed by "Nature Scene" or "Shaking Hell" (in Sonic Life, Thurston suggests that they recorded a version of "Inhuman" for the b-side). Hidden on the Candle single is a snippet of a conversation between Lee and Wharton, preserved on an answering machine. They discuss recording Sonic Youth and the affordability of folding your own 7" sleeves. Despite the numerous issues Thurston refers to, they did end up recording a full album's worth of material. They added "I Wanna Be Yr Dog" from the 11/15/82 Raleigh show (paired with "Freezer Burn", which captures the inside of a local shop's cooler, dubbed with guitar drones), and a piece Lee recorded on his own at home, titled "Lee is Free" (by Kim). Jim Sclavunos drums on all tracks except "Be Yr Dog" and "Making the Nature Scene", which feature Bob Bert.

    It was released on 12" vinyl by Neutral Records. There was a release party on April 30th, 1983. It was issued on CD when the band signed with SST, and later remastered for DGC's reissue campaign in 1995 (they also added the four unique songs from the Kill Yr Idols 12").

    Jim played the aforementioned Kitchen gig, and possibly four or five more shows in early 1983 (slightly contradicting the "two shows" story). An advertised January 13th Sonic Youth/Swans double bill at CBGB was apparently not played, since Thurston, Lee, and Mike Gira were all playing with Glenn Branca at BAM from the 13th through 16th. Photos from February 12th at Danceteria confirm Jim is on drums. There's one in the Sonic Death liners and a few others published here and there. One of these photos was used for the Confusion is Sex sleeve. There's a pic of Kim with the Knox while she's holding the mic - possibly "Shaking Hell"? Thurston crouched down pounding an unseen guitar could be "The Burning Spear" (Lee can be seen putting his guitar on behind him, which he would sometimes do after clanging on the bells for a bit). The pic used for Confusion is clearly them playing "Confusion", as it's the only song with Thurston singing without an instrument (and even if he'd ditched it for "Burning Spear" or something, Kim's hand position is too high for that song). The pic of Kim and Thurston shows him with a slide around the 2nd fret of the Knox, most likely starting up the "Bad Mood" outro.

    There is a recording dated April 14th, 1983 in Long Island. For years I wondered if the date had been mislabelled, since it is almost certainly Sclavunos on drums, after I thought his term was over. I received pretty firm confirmation on the date/city (but not the venue - it wasn't until early 2021 that someone contacted me to confirm it was Network). They play all of the original "songs" off of Confusion (except "Protect Me You"), plus two older tunes: "The Burning Spear" and "I Don't To Push It". The Confusion stuff sounds basically like it does on the record, but the biggest clue is "Nature Scene" - hearing this version makes it immediately apparent why they asked Bob to come back to record it, Jim was a firm believer in cymbal crash accents.

    The one show from January-April that Jim didn't play at was March 23rd, 1983 at the Bowery in NYC. Actually, make that two gigs, as this event evidently happened on both the 22nd and 23rd. Thurston, Kim, and Lee performed improvised feedback while Amanda Linn danced around the room. The following picture is from the 23rd, and I think the visual matches with this description Thurston gave in a guitar magazine: "In ’82 or something, we were asked to play at this performance art space in New York and we decided to do a guitar feedback performance. We stood there, turned the amps up and fed back for 10 minutes. It really polarised people... but I think the first time we used feedback as a compositional element, where we had control over it, was on Bad Moon Rising. I love it. It’s just the relationship between you, the guitar and the amplifier." They later adopted this droning outro (with Thurston on bass, like this gig) for the climax of "The Good and the Bad" throughout 1983. Any ID on Lee's mystery 12-string?

     


     

    Bob Bert returned to play the "Speed Trials" show on May 4th, 1983 at White Columns. He would remain in the band until June 1985(ish). This six-song set was cut up and pasted together to create a sound piece titled "Dig This!", which appears on the Speed Trials compilation. The cover of that record is clearly Thurston burning his spear, and was presumably taken at the show, though I have another pic that's supposedly from this show and he's wearing a different shirt. So I'm not sure...

    Thurston and Lee went to Europe with Branca from May 6th to June 6th and set up a Sonic Youth tour for later in the month. Per Sonic Life, Kim was supposed to be part of the Branca tour but got cut. After the Branca tour wrapped in Poitiers, Thurston, Lee, Amanda Linn, and John Erskine headed to Nicolas and Catherine Ceresole's home in Rolle, Switzerland. They eventually paid for Kim and Erskine's wife Shelly to fly out (and later Bob). While killing time in Rolle, Thurston and Lee found an old silo. They spent a few minutes recording themselves screaming, probably just onto a recordable walkman. This became known as the "Scream tape", which they would play through the PA or an amp at shows, often used as a segue to lead into "The Burning Spear".

    Info on this tour was originally quite scattered and speculative. However, a very interesting document from the Sensational Fix book helped clarify some details immensely. It's a collection of notes by Thurston, listing song titles, some lyric ideas, and dates for the three Swiss shows they did. Going back to Sonic Death, it's clear that much of side 1 was taken from some kind of early radio broadcast, and the French announcer makes a reference to them playing in Geneva the next night. This document confirmed the date of both shows, which we'll talk about a bit more below.

