If you're craving more of this early sonic trip, check out these two pages...and buy Thurston's book!!

Oh, and since I apparently forgot to add it to this site after using it in a Song of the Week feature last year, here is the set list from November 3rd, 1990 - you can see they cut "Titanium Expose" and "Mote" from the encore in favour of the all-star jam on "I Wanna Be Yr Dog". Thanks again to Alan Harwood!

11/03/90 Irvine, CA

Hi again! Slight update to the EARLY SONIC doc - which brings a partial set list to a summer '83 CBGB gig, possibly July 16th - also another awesome handwritten set list courtesy of Alan Harwood (April 19th, 1991 Honolulu) - and the addition of two Boston dates a week apart in September 1985. More soon!

04/19/91 Honolulu, HI

Hi everybody! You may have noticed some slight changes to some access points for this page - if you're navigating through the old sonicyouth.com link, I've removed that version and added a new set of links to hopefully force people to navigate using the frame-based version of the site (which contains links to statistics and other pages that were never easily accessible from the sonicyouth.com portal). I've also killed the original "splash" page and made the index a direct link to this updates page, with the bottom frame intact.

I realize that the design of this page is painfully outdated. It was obviously designed in the late 90s for desktop computers, and I didn't make a tremendous effort to keep up with the world of javascript and html 2.0 etc. I figure my sites are the kind of resource that you get immersed in, and wouldn't really qualify for a mobile experience. That said, I always wanted a timeline-based version of the Concert Chronology, and I would like the page to be at least somewhat mobile friendly, so I've added a new feature that's very much still a work in progress:

It combines basic date/venue and set list information for all of their concerts, as well as notes on any guest performers, or significant statistics like first/last performances of songs, official releases, etc. I've also added entries for all of their studio recordings to see how they fit into the chronology. This is just phase 1 - I have a massive backlog of photos and info to add to the entire site, which gets me to my next announcement...

Remember that project I've been occasionally teasing over the past decade? Well...I abandoned it. Kind of. I've completed something that's pretty close to the original intention - a detailed look at the band's first 3 years, inspired by the essential Sonic Death - but opted not to move forward with an ongoing series that examines "the history and mystery of Sonic Youth" in 15 parts. Beyond this feature, most of my in-depth Sonic Youth writing is now done via the "Song of the Week" series which I started last year at the Tab Archive. I found it easier to dial into certain specific eras of the band's career rather than try to tell the whole story in one chronological slog. But nobody cares about something I didn't do, so why not check out what I did?

Please let me know if you have any thoughts on either of these two features - obviously the Sonic Death piece is more of an information dump where-as the Timeline is an ongoing reference material. I should note that there's no jump points within the Timeline, I recommend using your browser's Find function or the little search bar in the lower right corner (this may be preferable on mobile).

Thank you for reading! This is ten years of planning basically knocked out in two weeks, so I respect that it's not the cleanest project ever, but hopefully there's some interesting information to be discovered. Enjoy! xx Chris Lawrence

Hi everybody! A few more set list scans courtesy of some lucky fans, including a previously unavailable set from the European Pretty Fucking Dirty tour! Big thanks to Alan Harwood ('85), Tom Berard ('91) and Toby Egelnick ('92) for passing these along:

10/06/85 Schwindkirchen, Germany

02/26/91 Hershey, PA

12/13/92 Nottingham, England

Note that the new 12/13/92 set list contains 6 of the top 10 performed songs listed below (including all top 5!), just to reinforce exactly how popular those songs were!

Scope out the Tab Archive for a new SONG OF THE WEEK feature in a couple of days, and stay tuned for more starting next month! And please send me more set lists!

Hi everybody! Just a quick cool thing - here's a previously unavailable set list from the band's 08/25/90 Vancouver gig! Huge thanks to the person who saved it all these years + passed it along (and those who passed it along to me!). It's in Thurston's handwriting but annotated w/ Lee's guitars for each song. Very cool! If you have any Sonic Youth set lists, please let me know!

