Okay, this is a week late for an April Fools piece, but hear me out. I've always had this song pencilled in for "some point, maybe" and while it makes little sense to place a 20+ minute track in (roughly) the center of a set, it's not actually a real set list and I can do what I want! So "J'accuse Ted Hughes" gets its day, 24 years to the day it made its first and only appearance, as the opening song of the band's legendary performance at the inaugural All Tomorrow's Parties festival in England. It would have been early afternoon for me on April 8th, 2000, sitting home several time zones away while Sonic Youth prepared to play their first full length live set since the September '99 Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, where they'd unveiled 10 new songs. Why does my time zone matter? Because like many around the world, I was tuned in to a very rudimentary webcast of the event which was being offered. It was still pretty early for streaming video on the internet, but it was happening more often - I remember watching the Halloween '99 "webcast" of Neil Young's Bridge Benefit festival and being blown away by the quality. There were certainly more streaming events in the NYC Ghosts & Flowers era than there ever were previously. So, a global contingent of Sonic Youth fans was waiting with bated breath to see what they would play...
Would we hear the instrumental Bumbershoot material with vocals? (Sorta.)
Would they play anything from the recently released SYR4? (It seemed that way to start...)
Would we hear a taste of the old material they might work into the forthcoming summer tour? (Uh, not so much.)
Would we spend a third of the set wondering what the hell they were doing playing one chord while Kim talked about Good Housekeeping? (Correct!)
It was a bold introduction to 21st Century Sonic Youth, though fully representative of the extreme experimental paths they would openly explore during the next decade. After opening with a piece whose structure seemed to consist entirely of one note/chord for over 20 minutes, while Kim did spoken word about Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes, they stumbled through a handful of tracks from NYC Ghosts & Flowers, which was due the following month. Some remained instrumental ("Free City Rhymes" and "Renegade Princess") and some were premiered with vocals ("Nevermind" "Side2side" "NYC Ghosts & Flowers"). Then there's good old "Lightnin'", which was surely not the encore anyone was expecting or wanting (I knew the feeling, having experienced it in Bumbershoot - then throughout 2000 I came to appreciate and even anticipate the oddity, particularly when it got really drawn out and noisy). After 50 minutes of new material, they closed out with a quick run through the last album's single, "Sunday".
It was a polarizing performance. It received negative reviews in both NME and Melody Maker, whose "Goodbye 20th Century, Goodbye Talent" headline made for infamous cover art when the band later released it on SYR7. Fan opinions were mixed, as I recall. I remember watching the webstream (an accurate description of its watery sound, I'm sad to say) and being intrigued but also wary - were they going to fill the set with this on the summer tour, which many fans were hoping would see the resurrection of some "oldies" following the rigid A Thousand Leaves tour set lists. Without the context of Kim's endless list of items that plays through "Side2Side", this version was incredibly underwhelming. Fortunately they'd solve that problem by enlisting Jim O'Rourke for the tour. It was cool to hear Lee sing "NYC Ghosts & Flowers", which was one of my favorites from Seattle, but he didn't sing all of the lines that would appear on the superior studio version. I mean, you can go listen to the entire set yourself, and I recommend that you do...OR, you can even watch that "my first Webcast" quality stream right here and relive that curious April morning/afternoon/evening depending on your global position.
My initial inquiries about this overwhelming wall of sound revealed that it was indeed a new song with the tentative title "NEW DRONE". I forget exactly when I heard of the "J'accuse Ted Hughes" rebranding, but it wasn't too much later. I seem to recall Thurston blurting "J'accuse Ted Hughes!" before a song on the summer tour. Regardless, it was long before the song was finally released in 2008, and would have inspired that volume of SYR's language. It became legendary - this mythical SYR that would contain "the ATP song" - but the vinyl-only SYR7 made myth a reality. It was paired with a 2003 studio instrumental on the b-side. Honestly, it was well worth the wait - mixed beautifully and so powerful, especially after a few more albums to let it cool off. I'd say it's easily the highlight of that show, even if it was one of the more massive "what the fuck was that" moments at a time when the alt.music.sonic-youth newsgroup was still boiling over with conversation. Although it was theoretically on the reserve list for the tour, they never did play it again, and it remains one of only a handful of songs with just one known performance (in fact, most of those are covers, and the only one that isn't - and features the entire quartet - will be our next song!).