    You'll note a very early reference to "Catholic Block", something called "Love is Love Above", and most bizarre, multiple passes at something called "Jealous Snake". It's even listed with a question mark after a list of all of the songs from the first two records. As far as I can tell, nothing resembling any of these lyrics appears in any of the June shows, but the "Burning Spear recitation" can be heard during the Geneva radio performance!

    The band played Vienna, Poitiers, Berlin, and Eindhoven for sure. I assumed there was some downtime in Switzerland, but Lee's journals suggests visits to Hamburg, Florence, and Innsbruck, which may or may not have been Sonic Youth performances. Hopefully more details to come on that in the future! The Poitiers gig was filmed (photos also appear in Sonic Death) and "Nature Scene" was shared on sonicyouth.com. "Nature Scene" from the Eindhoven gig also appeared on a cassette compilation released by the venue in 1983.

    The June recordings are a lot of fun. The band can be heard addressing their soundman John Erskine, who accompanied them on their tours until he became so heavily requested in NYC that he could no longer commit to the band. "The Burning Spear" briefly had an extra "recitation" added to the breakdown, and "Shaking Hell" still had the "devil may come / devil may not / he may come / he may not" lyrics, which are present on the lyric sheet in the sleeve of Confusion is Sex but not on the actual recording. She seemed to stop singing the additional lyrics circa summer '83. Lee apparently brought along a different zither, which he held in his hands rather than placed on a stand. Soon, he would switch to guitar for "Inhuman".

    Though not strictly followed every night, their master set list for the tour was as follows:

    (scream tape)
    Burning Spear
    Confusion is Next
    I Don’t Want To Push It
    Bad Mood
    World Looks Red
    Shaking Hell
    Nature Scene
    Inhuman
    Good/Bad
    (Dog)

     


     

    There are a number of pictures from the June tour, including a healthy amount from the radio show in Geneva. As a hardcore Sonic Death fan, this material has always excited me. It was clearly well-recorded, there's nice separation on the instruments...the only problem, of course, is the same one that plagues the whole album - only a snippet of each song is featured! Parts of at least seven songs are heard, and I would really love to hear this entire session someday...it sounds like it went better than when they revisited the same studio four years later (see Master-Dik...).

    There's a couple of pictures from June 11th in Lausanne, their first European show. They're playing "Inhuman" and possibly "Confusion is Next".

    In the June 17th radio session pix, most seem to be from "World Looks Red" (Thurston with Knox/drumstick, Lee with Tele/screwdriver). Traditionally Lee only used the blue Jazzmaster for "Bad Mood" on this tour, but the drumstick suggests he may have used it for "Nature Scene", which was likely played but no snippet appears on Sonic Death. There's also a cool pic of Thurston with his Harmony and Knox.

    There's one pic from the next night in Geneva, where they seem to be playing "Confusion is Next".

    There's two pictures in Sonic Death from Poitiers on June 26th, and what might be a screencap from the full video (which, again, would be lovely to see!). In the Sonic Death pix, it looks like one is "The Burning Spear" and one is "Confusion is Next". The pic of all three of them standing next to each other may be "The Good and the Bad" or potentially the start of "Shaking Hell". I also included a screen cap from the "Nature Scene" vid, because it reveals something interesting...a white guitar laying off to the side of the stage. Yes, we're about to meet another infamous early sonic instrument, the Gherson SG copy. It would soon become known as the "Kill Yr Idols" guitar courtesy of its wacky whammy bar, and was smashed or broke onstage at some point, given away via the Sonic Death fan club in the early 90s. I was a bit surprised to see it pop up in June, but there's an interview with Clutch fanzine that was reprinted in the Death Valley '69 12" liners, and it might clarify things...

    Interviewer: How many guitars do you go through?
    Thurston: There’s a couple we really use a lot and we can’t use any more, because they’re totally destroyed. There’s one we can’t use now that we’ll try to fix up.
    Kim: Someone gave it to us in Austria. Somebody else had given it to them to destroy in a set and they couldn’t so they gave it to us. It was a great guitar.

    I strongly suspect they're referring to this Gherson guitar. If it was given to the band at the June 23rd Vienna, Austria show, it would have been present days later in Poitiers. In January '85, when that interview was conducted, Thurston was using a different guitar for the "Kill Yr Idols" tuning, suggesting that the Gherson was indeed no more.

    I have pictures from one of SY's appearances at the Loft in Berlin in 1983, and initially I wasn't sure if it was June or October, but the first pic seems to be "The Good and the Bad" (with Kim now using the Gherson SG!), which was only played at the June show. The other pics suggest "The World Looks Red" and "Shaking Hell".

    I'm not sure about the Eindhoven band pic - Thurston didn't really play that high up the neck for "Good and the Bad", so it's probably "Shaking Hell".