Here's something else to pass along - if you haven't seen it, I've been posting semi-weekly SY content at the Tab Archive of all places - I pick a song and drone on about its history, then attempt to transcribe its various parts. I'm not a particularly great writer (or transcriptionist), but I still really enjoy finding interesting angles to discuss Sonic Youth! Check it out @ SONG OF THE WEEK.

Hi everybody! I've spent the past few months reviewing the hundreds of shows torrented last year, fine tuning this site as I listened. The last time this site had a major overhaul was probably 2010 - and prior to that, 2000 when this "version" of the page originally launched.

Here's what I've done:

Most importantly, perhaps, I've done a recount on all of the set list statistics, meaning the individual tour and year stats should all be accurate, as well as the song performances chart. Which leads us to a slightly updated Top 30 Songs Played. The graph belows shows the current top 30 in order, beginning with reigning champion "Schizophrenia" which has once again slightly stolen gold from "Teenage Riot". The first column shows the tally from the last stat count (2010?) and the second column is the song's current count based on all set lists and data available. Of course, I'm missing ~300 set lists, so these really close numbers don't mean that much - however, most of those missing sets are going to be from the first 5 years of the band, and there aren't too many songs from that era on this list. Realistically, "Brother James" would probably be the clear winner if all data was available. But it ain't! So enjoy this half-assed graph for now.

Just for fun, I tallied the stats for Steve's time in the band, removing any sets prior to May '85, which changed a few things:

Take a look around, please let me know if you have any comments/corrections/additions/etc! xx Chris

There's something shifting in the distance, and I do know what it is, but it's going to have to wait until I sort some other stuff out. Check the Facebook page below for occasional details! Until then, I have one particularly interesting piece of information for y'all...I've finally been able to confirm the date of the secret gig the band played while recording Washing Machine in Memphis. It's a small detail, but it was one of extremely few unknown dates outside of the early 80s.

The correct date is April 7th, 1995. The set list is still unknown, though I was once told they played three songs, which they might have jokingly introduced as Sebadoh covers. Realistically, they would most likely be showcasing the Washing Machine tunes they were in the middle of recording. Fortunately, Dan Ball took at least 3 photographs that night, which he has shared, and we can use these to deduce a little bit about what was performed...

Kim is on bass in all three pics, which limits things considerably. The first pic shows Thurston and Lee with their "F#" guitars, and the only song that applies would be "Panty Lies". The next two pics show Thurston playing the red Jazzmaster he used for the EGDGED tuning, which only appears on one Washing Machine track: "The Diamond Sea". I didn't think that song had been premiered this early (they seem to have waited until the one full-length NYC show on the April tour to debut it) but I'm not sure what else it could be unless they dropped "Skink" or something... Another option is the enigmatic "Little Trouble Girl", whose tuning is still unknown but I believe features Kim on bass...Any thoughts?

Hi everybody! We are in the midst of something I've waited nearly 25 years for, ever since I first perused the tape lists of 90s traders such as John Loughney, Emmanuel Tremblay, and others. John and Emmanuel in particular were true completists, with extensive Sonic Youth and side project collections. The earliest version of the Concert Chronology was based off of their tape lists, and as a teenager building this site (and someone who'd already shown signs of "completist" tendencies...) I dreamed of hearing all of these shows. Obviously many, many Sonic Youth shows have circulated freely over the years, partly due to the band's long-standing encouragement of tapers, but the past few weeks have seen a deluge of live SY recordings that is simply unprecedented.

It all started on June 19th when the aforementioned John Loughney posted a torrent on the dimeadozen site. And then posted another. And another. Obscure shows, some I'd never heard. And then more. Others joined in, including Emmanuel with more rarely circulated material, contributing so much that it became an undeniable Sonic Youth flood, dominating the front page on a daily basis for 3 weeks and counting. While it has shown slight signs of slowing down, I think nearly 300 shows have been torrented, including approximately 110 that were not in my personal collection. Fortunately I'd spent part of my quarantine vacation organizing years and years of SY torrents, CDs, tapes, etc spread across multiple drives and boxes to make a somewhat coherent master drive, or this may have been too overwhelming to manage as a collector/completist with kinda lousy planning skills.