Lee mentions the song briefly in the October 2000 issue of Total Guitar: "[ATP] wasn't an improvised gig at all. I mean, the first piece was a 20 minute long thing that we'd worked out for 12-string guitars. We loved it, and we had a blast at that gig. Yeah, we know it [got dismal reviews] and we couldn't really care less. I guess in part we knew that coming to England and playing that sort of show was probably the weirdest thing we could do, just because people here are much less receptive to it, or less ready to accept it than elsewhere. I think people here are generally still wrapped up in rock or pop, but a band like us has moved out into a bunch of different territories. People who came ready to rock were totally annoyed. We knew that it was going to confound a lot of people, but that was fine with us as well. It's not always great to give people exactly what they want."
That's worth noting - both Lee and Thurston play 12-string guitars on "J'Accuse Ted Hughes". Thurston is using the 12-string Kent that Lee had unearthed for the Bumbershoot gig, which he used on "Free City Rhymes" "Renegade Princess" and "Side2Side". I can't confirm that Thurston is using the same tuning that Lee used for those songs, but it does at least have a low C, which that tuning did: C G C C G A#/C (The bottom C and G are strung with single strings, the next three strings are same-octave pairs, and the highest string is split between A# and C.) Lee replaced the Kent with a Fender XII, which he seems to be using here, meaning he should be in the same tuning. Kim is using the Eterna in DADABB, with some confusion over what octave those Bs are in.
Thurston and Kim discuss the performance further in a March 2002 interview with The Wire supporting their current UCLA ATP installation:
Unfortunately, as cool as it is that the webcast was offered to begin with, let alone still preserved and available in its turn-of-the-century quality, the camera operator chose to spend most of the "J'accuse Ted Hughes" performance focused entirely on the faces of the band members. Real tight shots, too. We get occasional glimpses of their instruments, as I mentioned above, but it's mostly hopeless. To think that so many people were witness to this lousy sounding webcast, I wonder how much of that had an impact on people's opinions on the set, because when heard in its full fidelity, "J'accuse Ted Hughes" is a force of nature.
Thurston even offers some illuminating insight into the song in his must-read memoir Sonic Life: "I had constructed a twenty-minute electric guitar instrumental, first performed at a solo gig at the Cooler in New York City. After we'd accepted the ATP offer, I showed this piece to Lee, Kim, and Steve. We decided to play it as a group, along with a few instrumental versions of the disparate pieces we had recently composed together. The day of our set, as the lengthy instrumental got under way, Kim stepped up to her microphone and began a freestyle recitation inspired by a New Yorker magazine piece she had read on the airplane ride over from the U.S., exploring the relationship between American poet Sylvia Plath and her English poet husband, Ted Hughes. In the moment I bristled. I thought the instrumental should be entirely instrumental. But listening to the recording on the way back home, I realized how fantastic it sounded, Kim's verbal improvisation taking the music to new heights. I immediately suggested we release it as a twelve-inch."
There are countless Cooler gigs documented in the late 90s, and probably just as many that aren't. I can't identify a Cooler gig or any Thurston solo set based on data I have that would indicate a performance matching this concept. I would love to hear from anyone that has a recording they think might be a Thurston solo presentation of what would become "J'accuse Ted Hughes"!
I wish I had access to some sort of graph or notation for this piece, if there was one. Some of the SYR4 scores demonstrate how they could chart a lengthy, seemingly improvised concept. Rather than try to break it into discernable sections, I took the easy if not more complicated option, which is to break it into one-minute segments. I have no intention of accurately tabbing 90% of it, but an incremental guide examining each member's movements seemed like a fair compromise. I've transcribed the odd part, but really, it's almost all open notes or harmonics or more aggressive open notes or harmonics. Kim is the wrench in this one - while Thurston and Lee utilize C/G based tunings, Kim uses her oddball Eterna in the DADABB tuning, and seems to be mixed louder than either of them, just dumping out skronky chords left and right (well, down the center actually). One good note - I'm preeettyyy sure I can now confirm that from '99 til early '01, Kim's Eterna tuning did have the Bs tuned down. I overexplained this issue in the Small Flowers Crack Concrete article, basically debating whether she changed the octaves on the Bs between the NYC Ghosts material and the Murray Street shit. It would seem, unless I'm really mixing something up, that she did. Maybe at some point the guitar was restrung by somebody who didn't realize the octave was lower, and she just went with it? I have no idea, and it still bugs me! Can someone check my notes on this? By the way, she also utilizes a mallet and a water bottle during this song, so make sure you have those handy!