     


     

     


     

    When they returned from Europe, they continued to play around NYC, with appearances in Boston and Philadelphia as well. They wrote a handful of new songs using the first real alternate tuning they came up with (as opposed to "anything", or changing a string or two like Lee did on "Bad Mood"). This gloriously atonal tuning, GGDDD#D#, would be responsible for countless tunes in the band's future, such as "Stereo Sanctity" "Cotton Crown" "Total Trash" "Mote" "Bull in the Heather" "Washing Machine" "Pattern Recognition" et al...It combines the band's love of unison strings as well as dissonant notes (strings tuned very close to each other). This particular tuning has the heaviness of a G power chord in the low GGDD strings, but the D# pair adds a gnarly twist, particularly when played as a whole. Both Thurston and Lee used new instruments for this tuning - Thurston with the Gherson SG, and Lee with a Kent (previously seen held by Mike Gira in the 06/18/82 backstage pix - but I haven't seen any pix of SY using it prior to July '83). On July 22nd, they played the Sin Club and closed with a verrry long, unfinished version of "Brother James". The beginning of the song is essentially written around the tuning's open notes, starting on the D#, mixing in some D, isolating the D, then dropping that low G with a bar (or in Lee's case, bending the neck).

    Less than a week later, they played the same set (with "World" and "Bad Mood" reversed) at Folk City. "Brother James" is still a total mess. There's a picture that may be from this show - at the very least it's summer '83 at Folk City (the Gherson SG dates it after June). They're most likely playing "Confusion is Next" in this pic.

     


     

    There are some really cool pix from September 10th (SIN) and the 14th (CBGB). Again, the first Sin Club pic shows "Confusion is Next". The pic of Kim singing is almost certainly "Brother James" - she didn't play while she sang, and the guitars are right for Thurston and Lee. The last picture is the real question mark - Lee is shown at the microphone, with no instrument, while everyone else is playing. Thurston is using the Knox, which was still in the "anything" tuning, but the only songs he was known to play it on were "World Looks Red" and "Bad Mood", and later "Early American". Obviously, Lee doesn't sing any of those - in fact, he doesn't sing anything except "I Dreamed I Dream" during this era! And if for some strange reason they unearthed "I Dreamed I Dream", Kim would probably not be playing the riff high up on the fretboard. So...what is it? I have two theories, one is far more probable than the other, but not necessarily correct (and I definitely don't have enough info to confirm). Let's put a few other pieces into place first...

    I'm gonna put some of the interview out of order, as "Kill Yr Idols" needs the proper backstory. It was actually a review of the September 14th CBGB gig that sparked the statement against Christgau. Here's one pic from that show, where I'm guessing they're playing "The Burning Spear" as the tuning would not be critical for Thurston, so the GGDDD#D# guitar would suffice.

    Here are a few things worth reading - John Piccarella's review, Thurston's response, and part of a letter Christgau wrote to Thurston.

    There's a bit of confusion over some dates in October - there are posters for an October 8th gig at both SIN Club and Plugg Club. However, the Plugg gig started at 9pm and the SIN poster specified "LATE", so maybe they did two in one night. What raises my eyebrow is that the version of "Shaking Hell" that appears on the Kill Yr Idols 12" is supposedly recorded at Plugg Club on October 15th. It's certainly possible they played the same club two Saturdays in a row.

    At some point in October, they went back to Wharton's studio. This time, instead of wrestling with two 4-tracks, they recorded directly to 2-track. They recorded three songs that would end up as side A of the 12" - "Kill Yr Idols" "Brother James" and "Early American". The other side had two tracks from Confusion and the live version of "Shaking Hell". It's possible, however, that they recorded one more...

     


     

     


     

     


     

    The band's second European tour began in Munich, Germany on October 28th and ended with this infamous London gig on December 1st. Many, many recordings are available, though I suspect I'm missing a number of dates (or possibly not - Lee's journals revealed only two unlisted shows). At this point, the band was playing all three songs from Kill Yr Idols (often opening with the gorgeous wonder of "Early American", which eventually segued into "Burning Spear" via the Scream tape). They were still playing most of the Confusion material, and heavily favoring "The Burning Spear" off the first record (with occasional epic deliveries of "The Good and the Bad" and very rarely "I Don't Want to Push It"). They alternated between opening with "Early American" and "The World Looks Red", usually working towards ending the set with Thurston on bass. A tape of the Munich gig reveals some post-show chatter with the band who seem discouraged by the opening night. They certainly hit their groove early on - most shows on this tour are very exciting to listen to.

    While many shows were recorded, some even saw semi-official release. Most notable is the November 27th gig in Venlo, Holland which was released in its entirety via Sonic Death in the mid 90s. Though early reports suggested it would be a combination of recordings from Venlo, Lausanne, and Geneva, the final version seems to be one full set. There was also Forced Exposure's (Over)Kill Yr Idols 7" (whose artwork is discussed elsewhere in this interview, as a potential cover for Bad Moon Rising) that captured two songs from the October 30th Berlin gig: "Making the Nature Scene" and "Kill Yr Idols" (which was retitled "I Killed Christgau With My Big Fucking Dick"). Both of these songs were included on the band's Rarities 2 collection.


    groningen


    amsterdam

    The November 24th Groningen gig is the source of "Shaking Hell" on the disc that came with the Sonic Life biography. It's also the source of "Kill Yr Idols" and part of "Confusion is Next" on side 2 of Sonic Death. In fact, I've been able to determine several other parts from this tour that were used on Sonic Death - a minute and a half of the long thundering chords that would often precede "The World Looks Red" are preserved from the Munich gig (as is one second of the song itself). Side 2 begins with "Early American" and part of "The Burning Spear", taken from the beginning of the November 4th Zurich show. I've ruled out every other show I have, but there's obviously a ton of recordings that aren't circulating.

