SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH on World Cafe, August 21, 2006 (2006).
Travelling back even further on the NPR timeline, Sonic Youth appeared on World Cafe in 2006 to promote Rather Ripped.
This is a brief session (only three songs) but as with the interview with Thurston Moore, David Dye does another great interviewing the band here. Although it must be said that saying the band is once again a four piece (when clearly there are five people in the picture and in the studio and when he later says two guitars, two basses and drums–which I also think is incorrect, as I’m pretty sure Kim switched to guitars at this point, although I don’t know if she did during this set) is not a great way to start the interview.
Facts aside, the interview is informative and interesting and provides a glimpse into the band’s psyche all these years into their career.
The set is also good (although Thurston’s voice sounds a little off on the opener “Incinerate”). The surprising thing about the set is that even with the five of them, the feeling is one of restraint. True, the songs on Rather Ripped are not as noisy as previous records, but this feels like they are trying not to wake anybody up the NPR folks. It’s a weird feeling for a Sonic Youth set, but the plus side to it is that you can really hear everything clearly.
The other two songs are sung by Kim: “Jams Run Free” and “What a Waste” (why do they never promote any of Lee’s songs??). And there’s the very amusing comment that the first time they played “What a Waste” Thurston and Kim’s daughter said it sounded like the theme from Friends. Ha!
[READ: April 15, 2011] The Best American Comics 2006
I just recently learned about this series from The Best American line of books. I had known about the Best American Short Stories and Essays and even Non-Required Reading (which I have not yet read). But once I found out about the best comics, I knew I had to check it out.
The first issue came out in 2006. The series editor is Anne Elizabeth Moore and the Guest Editor for this volume was Harvey Pekar. Each of them has an introductory essay in the book. To me the amazing thing about Pekar”s essay is how aggressively defensive he sounds (a sort of, “you may not like this one, but try this one” attitude) about these comics and comics in general. I don’t know much about Pekar’s work. I know he’s a kind of underground icon, but I seem to have missed him. My impression of him is that this sort of antagonistic/defensive attitude seems to go along quite well with his comics, so I guess that makes sense, but I didn’t find it very welcoming.
But that’s okay, because I really enjoyed the comics. And quite a few were by artists that I had never read before, which is even better! (more…)
I Just Read About That... 