That said - wow. I'm stunned by the amount of new material that has been shared, but it changes things considerably when it comes to this long-promised SY project I've been working on. Live shows are a crucial element of the project, so to suddenly have 100+ more is a delightful yet daunting development. Fortunately the first phase has only minimal "new info" to patch in based on this flood, so I'd like to rewrite "Bull in the Heather" and offer a strongly optimistic semi-promised launch date of 10/15/20. Obviously you can check the front page for updates, or you can like my dumb Facebook page that I might start using more often soon...

A lot of talk, but what's new? Well, thanks to this flood (and a little help from Sonic Youth themselves), I have 10 new set lists to offer, including a nice chunk of the Australian Washing Machine puzzle (all hail crankingamps!) and the infamous missing '97 show! Who knows what else this flood might bring...stay tuned! (Don't forget to check out Sonic Youth's own live archive on bandcamp, though - new shows are being added all the time and it's a great way to directly support the band!)

ONE LAST HUGE THANKS TO *EVERYONE* INVOLVED IN THIS FLOOD! IT'S BEEN UNREAL... SPECIAL THANKS TO JAN-WILLEM FOR MANAGING THE WISH LIST!!

NEW SET LISTS

Hi everybody! It's been about 9 years since the last update, and while I had a kinda sorta good reason for the delay, I figured I'd offer this small but substantial update to at least let you know I'm still out here, and I still read, save, and appreciate all your e-mails.

If you have any set lists not featured on this site, or know of any shows that aren't listed, OR have any recordings that you think may not be commonly available - please contact me! I'd love to hear from you and I promise I won't take 9 years to respond...

This update is focused strictly on new shows, new set lists, or new set list scans. I've also added tons of opening bands thanks to all of you! I've saved things like ticket stubs, gig posters, live photos, etc for (near) future updates. I'll be updating the various statistics later, as well. Maybe in some interesting new ways? Maybe not. Here's what's new!

NEW SHOWS WITH SET LIST

NEW SHOWS

NEW SET LISTS WITH SCANS

NEW SET LISTS

SET LIST SCANS

OTHER CHANGES

That's all I've got (right now). If you think waiting nine years for 10 shows and 25 set lists is a bit of a let down, you might be right. However, this is just a teaser...I've been working on another sonic project that might enhance this site, and there are a lot of the aforementioned posters, photos, tickets, memorabilia etc to come... I thank all of you for years of patience and the following people in particular for taking the time to write and offer some detail to help make the site better for everyone. THANK YOU!