    That leaves the mysterious Bad Mood, a double 7" bootleg that features five songs from 1983 ("live in Sweden" per the sleeve). I've determined that all five songs are taken from the November 3rd Biel, Switzerland show. Sweden, Switzerland...whatever. Also, five songs from October 30th in Berlin were released on a bootleg CD called The Social Power Performance. Another track that might be from this Berlin show is "Audience", released in 2002 on the Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music compilation. It's a 6-minute piece - but you can go ahead and speed it up by 50% to hear it at its true speed - and is basically what the title suggests, the crowd very loud and rowdy and demanding an encore. Since the June show has no encore, I assume it comes from October. Unfortunately, there's a big splice in the recording between the band leaving the stage and returning for "The World Looks Red" so I can't be 100% sure. The other element is that the band supposedly turned the microphones towards the audience and began feeding the sound back to them, possibly modifying it somehow. How much was done on the fly and how much was "re-created at Echo Canyon, New York, in 2001", I really don't know.

    Though not official, perhaps the most exciting document from this entire tour is a video of the entire November 8th Milan, Italy show. It blew my mind when I first received a grainy, incomplete VHS copy in the 90s, and still thrills me to watch. After listening to the Venlo boot countless times, being able to watch a performance from earlier in the same tour was like a dream come true. It also reveals the current status of the Drifter, which had disappeared from pictures after those mystery cowbell pix. In Milan, it was Thurston's drumstick guitar for "The Burning Spear", having replaced the Harmony Bobkat which was in use on the June tour.

    There's even some photos from the Milan gig! I don't have too many pics from this tour, one from Groningen and one from Amsterdam. There's also a nice set of pictures from November 1st, which you can check out over here. There was some previous confusion over the November 1st date, which was often labelled Linz, Austria @ Posthof, but is really from Hof, Germany. It would seem they actually played Linz on the 11th, but at Stadtwerkstatt, not Posthof (which did not open until 1984). This leaves only the question of which show the circulating recording belongs to, and I'd have to guess Linz, since it was labelled as such, and begins with "The World Looks Red" while the Hof pictures heavily display "Early American", likely the opener of that show.

    I did stumble across another exciting set of photos (with thanks to Raj Paden!), taken by Petra Gall at the Berlin gig on October 30th. She took a whole roll throughout the show, which can be viewed here, though only four photos are offered in full sized quality. I took the effort to isolate and magnify every other picture she took, and you can track much of the set, from "Early American" to "Burning Spear" to "Confusion is Next" to "Bad Mood" to "Brother James" to "Nature Scene", based off the instruments used.

    Unfortunately the legendary London gig does not circulate, but Thurston's comment that they came out and did "Kill Yr Idols" and his guitar broke in his hands makes me think this is when the Gherson SG fell apart, and while it's listed on the "INSTRUMENTS USED" sheet for the Bad Moon Rising material in 1984, I don't actually know that it was. It was, however, used for "Skrewer Boy", Thurston's contribution to the Tellus #10: All Guitars compilation. Its whammy bar made a particularly delicious squeak when it spun, which he captured extensively, likely after the guitar had been otherwise disabled.

     


     


     


     

     


     

     


     

    This was earlier in the interview, but it refers to one of the most fascinating, mythical gigs from the European Confusion tours. I was able to confirm with Bob Bert that this show took place in Dorfen, aka Schwindkirchen. A tape of this October 29th gig actually circulates, but unfortunately it captures none of the fun. However...and this is where I have failed you all as a historian...years ago I was contacted by a guy named Andy who taped this show. The whole damn thing. While the recording I have cuts during "The Good and the Bad", he was able to confirm "Nature Scene" followed by an encore of "The Burning Spear" and "I Wanna Be Yr Dog", dissolving into a series of jams and improvisations with members of the audience. In fact, one of these audience members, a fellow named Reinhard Eggersdorfer, even contacted me to let me know that he played bass on "I Wanna Be Yr Dog" and the subsequent mess!

    Lee wrote extensively about this show in his tour diary, which reveals that their driver Christof joined on bass at some point, for something called "I Can't Stop It" - possibly the rumored improvised rap song, possibly another jam. I would love to hear the rest of this show and unfortunately I've been out of touch with Andy for a long time, and his e-mail is no longer valid. If you're out there, please get in touch with me! Or, if anyone out there happens to have a complete recording of this show, let me know! That rap jam could be the answer to all of life's mysteries.