Alright. Maybe I should have waited til the 25th anniversary next year, but I hope this was still worth looking at, even if you're not about to scroll down and learn how to play it (I mean, you could...). If you haven't heard it in a long time, I strongly recommend going back and revisiting - preferably from the full ATP set released on bandcamp, which in my opinion has better mastering than the digital download of SYR7 (which is certainly a nice option for those who don't have a turntable). I should also note that SYR7 has the channels reversed - Thurston is in the left rather than the right. Anyway - open your preferred version, then pull up that awful murky webcast, mute the video and sync the audio using the voice shouting right before Thurston starts his opening drone. Despite the dull, dark camera angles that remain focused for far too long, it does truly enhance both the listening and viewing experience. Please let me know if you have any comments or corrections!
"J'ACCUSE TED HUGHES"
KIM
DADABB
CENTER
THURSTON
C G C C G A#/C ?
LEFT (RIGHT ON SYR7)
LEE
C G C C G A#/C
RIGHT (LEFT ON SYR7)
MINUTE 1 00:00-01:00 Thurston starts by picking the low C: C----------------------------------- G----------------------------------- C----------------------------------- C----------------------------------- G----------------------------------- C---0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0--- etc Lee does quiet feedback swells on the high C note. Kim strikes a few tentative skronky chords, then goes to her amp to adjust something. She comes back at 0:38 playing this: B---7--- B---7--- A---0--- D------- A------- D------- At 0:50 she switches to another chord she plays for a bit, continuing into the next section: B------- B------- A---7--- w/ steady rhythm D---8--- A------- D------- MINUTE 2 01:00-02:00 Thurston keeps droning the low C string. Lee continues high C feedback swells. At 1:27 he plays 12th fret harmonics (low C then high C). Then he starts lightly strumming open strings from low to high, riding the high C for a bit. It doesn't sound like the A# note is being picked so he must be isolating the C string. Kim keeps playing the previous chord. At 1:16 she switches to: B---6--- B---6--- A---0--- D------- A------- D------- Then at 1:40 all open strings: B---0--- B---0--- A---0--- D------- A------- D------- Moving towards the lower strings by 1:50 or so: B------- B------- A------- D------- A---0--- D---0--- MINUTE 3 02:00-03:00 Thurston gradually starts adding more of the open strings to the chord, eventually droning this: C------- G------- C---0--- C---0--- G---0--- C---0--- Lee keeps droning the high C string, then starts a motif that is basically like: C---------------------------0-0-0-0----------------- G-------------------------0-0-------16-16---17-17--- C-------------------0-0-0-0------------------------- C-------------------0-0-0-0------------------------- G---0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0------------------------- C---0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0------------------------- Play that twice, then go back to droning the high C, then start picking out skronky chords. At 2:00 Kim switches back to her previous chord: B------- B------- A---7--- D---8--- A------- D------- Then at 2:04 she's already off to the open strings again (xxx000), then she starts hitting the 6 fret on the Bs, back to open, etc. At this point you get the idea of her rhythm and the general range of notes she's choosing. MINUTE 4 03:00-04:00 Thurston keeps droning the same chord. Lee drones the high C for a bit, then hits a chord like this a few times: C-------- G-------- C---18--- C----0--- G----0--- C----0--- Then at 3:28 he starts playing 12th fret harmonics, and you can hear him picking between the A# and the high C. He has a prominent phaser type sound at this point though I'm not sure what it would have been as he seemed to drop any kind of phaser from his live rig after the gear theft. After the harmonics he starts playing some skronky notes and chords. Kim continues bashing out skronky chords in the same rhythm. I can hear the open high A string a lot. MINUTE 5 04:00-05:00 Thurston keeps droning the same chord. Lee keeps playing skronky chords. At 4:40 he steps on distortion a few times, then goes back to picking open strings and droning the high C. Around 4:07 Kim starts doing quick trem pick attacks on certain notes: B-------------------- B-------------------- A-------7--------7--- D---8------------8--- A-------------------- D-----------7-------- bend the low string a bit She goes back and forth between the notes and then hangs on the chord version. MINUTE 6 05:00-06:00 Thurston keeps droning