Premiere Video: Sonic Youth: "The World Looks Red"
 

Premiere Video: Sonic Youth: "The World Looks Red" (Live at Urban Outfitters)

Sonic Youth's work for Starbucks is one thing, but this performance at the Santa Monica, Calif., Urban Outfitters was for a decidedly good cause. The indie rock icons joined electro-popper Dntel at the Salvation Army-influenced clothing retailer on July 21 as part of a Free Yr Radio instore to benefit Los Angeles FM station KXLU. In this clip, they neither revisit their landmark Daydream Nation nor break out new stuff from their most recent album, last year's frequently overlooked Rather Ripped.
Instead, Sonic Youth reach way back to debut LP Confusion Is Sex for "The World Looks Red", which features grotesque lyrics ("people with fish eyes") by Michael Gira. It's probably a strange feeling to play a song released 14 years ago-- back when New York was even less like Los Angeles-- at a huge retail outlet in a Southern California coastal town. But the band show no signs, jumping around as if sex wasn't confusing at all. "Yes, it is/ No, it isn't," Thurston Moore speak-sings. Wire up the radio.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/f...ban-outfitters

14 years ago?

when he wrote 14 he meant 24 init?
anyways theres a good live version of that song on sonic youths myspace.

No, it is "no it is, yes it isn't"

are you fucking kidding me?

Great Sound....

is there any way we can download this?

wow! that's a surprise. while that's technically amazing and i'm happy to have seen it, i have a copy of this filmed on a digital camera from the front that i think actually captures the energy of the song with a little more intensity (or at least compliments this one in its crispness and extravagance). maybe i can figure out how to get it on the youtube or something...

this is pretty damn cool though!

I'd always thought it was "No it isn't / yes it is", not the other way around. But, hey, it's Thurston's song, he can do whatever the hell he likes with it... within reason.

God damn, one of my all-time favourites. They played awesomely in this one, but when I saw them, it seemed so much more energetic and fucking VICIOUS! At any rate, the song rules, and has some of the coolest ever sounds incorporated into a "rock" song.

i feel like yell this song to the ear of people around me
i love that song
i wrote that song on the walls of library when i was alone in there.
later i found out security camcoder had been shooting me

That needed rep, for having guts.

grotesque lyrics? what a bunch of idiot sissies at pitchfork.

PUSH IT AWAY - THE WORLD LOOKS RED
PEOPLE WITH FISH EYES - THE GROUND SUCKS
WALK ON MY FINGERTIPS - DISPLACING THE FOG
THE WEIGHT OF MY BODY - IS TOO MUCH TO BEAR
THE MEMORY DRAINED - THE LIFE FROM THE DOLL
AN OCEAN OF INSECTS - WORKED LIKE A SHEET
THE IMMOVABLE FACT - BURIED MY MIND
IN A HORSEHAIR COAT - IN A PILE - ON THE FLOOR

I've heard more grotesque lyrics than this.

The reviewer has obviously never done any time with the lyrical content of Gira's early Swans material.

I think that is one of the most poetic lyrics they did on that album.

ha, yeh, he switched it to the... normal way. weird!

That's really odd, when I watched this I >did< notice rather grotesque lyrics.. I couldn't completely make them out over the screaming Urban Outfitters crowd, but it was something to the effect of:

Put it in my pocket - World looks green
I've got dollar signs - In my eyes

Ride in my Cadilac - Drinkin the Starbucks
Selling no wave pop - To the mainstream
Kicking out Jim O'Rourke - For being too ugly

An ocean of idiotic - Sonic Youth fans
Buying our albums - Seeing us live
Even after we play for - their hipster little sisters - at Urban Outfitters


Crazy. Sonic Geezers still got a bit of sass, I guess!

Also, I find it funny that Pitchfork said "the frequently overlooked Rather Ripped". Just sayin'.

The Youth are now reaching DEVO-esque levels of pop culture irony.

Indeed.

Hey, I think I finally figured out why Jim left the band so quickly!

He must hate money as much as you do, eh? Just sayin'.

Heh. No one hates money, but you don't necassarily have to worship money either. There's a such thing as integrity.

This performance was actually for a good cause, but it's still kinda laughable. It's been hard to take Sonic Youth seriously since Kim Gordon appeared in Cavlin Klein ads though. I don't think a band sucks for wanting money (I don't use the word "sellout"), I think they suck for writing bad music... so yeah.

One day, Thurston came in to Sonic Youth practice and said, "Hey Jim, you like Starbucks, right?" And he said, "..." And they kicked him out of the band. True story.

Dunno, I just like SY and the more they play ( I don't really care much where/what for they do that) = more chances to see them (well, I live in Italy, so this is not really true), and more chances to hear recordings/see videos (now, this is true even if i live here he eh). I like to see/hear them playing. I know you don't like them much these days (and you're not the only one), but still...

Now if I was in Sonic Youth, I would rewrite some of the songs for acoustics and put together a short set of similarly tuned songs and do some impromptu gigs all over the place to fuck with people.

But I'm not in the band and I'm most likely idiotically overlooking major obstacles to this.

The two things I like best about 'The World Looks Red' are the Doors/'L.A. Woman' intro and Thurston's echoey, I'm-an-oracle-proclamating-from-a-distant-misty-mountain-in-time vocals. Also, there's a guitar (?) passage in the middle that's rather reminiscent of the keyboard run in The Velvet Underground's 'Ferryboat Bill'--I'm sure SY would have heard it as a bootleg by 1982/'83 (it wasn't officially released until 1986 on the Another View LP).