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Underground > Radio & Music >

Sonic Youth reissues? (and other reisssues)

12:44 / 05.01.03

Now I've said before that I'm highly suspicious about the idea of "reissuing" records that are already widely & cheaply available and already feature top notch recording quality / production, and "Dirty" isn't even anywhere near my favourite SY album, but I knew it would get to the point where I'd see the details, and GODDAMNIT!, Drool.

All those new songs.. where's my wallet?

The two CD reissue contains 11 new tracks and a handful of reworked versions of existing tracks. New songs include "Stalker" (previously available only on the double-vinyl version of the album), and rehearsal recordings of "Little Jammy Thing," "Stalker," and two songs, "Youth Against Facism," and "Wish Fulfillment," that ended up on 'Dirty' in different formats. Eight of the rehearsal songs have never been released: "Barracuda," "Dreamfinger," "New White Cross," "Guido," "Moonface," "Poet in the Pit," "Theoretical Chaos" and "Lite Damage." B-sides include "Genetic," "Hendrix Necro," "The Destroyed Room," "Is It My Body," "Personality Crisis," "The End of the End of the Ugly" and "Tamra."

Thurston Moore has gone on record to say, "I do enjoy [digging through old recordings] in a way, but at the same time I find it exasperating because we had to listen to all these things and make choices and there's so much to listen to." 'Dirty'. Plans by the corporate conglomerate also include reissuing 'Goo' and 'Daydream Nation'.

But seriously folks, isn't buying (major label!) albums you already own basically a bit fucked? An admission that you the listener are gullible enough to endlessly cough up for swiftly assembled compilations and new presentations of old material?

(I'm actually hoping someone else is gonna buy this and let me copy the second disc)

Matthew Fluxington

13:10 / 05.01.03

I love SY to death, but I see no point in actually buying that. I have almost all of those bonus tracks already (from the mp3 section at Sonic Youth.com, no less), and I'll just soulseek the remaining few.

Can't wait to hear "New White Kross", though.

19:49 / 05.01.03

Is "Barracuda" a cover of the Heart song? I mean, that would just be cool. I sorta agree w/ Flux, especially considering the availability of some of these songs. I also don't think its always worthwhile to buy a reissue for the demo tracks/"bad" takes, and I'd like to meet even one person who bought the VU's Loaded reissue and listens to the second disk (all alt takes) enough to justify spending that loot. Anyhoo, I'll be buying it, as my copy of Dirty is, well, dirty (and scratched to hell) from years of sliding in and out of those CD booklets.

So is the "alt-rock" reissue thing becoming a trend, what with Pave's S&E?

Matthew Fluxington

20:05 / 05.01.03

Well, that Pave reissue is really essential to those people who didn't already have all of that stuff, all of the extra music added on is among the most brilliant work Pavement ever did. I think it's really cool that they did that, you get an entire era of one band for the price of a regular cd. Matador put a lot of care into that reissue, and did not gouge the fans. They'll be doing all of the Pavement records like that over time, and it's really good news for the new fan. Pavement is a band that will probably only become more popular as time goes by, very much in the same way that the Pixies are a far bigger band now than they were when they actually existed. People are still getting turned on to Pave, and the reissues helps to stimulate that. And this is why you're seeing this wave of early 90s reissues - it's meant to capture a new audience who wasn't around for the record the first time just as much as it is there to give old fans a treat.

The Return Of Rothkoid

20:58 / 05.01.03

But seriously folks, isn't buying (major label!) albums you already own basically a bit fucked? An admission that you the listener are gullible enough to endlessly cough up for swiftly assembled compilations and new presentations of old material?

Well, it depends if what you get is worth the money. For example: I own a fair few of Miles Davis' albums. And a lot of them are the CBS masters - ie: crap. So when Legacy remixed and rereleased them, I picked 'em up, purely because the sound quality is now fucking awesome, not just some shitty transfer, and becase they usually come with bonus cuts. The version of In A Silent Way that's out now - and relatively cheap - is fucking godlike; the hammond at the start drills right through you.

Um. So yeah. Remasters/reissues generally good (Rollins Band's Weight finally getting a decent mix in the new version) but as ever, listen-before-ye-buy.

A

02:10 / 06.01.03

A similar thing has happened with reissues of the first 8 Ramones albums. They've all got a bunch of rare or unreleased stuff tacked on to the end of them. I don't want to waste money shelling out for records i already own, but I do want those songs. They could have released a double-cd of all those songs, but spreading them out over that many albums has the potential to make the record label way more money. Bastards.

Matthew Fluxington

02:32 / 06.01.03

Another really good example is the recently reissued Rolling Stones catalog - the new mixes of all of the albums, Gimme Shelter in particular, is very noticeably superior to the original cd masters of the albums. Apparently, the new mixes are quite a lot more similar to the original vinyl editions.