the same chord, very aggressively now but just as steady. Does he turn a phaser on? Lee does light skronk into open strings. At 5:40 he starts doing 7th fret harmonics. Kim bashes out skronky notes on the high A string between the 14th and 17 frets. Around 5:45 she switches between the open A string and the 17th fret for a bit. MINUTE 7 06:00-07:00 Thurston keeps droning the same chord, still steady but sometimes mixing up the rhythm when Kim starts singing, adding extra bursts of wrist action. Lee keeps playing 7th fret harmonics. When Kim starts singing, I think he starts playing harmonics while moving his finger from the 3rd to 5th-ish frets. At this point, he seems to have distortion on. Kim starts by quickly picking the open B strings: B---0--- B---0--- A---/--- D------- A------- D------- When she starts singing at 6:15, it sounds like she's just picking a shape like this: B-------- B-------- A---19--- D---19--- A-------- D-------- The Eterna sounds so odd when it's clean that she may just be playing that, or she may be playing a slightly "weirder" chord. Either way, she's just picking at skronky shapes while she sings. MINUTE 8 07:00-08:00 Thurston keeps droning the same chord. Lee does big open string wall of sound noise with distortion and delay, probably adding extra skronk. He does more harmonics around 7:50. While she sings, Kim continues strumming skronky chords high up the neck and with open high A string droning. MINUTE 9 08:00-09:00 Thurston keeps droning the same chord. Lee does a mix of harmonics and open string droning, getting way more intense towards the 9-minute mark. Kim keeps singing and strumming random skronk chords. MINUTE 10 09:00-10:00 Thurston keeps droning the same chord. At this point it is heavily distorted. Around 9:30, he starts to emphasize the middle strings more: C------- G---0--- C---0--- C---0--- G------- C------- He strums that until he begins playing 12th fret harmonics. Lee keeps playing a cloud of harmonics and open strings. Around 9:35 his high A#/C drifts back in more clearly, then he hits the low C string again, and back to the high C. Kim keeps singing and strumming random skronk chords. She's picking around the 16th-19th fret on the high A string. MINUTE 11 10:00-11:00 Thurston keeps strumming 12th fret harmonics. Lee plays chunky 5th and 7th fret harmonics with increasing modulation. Kim hits the low D and A strings a couple of times, possibly with a mallet. She mostly sings. Around 10:53 she starts picking with the mallet against or under the strings. MINUTE 12 11:00-12:00 Thurston keeps strumming 12th fret harmonics, then just drones the middle C strings. At 11:37 he goes back to strumming 5th fret harmonics. Lee steps back, occasionally bursting harmonics or backwards-sounding swells. Around 11:55 he starts a chord like: C---0--- G---7--- C---0--- C---0--- G------- C------- Kim is still singing, and has a mallet under the strings of her guitar, which she's jerking around and picking. MINUTE 13 12:00-13:00 Thurston keeps strumming 5th fret harmonics. He slowly starts including less harmonic and more straight-up mute in his strumming. Lee holds the same shape, picking a pattern like: C-----0-------0-------- G---7-------7---------- C--------0-------0----- C---------------------- G---------------------- C---------------------- Then he does 5th fret harmonics with a few bursts of feedback, then settles into strumming 5th fret harmonics on the middle C strings. Kim keeps singing, pulling the strings off the fretboard with the mallet. When she stops singing around 12:30, she pulls the mallet out and walks back to her amp for a bit to pick up a water bottle. MINUTE 14 13:00-14:00 Thurston keeps strumming muted strings with the sliiiightest hint of harmonic. Lee keeps strumming 5th fret harmonics (with open strings mixed in). He mostly accents the middle C and high G strings with the harmonics, then goes down to the low C. Around 13:30 he starts playing shapes like: C---12--10--- over and over w/ heavy delay + low notes G---12--10--- C------------ C------------ G------------ C------------ Then just harmonic skronk as Thurston winds down to the next section. Around 13:30, Kim starts rubbing both the mallet and the water bottle up and down her fretboard. MINUTE 15 14:00-15:00 Thurston starts picking the low C string again: C----------------------------------- G----------------------------------- C----------------------------------- C----------------------------------- G----------------------------------- C---0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0--- etc By 14:30 he is back to his full agro chord in full agro strum glory: C------- G------- C---0--- C---0--- G---0--- C---0--- Lee