Mike Ziegler, John Mulhouse, John Rickards, Jack Daniels, Jeff Hunt, James Wood, Troy, Peter Hartinger, Richard Conrad, Fred Thomas, Lee Tintary, Sebastian Petsu, Charly Loibl, Paul Kerr, Matt Thrasher, Hagen Pfaff, Natxo Rodriguez, Artemis, Richard Wistow, Hotcha, Nathan Aguilar, Fernando Xavier, Toby Cornish, Steve Mitchell, Christopher Howard, Thomas Desmet, Robert Lamoreaux, Julien Paget, Christian Cavallin, Alex Golob, Jeremy Smith, Emmett Williams, Alena Loiselle, George Heibel, Frank Rowenta, Jarlath O'Grady, Simon Richards, F.F. Koncheyev, Birch Harms, Bertuz Schipper, Eric Bogosian, David Anderson, Simon Rodgers, Rémi Bienvenu, Demian Repucci, Daren Curtis, Carl Montgomery, Steven Schrom, André Mühling, James Berman, Massimo Salerno, Ruud Wolters, Eric Cartier, Eva Schmidt, Klaas, Michael Krimm, Jason Kielbasa, James Rhodes, Steven Vinkenoog, David O'Bryan, Steve Jaques, Bruder Bernhard, Calle, Fabrice Derradji, Oscar Barras, Blaine Dawson, Chris Wicks, Randy Zimmerman, Thomas Domaske, Alan TJ Harwood, Sol Invictus, Jan-Willem, James Burns, Matthew Leitman, Robert Flaglor, Tim Rahto, Julian Schoen, Andi Dvorak, Morgan G, Ian Turner, Eugene, Ryan Toukatly, Igor Tonkikh, Richard Masio, sharon Russell, Meike Randow, Marc Seguin, Moritz Strecker, John Andrew, Gary Brennan, Martin Minka Jensen, Patrick McLean, Robin Davies, Brian McCann, John Squier, Aleksej Zagar, Kevin Kesterson, Gerard Smith, Eric Bryant, Jason Wieseler, Tom Berard, Greg McCaughey, Adrian C, Bryan Leed, Paul Dever, Reinhard Eggersdorfer, David Anderson, Roy Evans, Tsimbalyuk Alexander, Donald Dennis, Michael Peterson, PJ Lenny, Nic Hughes, Val Dasch, Dima Tsvetkov, Vince Dome, Juraj Siftar, Gary Chaplin, James Murray, Kelly Kerr, Jirka, John Norton, Anton Lopez, Chris Battaglino, Sam Worrad, Seth Conley, Michael Flaherty, Martin van Rappard, Josemari Unanue, Ian Gear, Barry Power, Christos Koukos, Felice Rosser, Chris Hartstonge, Wharf99, Richard Miller, Mark Maloof, Ken McCullough, Miriam Krill, Jonnie Miles, Nicky Fitchett, Matt Weston, Scott Munroe, James Arnall, Scott Larsen, Eric Barry, Sashko Slolyarov, Laura Andrada, Ryan Karins, Jason MacQuarrie, James Finch, Skip, Alan Licht, Alex Molinari, John Norton, Ivan Stroobants, Rik Smithies, Gonzalo Bitaube, Gerald Charlier, Sam Sheffield, Sean Lozano, Gregory Macdonald, Beau Fredericks, Kealan O'Donovan, Gary Blaine, Alan Ireland, Roger Hanley, Olof Oberg, Stephen A. Housden, Greg Joondeph-Breidbart, Tim Heavy, Justin Baukus, Mike Wahweotten, David Bluvstein, Eric Hubner, Rich Atomic, Franck Pata, Gavin Whitehouse, Brandon Gross, Jeremy Thurston, David Serjeant, Cory Murray, Raymond Spiteri, Marco, Dave Parent, Hilary Bugbee, Paul Ashwin, AndyC!!!, Ezequiel F. Muñoz, Mona Street, Joey Donovan, Paul Dever, Richard Grant, Gabe Spierer, John Wiese, Lee Holford, Murray Ramone, Layne Cantu, Gas, Jonathas Formagio, Olivier Caulet, Ken Fitzer, Petur Valsson, Marc Ridet, Bernd Kretzschmar, Brian Martin, Langan Smith, and Jim Laasko.

In late 2018, Sonic Youth began offering various shows from their live archive through the streaming/download site nugs.net. The 12 shows offered included everything from particularly tasty 80s fan tapes to sizzling 2000s era soundboards. In 2020, the band developed a bandcamp presence that seemed to replace their nug life, including prior live releases such as Venlo '93, Texas '86, Lisbon '93, etc and selections from the SYR series. Some of them have their own individual presence on bandcamp as well. I do encourage you to buy directly from them, most of these shows sounds great and are killer performances as well!

While it's awesome to hear what the band chooses to officially endorse, part of this site's lifeblood is classic tape trading which has evolved into torrenting and ultimately YouTube as a source of distribution of recordings new and old. As the guy behind this site for 23 years, few things excite me as much as hearing a new recording, seeing a new set list scan, or seeing a new photo from before the cell phone era...It's still cool to see holes filled in after all these years, so please contact me if you have any shows that you taped yourself, or know are not commonly circulating. If there's no set list on this page, that's a good indication that the show may not be circulating. Please write if you have any recordings you think might be of interest!