10:46 / 06.01.03

And I've also found myself shelling out this year for the Flaming Lips and Replacements reissues.. (but I don't mind that since I don't own the originals).

The whole thing wherein People Who Want New Tracks Most = People Who Are Most Likely To Already Own Records is a complete economic bastard..

Oh how I wish record companies were nice and, as Count Adam suggests, would issue SY, Pavement and Ramones "Rare Tracks" compilations instead.. I mean, I'm no production expert, but 'remastering' Dirty just sounds like a joke! It's one of the hi-fi-est, best recorded rock albums I own!

Matthew Fluxington

11:48 / 06.01.03

Well, I for one think they could make the mix sound a little less glossy - there's nothing bad about Butch Vig's production, but Andy Wallace's mix is a little too candy-coated for my tastes. I'm pretty sure they can get a better mix out of those master tapes.

Matthew Fluxington

18:16 / 08.01.03

By the way, there's a good shot that "Barracuda" may have something to do with the Heart song - the lyrics "Drunken Butterfly" is made up entirely of Heart lyrics cut up and scrambled together, after all. I'd bet that it is probably an early version of "Drunken Butterfly".

18:54 / 08.01.03

Goddamned if its not! Huh! Flux, when you die I demand that you have yourself downloaded so that future generations can use you as an encyclopedic reference.

20:31 / 08.01.03

hey, i didn't know that about Drunken Butterfly. where else have the Sonics used cut-up?

Matthew Fluxington

21:00 / 08.01.03

To my knowledge, the only other example of direct cut-up/quotation in Sonic Youth lyrics would be "Eric's Trip", which Lee Ranaldo pieced together mostly from dialogue from the Andy Warhol film Chelsea Girls. This is a quote from Lee in the Alec Foege book Confusion Is Next -

"It's based on this character from Warhol's group named Eric Emerson. In the film, there's this big sequence with Eric in it, and he's really tripped out and he's talking in this really acid-babble kind of way. And he says all this stuff which I basically wrote down verbatim and used as the first verse and basic structural key of it."

There's a lot of cases of Sonic Youth using quotations and appropriated words, sounds, and images in their work. "Providence" is built around a Mike Watt answering machine message, "Addicted To Love" is literally a karaoke version of the Robert Palmer song at a karaoke booth in a mall, and the video for it was made at a make-your-own video booth at a mall too. That's just off the top of my head, there's definitely more than that. Also, it's not quite the same thing, but the lyrics of "Schizophrenia" is essentially just Thurston paraphrasing Philip K Dick's Radio Free Albemuth and Valis.

13:27 / 09.01.03

Whoa.. aside from the stuff in the last paragraph I was completely unaware of all of that.. Drunken Butterfly made out of cut-ups of Heart lyrics?? That's the coolest thing I've heard all week!

If we're listing this stuff, I'm very fond of the bit on Bad Moon Rising where a distorted chunk of the Stooges "Not Right" is filtered in between songs. More of that sort of thing, I say.

Oh, and while we're talking Sonic Youth, I was listening to internet radio the other day and heard a completely insane SY christmas record .. mostly just blasts of noise and Thurston doing a bad rap about Riendeers shootin' heroin and stuff, and they all shout "Merry Christmas David Geffen!" at the end. Does anyone know where/when the hell this somewhat unique song came from?

Matthew Fluxington

13:46 / 09.01.03

Ah! That's "Santa Doesn't Cop Out On Dope" from the DGC Christmas compilation Just Say Noel, from the mid-90s. I love the part where Thurston says "it's your old friend, Sonic Youuuuuuff and we just got back from the North Pole, and you know what we saw up there? the big man and all his lil' dwarves. we really got off on that!"

If you want to know a lot of interesting things about Sonic Youth, I can recommend the Alec Foege 'Confusion Is Next: The Sonic Youth Story' book. UK Amazon link, US Amazon link.

I think your best bet in the UK is to buy a used copy from the US and have it shipped to the UK, the price evens out fairly well, and it'll be easier than finding a copy in the UK.

14:18 / 09.01.03

Presumably you mean you *can* recommend it?

I was vaguely looking for that book for a while, then I think I read an interview with the band where they said it was rubbish, and so I thought I wouldn't bother..

I take it it actually is worth getting then?

How about the Geffen christmas album? still available anywhere? I suppose the rest of it's probably pretty lame, but the SY track surely deserves a place in my collection!

Matthew Fluxington

14:50 / 09.01.03

Um, yeah, I meant that I DO recommend it. Weird, I have this odd tendency to type out the opposite of what I mean when I'm typing fast and not thinking about it too much. Bad, bad habit.

The book is great - it could be better, but it has a lot of great anecdotes and trivia in it, it's worth reading if you really love the band.

If you can find the Just Say Noel thing really cheap, then get it. Otherwise, I say get it from a filesharing service, or failing that, I'll send you a copy one of these days.