turns on his ring modulator and goes wild. He uses heavy delay and distortion and basically just plays the same open string motif from earlier. Kim puts the mallet and bottle down around 14:20 and starts hitting open strings, first high then low. Around 14:38 she starts bashing out a chord like this: B------- B------- A---9--- D---0--- A---0--- D---0--- Keep playing til next section. MINUTE 16 15:00-16:00 Thurston keeps aggressively strumming the same chord. It sounds like he starts doing fuzzbox accents. Lee continues droning the high C string. I swear it sounds like he has a wah or phaser during parts of this song! Then more 5th fret harmonics, and back to heavy delay skronk chord glory. Kim continues striking the same chord as the previous section. Around 15:30 she starts trem picking up around the 17th fret on the high A string, moving up to the 18th fret. MINUTE 17 16:00-17:00 Thurston keeps bashing the same open chord, with fuzzbox accents. His rhythm changes slightly, accenting the low string then middle strings. Lee releases his wall of skronk and just kinda starts smacking the low C string around. Then he goes from low to high and works the high C string a bit, then starts strumming all of the open strings. Kim keeps trem picking the 18th fret of the high A string. Her guitar gets a bit quieter at this point but I think she's just doing more skronk picking. Possibly from the 7th to 19th fret on the A string. MINUTE 18 17:00-18:00 Thurston keeps hammering the same chord but starts adding stompbox bursts. Lee keeps droning the high C string while adding extra bursts of distortion and ring modulation. He gets the low C string in there too. Kim continues rapidly picking notes in a shape like this: B-------- B-------- A---19--- D---19--- A-------- D-------- Then she switches to another chord, strumming quickly while also pulling off to the open A string. It's all just chaos at this point. MINUTE 19 18:00-19:00 Thurston keeps destroying the same chord, turning on his Wah-Vol around 18:07 and taking things to total meltdown. He basically just goes full "crazy" strumming up and down the fretboard, adding bursts from his MXR boxes. Lee keeps chugging the low C and G strings, then starts doing light skronk chords with delay. Around 18:40 he runs his finger from the nut to the 5th fret or so doing harmonics on the low C string, then just does strangled bursts of distorted noise. Kim starts banging out the same chord over and over: B------- B------- A------- D---1--- A---x--- D---1--- MINUTE 20 19:00-20:00 Thurston continues "freaking out". At roughly 19:45, he puts his guitar behind his head (while still playing). This moment was captured on the cover of SYR7. Then he held the guitar up to his amp while strumming for some extra feedback squeal. Lee does aggressive ring modulated pick scrapes with delay. Around 19:40 he turns off the distortion and just does chunky palm muted open string picking with delay. Kim keeps playing the same chord. She stops at 19:40 and places the mallet back under her strings, then picks out a slow plinky chord with some kind of reverb or modulation. MINUTE 21 20:00-21:00 Thurston was still facing his amp at this point, making squeaky skronk before moving back to his pedals and turning his wah on at 20:20 for some super noise. Lee drones the low C, then hits the high C. He goes back to the low C for a bit, then chokes out some swipey string noise, moving to pick scrapes with delay. Then he does more "harmonics from the nut to the 5th fret and back" on the low C string. Kim keeps picking the strings with the mallet underneath them. She starts singing again at 20:56. MINUTE 22 21:00-22:00 Thurston keeps making a wall of wah/fuzz, and around 21:25 he is just using his patchcord and manipulating static with his effects. Lee keeps doing harmonics on the low C string, moving his finger up and down the string while picking. I don't know what effect he's using here - a wah? Phaser? Something built into the ring mod? By 21:30 and onwards he's just kinda doing waves of phaser noise. Kim keeps singing while casually picking out notes behind the mallet. MINUTE 23 22:00-22:53 Thurston lets his wah bleed out while he grabs his next guitar, which he plugs in around 22:15 (it's a black Jazzmaster he used for the next song "Free City Rhymes"). He makes one final burst of noise at 22:44 and that's it! Lee just does waves of feedback, building to a bit of a wail. At the very end you can hear him pick out his open strings before starting "Free City Rhymes". Kim stops singing at 22:30, and plays her final plinky mallet chord moments later. text + tab by Chris Lawrence
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