    By the way, the band's "best" set order for this tour was as follows:

    World Looks Red
    Bad Mood
    Brother James
    Kill Yr Idols
    Early American >
    (scream tape) >
    Burning Spear
    Confusion is Next
    Shaking Hell/Nature Scene (order varied)
    Good and the Bad / Inhuman (order varied – the second one was the encore)
    [DOG]
    [Push It]

     

     


     

    Asking the important questions! This confirms that the only cover they played in this era was "I Wanna Be Yr Dog", which solidifies my theory for that pic with Mike Gira on bass. And of course, Sonic Youth would go on to cover two Alice Cooper songs, "Hallowed Be Thy Name" and "Is It My Body". As for "Sinister Purpose" (originally by Creedence Clearwater Revival), it appears on an '84 set list along with "Straight Edge" and "Rise Above", which are also discussed in this Forced Exposure interview (sorry though, my cut off date is 1983!). Lee throws a quick tease of the main riff in during the November 8th Milan show.

    Anyway, the real meat of this discussion is "Blooze Blurrr". What the hell is "Blooze Blurrr"? When I was first starting the Concert Chronology, the August 11th, 1985 Chicago show was a very popular bootleg known as Anarchy at St Mary's Place (long before the band released the entire show themselves). One of the most curious parts of the set was an instrumental that led into "Brother James". I asked the band very early on what the title of this song was (unaware that it had been released on a Bang Zoom compilation, though untitled). The first suggestion was "Blooze Blurrr", which I'd obviously never heard of. There seemed to be some recollection that it was in the GDD# tuning, which this unknown Chicago instrumental was. Of course, time would tell that the Chicago tune was "Kat N Hat", a song they played from July-August 1985 and abandoned. Some versions even had Lee working on a vocal, though unfortunately not Chicago. But that left another question: what the the heck was "Blooze Blurrr"...?

    This description from Thurston is the only time I've seen the song mentioned in an interview. I'm not sure why he brings it up when asked about "unoriginal" songs, but based on the response by the Sin Club compilation folks, maybe it was more of a bluesy, not-Sonic Youthy thing. They recorded it on a "binaural head" - is he referring to the 2-track session at Wharton's, or some other session entirely?

    I started a thread on the song on the SY "gossip" board, pooling the information I had at the time (2009). I bumped it a few years later, which prompted this very enlightening response from Lee Ranaldo: "Haven't heard the instrumental track in question-in an airport right now-but Blooze Blurr did exist as it's own song-as w Kat'n'Hat it's an early attempt at vocals on my part, but we never developed it further. The song was fr Kill Yr Idols period-in fact I'm pretty sure we have 4-track recordings of the KYI stuff including BB somewhere in the archive...."

    Aha! Confirmation that it was a Lee vocal, from the same era (if not session?) that produced the Kill Yr Idols material. Maybe they only did a 4-track demo but not a proper 2-track master (...) I'm guessing the weird instrumental that was tacked on to the Folk City mp3 set is a red herring, but you never know. Are they playing "Blooze Blurrr" in those September 10th Sin Club photos with Lee at the microphone? It's all part of the history and mystery of early Sonic Youth.

    Hey, another song they mention in the Forced Exposure interview, just in passing, is "Mildred Pierce"! Yes, that "Mildred Pierce" - it was one of their earliest songs, written in standard tuning, and probably never recorded. Years later, Dave Markey would do a one-off hardcore cover band with Thurston, and Thurston suggested they resurrect "Mildred Pierce", which led to its revival within Sonic Youth. They did a long demo version (titled "Blow Job?") and then a proper 2-minute take on the album itself. Unfortunately, no recordings circulate of an early 80s "Mildred Pierce". They mostly stopped writing in standard tuning by late 1982, so it could be a really early song. Oddly, Thurston refers to its "commercial potential" in the interview.

     


     

    This is chronologically out of place, but Thurston's brief time with Even Worse is worth documenting for two reasons. One, they eventually released a 7" containing a song written (but not sung) by Thurston, "One Night Stand". It was recorded February 20th, 1983 at Great Gildersleeves in NYC. There's even a cool pic from this show, and look what Thurston is playing...Lee's f-hole Tele! How about that. I guess by early '83, none of Thurston's guitars could hold standard tuning anymore (though "I Don't Want to Push It" would return to the set).

    Thurston talks in Sonic Life about his non-sonic bands, playing with Swans at CBGB before joining Even Worse for a gig at Tramps later that night.

     


     

    Just in case you thought they were rich rock stars in 1983. That Suburban Relapse interview is a very interesting document from this era, by the way. So is the Unsound feature! Thanks to Raj Paden for informing me about another 1983 interview in Terminal!, which is full of interesting information, including a description of a summer 1983 CBGB gig with a partial set list.

     


     

    So, following the European tour, the band is known to have played one last gig in 1983, on December 17th at CBGB. Both pictures seem to depict "She's in a Bad Mood". This would be the last known performance of the song until it randomly popped up towards the end of the fall 1985 European Bad Moon Rising tour. They played it one time only, on November 9th in Ladbroke Grove. Thurston introduces it as a song they haven't done in ten years. It's a really cool take, and the only one with Steve Shelley on drums!

