What, a year before it was released? :p

I had been vaguely aware of them for a while (I remember seeing one of the pics from the inside sleeve of Master=Dik in a magazine and trying to imagine what sort of fucked-up noise a band that looks like that would make!) but my first exposure was at a schoolfriend's party sometime around '94/95 where the host's older brother and friends were sitting around upstairs taking mushrooms & watching 1991:TYTPB. My Nirvana-worshipping mind was blown wide-open and I've never looked back since... :)

It was 2002, i was 14, and Murray Street had just come out.

I bought Screaming Fields Of Sonic Love, and loved them instantly.

I remember hearing Plastic Sun on a compilation when I was 8/9 and thought it was the worst thing I had ever heard. Fast forward 4 or 5 years and my aunt is telling me that Sonic Youth are "one of the coolest and greatest rock bands to exist" and that I should "really try and get into them."

One trip to the store, came back with Daydream Nation and that was that.

Sonic Youth was a name I'd known since I'd started getting into bands like the Ramones and Television. I think I went onto the iTunes store and listened to a 30 second sample of Teen Age Riot, but I didn't think much of it (the only bit you could listen to was Kim's intro, I thought it was boring). Later, the Silver Rockets & Kool Things: 20 Years of Sonic Youth documentary was being shown on TV. I watched it, I thought SY were pretty cool. Again I listened to Teen Age Riot on iTunes, but I still didn't like it much, it wasn't as good as it was when I watched the documentary. Eventually I went out and bought Daydream Nation, I loved it etc.