     


     

    Looking back, there are some pictures with unknown dates, and there's still this matter of Sonic Death to dig into...

    The Confusion is Sex sleeve features a heavily xeroxed image, photographed by Roli Mosimann of the Swans. The version used for Confusion is actually pieced together from two separate images, as you can see the original picture with Kim in a 1984 issue of Unsound.

    There's a few Marti Wilkerson photos that seem to be late '82. Lee has a stand for his zither, a step up from the earlier pic where he's playing it on the floor. Not that there was any doubt, but Thurston is on bass and singing, so they're playing "Inhuman". I'm not positive that the Thurston drumstick pic is from the same gig, he seems to be dressed the same as that Bob Bert pic...

    I neglected to delve into "Shaking Hell" and its relation to Rock My Religion, but if you check out Dan Graham's film on YouTube there's a quick flash of the band in an unknown venue (rehearsal space?) and they appear to be playing "Shaking Hell".

    There's a very cool Catherine Ceresole pic on the back of Kill Yr Idols. It looks like they might be playing "Burning Spear". I don't have a solid guess as to a date, and it doesn't appear in her amazing book. update: This picture was taken on October 2nd, 1983 at Wollman Auditorium. Thanks Bob!

    Here's one of them doing "Confusion is Next", but I don't recognize the venue. Do you?

    Stephanie Chernikowski took some really cool pics at a mid-1983 CBGB show. I'm not actually sure what guitar Thurston is playing in that first one, some kind of Danelectro or something? Then there's a couple shots of him with the Knox, singing "She's in a Bad Mood" (dig the slide in his hand).

    There's a picture in the Suburban Relapse article that looks like the band might be playing "She's in a Bad Mood", though Thurston seems to be using a beer bottle rather than a slide. Is this a gig or a rehearsal spot of some sort? Awesome picture!

    The Unsound interview has some great pix too, by Roli Mosimann, Victor Poison-Tete, and of course Catherine Ceresole. I don't know the date of Victor's picture - likely a mid '83 gig they played with Rat At Rat R.

    The final shot also appears in larger, less xeroxed form in the Sonic Death liners, revealing Lee in a striped shirt playing the Tele w/ a screwdriver, so, once again, likely "Confusion". There's two other unknown pictures in Sonic Death - one is Thurston screaming into a mic, having stepped off the stage (Lee's pillars of bells can also be seen). The other seems to be a video still on screen - I'm not sure how many early shows were filmed, possibly Minneapolis '82 and the 08/13/83 Vancouver Five Benefit (Thurston describes this gig in Sonic Life: "During "The Burning Spear" I wailed so hard on my guitar with a drumstick that I nearly took my left thumb off, blood (yet again) shooting out across the stage as I ripped off the strings.") Obviously it would be very exciting to see any video footage that might exist of the band from this era, but that sounds kinda cool...

     


     

    So, Sonic Death. I've covered most of the pictures, but those were just a bonus with the CD release. The real treat is the music itself, a collage of sound woven together by Thurston using tapes of gigs from '81 through '83. The band or someone close to them was very prolific at taping and documenting their shows, and it paid off with this cassette compilation that Thurston originally released via his own Ecstatic Peace! imprint. While the Venlo show is a fantastic example of the band at the peak of their Confusion era, this aims to present the band's music in a different light, highlighting various passages and hints of things to come between songs. It can be confusing at times but over the years I've memorized every note. When SST released it on CD in 1987, rather than attempting to separate the tracks they just did a clean "Side 1" and "Side 2" split. I've probably talked enough, so here are my notes on Sonic Death in chart form:

    PIECE
    START
    END
    SONG
    SOURCE
    01
    00:00
    05:05
    THE GOOD AND THE BAD
    09/18/81 NYC
    This is an earlier version of the song known as "Loud and Soft", when it still had Lee doing spoken word and did not return to the "funk" riff after the breakdown. The full track was released on the 2006 Sonic Youth reissue.
    02
    05:05
    07:16
    SHE IS NOT ALONE
    09/18/81 NYC
    This is an earlier version of the song known where the band detuned their instruments. They completely rewrote it for the Sonic Youth record. The full track was released on the 2006 Sonic Youth reissue.
    03
    07:16
    10:33
    SHE IS NOT ALONE
    ?
    This is the final version of the song. It's probably from a show with Richard Edson in early-mid '82.
    04
    10:33
    12:25
    UNKNOWN #1
    ?
    This is a completely unknown song. It could be an early Arcadians tune, or just something they wrote and abandoned ("Mildred Pierce" nearly suffered the same fate, but at least they mentioned it back then).
    05
    12:25
    17:02
    THE GOOD AND THE BAD
    ?
    This is the final version of the song. It's probably from a show with Richard Edson in early-mid '82.
    06
    17:02
    19:15
    WORLD LOOKS RED
    ?
    This has been sped up radically, but you can tell that it's a slightly different arrangement with a longer outro featuring lots of drum rolls. It's not clear who is on drums.
    07
    19:16
    20:25
    THE BURNING SPEAR
    09/18/81 NYC
    This is a small section looped over and over. The full track was released on the 2006 Sonic Youth reissue.
    08
    20:26
    23:46
    CONFUSION IS NEXT
    06/17/83 GENEVA
    This starts the long portion that is taken directly from the Geneva radio session. You can tell by the lack of crowd noise and clear separation between instruments. The start of the song is looped.
    09
    23:47
    25:16
    INHUMAN
    06/17/83 GENEVA
    This captures three moments from before, during, and the end of "Inhuman". Lee can be heard strumming his zither before Thurston introduces the song, it cuts to a quick beat during the verse, then jumps to the demonic meltdown.
    10
    25:16
    26:16
    I WANNA BE YR DOG
    06/17/83 GENEVA
    This is a long segment of Thurston slowly playing the bass riff to "Be Yr Dog". You can hear Lee shout "we're coming!" so this may have been right after they took a break. You can also hear Lee tuning his guitar to standard tuning.
    11
    26:17
    27:35
    NOISE #1
    06/17/83 GENEVA
    This sounds like the pre-"World" jerkin' that they would do, with Thurston digging his drumstick into the strings while Lee strummed behind his screwdriver. Though "World Looks Red" doesn't appear in this collection of songs, there are pictures from this session where they are clearly playing it.
    12
    27:36
    29:28
    SHE'S IN A BAD MOOD
    06/17/83 GENEVA
    This is the end of the song, and I think I hear a "2 3 4.." count very softly in the fade at the end of the track, suggesting they launched right into another song. Since it sounds like Lee was strumming behind the bridge of the blue Jazzmaster to kill time, Thurston was probably switching instruments (possibly even to bass). Actually, there's a pic of Lee using the blue Jazz with a drumstick, so maybe they did go into "Nature Scene", though it's not included.
    13
    29:29
    30:20
    SHAKING HELL
    06/17/83 GENEVA
    So ferocious! One of the many reasons I would love to hear this entire session released.
    14
    30:21
    33:39
    THE BURNING SPEAR
    06/17/83 GENEVA
    The presenter introduces the band in French, and then we're treated to one of the few complete songs on Sonic Death. This version even has the cool "recitation" as depicted in the Swiss document with "Jealous Snake".
    15
    33:40
    38:31
    I WANNA BE YR DOG
    ?
    This sounds to me like it's from the very end of a show, possibly one of the June tour gigs where they closed with an epic "I Wanna Be Yr Dog". It's one of the longest stretches of unbroken sound on the whole album, and seems to just be Thurston and Lee making a racket on their instruments. Curiously, the last 25 seconds or so (the Scream Tape and quick drum fill) seem to be taken from the start of the 06/11/83 Lausanne recording...
    16
    00:00
    00:40
    van chatter
    ?
    This sounds like it was recorded in the van while driving around. You can hear Thurston, Kim, and Lee - John and Bob are addressed by name - and there's another woman. In Sonic Life, Thurston says that Kim flew to Paris in June '83 with John Erskine's wife Sherry. I wonder if it's John and Sherry Erskine, and Sonic Youth (with Bob Bert)? Judging by the reference to lira and Paris, it could have been recorded in November 1983 when they were going from Italy to France (perhaps Sherry attended as well). Alternately, the unknown voices could be Catherine and Nicolas Ceresole.
    17
    00:41
    01:15
    NOISE #2
    ?
    This is just some noise being panned back and forth, probably a tape effect and not any kind of live performance.
    18
    01:16
    01:32
    I WANNA BE YR DOG
    ?
    This is a very short clip from the final chord of the song as it breaks down.
    19
    01:33
    01:51
    BROTHER JAMES
    ?
    This is another extremely short clip, and tough to match to any particular version.
    20
    01:52
    09:00
    EARLY AMERICAN
    11/04/83 ZURICH
    This version was recorded on November 4th, 1983 in Zurich, Switzerland. It segues into "The Burning Spear" via the Scream tape. It is the longest uninterrupted piece of music on the album.
    21
    09:01
    10:12
    THE BURNING SPEAR
    11/04/83 ZURICH
    This version was recorded on November 4th, 1983 in Zurich, Switzerland. It's really just the beginning cymbal crashes over the Scream tape, then it cuts before it gets to any beat or riff.
    22
    10:13
    13:04
    KILL YR IDOLS
    11/24/83 GRONINGEN
    This version was recorded on November 24th, 1983 in Groningen, Netherlands.
    23
    13:05
    14:34
    CONFUSION IS NEXT
    11/24/83 GRONINGEN
    This version was recorded on November 24th, 1983 in Groningen, Netherlands. It cuts in during the song's midsection breakdown.
    24
    14:35
    15:12
    we want electricity
    ?
    This is probably Thurston repeatedly striking the open strings of the bass, which he would do as an intro to his "Nature Scene" riff on this tour. Instead, he stops and exclaims "We want electricity!", and it cuts to another little death.
    25
    15:13
    17:24
    UNKNOWN #2
    ?
    This is a unique song that may or may not be an improvised jam. It has an almost "Burning Spear" feel, particularly in the drum beat, but the bass is all over the place. After a minute or so, the idea falls apart following a final drum flourish, but the trebley guitar keeps going and eventually dissolves into plinky picking over a droning amp while a crowd chatters.
    26
    17:25
    17:46
    NOISE #3
    ?
    This sounds like it may be some bells recorded outside. At the August 27th, 1985 Austin, TX show, it sounds like this same tape is played between "Death Valley '69" and "Making the Nature Scene".
    27
    17:47
    18:32
    KILL YR IDOLS
    ?
    This starts during the song's midsection breakdown. It is very likely from the fall 1983 European tour.
    28
    18:33
    20:13
    WORLD LOOKS RED
    10/28/83 MUNICH
    This is the from the October 28th, 1983 Munich, Germany show, the opening night of the fall 1983 European tour. They'd already played "Early American" and Thurston was now droning his low strings on the Knox guitar, halting their sustain with his drumstick. Over and over. At the very end of the clip, as it fades, you can hear the song start up properly.
    29
    20:14
    20:47
    WORLD LOOKS RED
    ?
    This sounds like another intro to "The World Looks Red" with Thurston pounding the Knox and Lee strumming screwdriver action.
    30
    20:48
    21:49
    SHAKING HELL
    ?
    This begins with Lee saying "The next song is called 'Shaking Hell'." In response to something unclear, Thurston declares "Suck my dick asshole!" right when the band starts the song, prompting Lee to explain "That's an American expression - 'suck my dick'!". This is likely from one of the 1983 European tours.
    31
    21:50
    22:28
    NATURE SCENE
    ?
    This is another example of the anticipatory intro that Thurston implemented for "Nature Scene" on the European tour. It may be from the same show as "Shaking Hell" judging by the reverb, but I'm not positive.
    32
    22:29
    24:14
    I DON'T WANT TO PUSH IT
    ?
    This is a long stretch of Lee picking behind his screwdriver, which he would sometimes do to kill time while Thurston was switching instruments - in this case, probably putting on his Bobkat in standard tuning to start the harmonic intro to "I Don't Want To Push It". Lee would then tune his Telecaster to standard, which you can faintly here him doing here. This was common in mid-1983 when they would play "Confusion is Next" followed by "I Don't Want to Push It". Shortly after the harmonic intro starts, it cuts to the song's droning outro.
    33
    24:15
    25:09
    SHE'S IN A BAD MOOD
    ?
    This is just the last minute of the song.
    34
    25:10
    25:58
    NOISE #5
    ?
    This is more panned noise, probably just tape manipulation.
    35
    25:59
    27:37
    UNKNOWN #3
    ?
    This is one of the most interesting segments in Sonic Death. It's a slow, detuned guitar riff punctuated by cymbal crashes and a two-note sliding bass riff. It sounds like the same concept being played over and over with some direction, not an aimless improvisation, but who knows. Part of me wonders if this could be "Blooze Blurrr", or at the very least explain that Sin Club pic where Thurston is playing the Knox, Kim is playing a high bass note, and Lee is on the mic. Obviously Lee isn't heard singing on this track, but it could be a smaller portion of a longer piece (it never falls apart, just cuts). The open guitar notes DO sound like Thurston's detuned Knox "anything" tuning, and Kim does seem to be hitting a note way up high on the low E. Pretty far reach, but maybe not the farthest so far.
    36
    27:38
    28:18
    NOISE #6
    ?
    There's a quick echoed yelp between the previous unknown tune and this brief mess of guitar and bass noise (this one actually seems to be recorded live).
    37
    28:19
    29:31
    crowd chatter
    11/15/82 RALEIGH
    This is taken from (presumably) the end of the November 15th, 1982 Raleigh show. Thurston can be heard addressing the crowd, resisting requests to hear more, suggesting a Sonic Youth/Swans jamfest instead.
     


     

    Lee Ranaldo (I Dreamed of Noise): "Sonic Death wasn't even released at the time, it was only later. The same thing, Blast First wanted something else to release and they suggested we release that. I never think of Sonic Death as an album that we made, it's something different, it's something that Thurston assembled, we didn't go to a studio to do it or anything like that. That whole record is fully a collage. I think it's a really great thing. It's also not something I listen to a lot just because it is very demanding to listen, you have to listen for a really long time. Thurston did it after we came home from the tour and we had recorded all these shows on cassettes.
    That was the time when Walkmans were starting to get bigger. We had all just bought Walkmans, so in Europe we were recording all the shows and then we'd listen to the shows the next day and then we played a show that night and listened to it the next day. Very Robbe-Grillet. We had all these tapes. He just did that at home, found the best parts of each tape as he listened to them and added them to the list. So it was very simple, it wasn't conceived as a record at all, he put it out on a cassette. There's some singin' on it, but not really songs, just bits and pieces, even some talking and fooling around. It's like a tour diary, when I listen to that I remember very specifically those first European tours."

     


     


    OUT NOW!