In the tiny book of liner notes inserted with the new reissue of Sonic Youth’s “Daydream Nation” (Geffen, $29.99) is a story so unlikely it has the perverse ring of truth. It’s told by Ray Farrell, the band’s A&R man at the time (1988), now vice president of the eMusic online service. He writes that their tour of the Soviet Union — itself, in 1988, an unlikely story — was cut short by the government. The official reason was a lack of available flights to shepherd the band around the country. But the band suspected that the audiences who had turned out for its first shows, in support of “Daydream Nation,” had freaked the powers that be.
The mix was too odd.
At some shows, bikers would stalk about and pick fights; and at others, the band would play the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun” and audiences of Western-music-starved college students would react by swaying.
Not in irony.
In genuine, sincere unison.
I believe his story, but only because I remember first hearing “Daydream Nation” in 1988 and remember what it felt like — it felt like a band, at last, had found a way to tie every strand of far-flung creative energy floating around the underground rock movement back to popular rock music. My stoner friends dug it. The guys I played baseball with listened to it on their Walkmans. It was a unifier. It felt like this weird rock group (at the time, way outside of the mainstream) had found the places where the Carpenters coexist with Motorhead — without seeming snarky.
Today, every spaced-out note and muscular riff on that two-album set has been absorbed, homogenized, and tossed back.
The culture caught up to it.
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Bands are playing entire discs, in sequence, at their concertsBut then it didn’t have far to go. “Daydream Nation” arrived as the best indie rock of the ’80s (the Replacements, Husker Du, the Pixies) was headed for major labels. Sonic Youth themselves jumped to a major soon after. (The Nirvana breakthrough was still a few years away.) But in 1988, they sounded like the only band without a reference point, without a past. “Daydream Nation” called to mind a dizzying array of influences without sounding like anything you could put your finger on. One song, “Hey Joni,” was a nod to Joni Mitchell (a favorite of guitarist Lee Ranaldo); and the cover art was festooned with Led Zeppelin-like cryptic symbols.
But check out YouTube.
Search for “Teenage Riot.”
You’ll get a music video of the first song on “Daydream Nation,” a video that seamlessly pairs concert shots of Sonic Youth with archival footage of Patti Smith, the Stooges, the Beach Boys, Neil Young, the Ramones, Minor Threat, Sun Ra — each a piece of the Sonic Youth puzzle, buried deep in their sound. As Matthew Sterns explains in his book-long appreciation of the album, released earlier this year as part of the 33 1/3 series, “Daydream Nation” was recorded for $35,000 in less than two weeks, in a literal swirl of discordant influences. Greene Street studios in Greenwich Village had played host only a few months before to Public Enemy and the recording of another pop milestone, “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.” Intrigued, Sonic Youth requested that very same wall of sound — dense and epic.
For a more tangible lesson in influences, pop in the second disc of the reissue and you’ll find four cover tunes recorded during the same period. Their drifting head-in-the-clouds feedback loops make an appearance on the Beatles’ “Within You Without You”; those chaotic herky-jerky time-signatures on “Electricity” are courtesy of Captain Beefheart; a traditional punk thrash drives their take on Mudhoney’s “Touch Me, I’m Sick,” and an anthemic riff becomes the foundation for Neil Young’s “Computer Age” — ironically, a song far less accessible in its original version.
The star of this reissue, however, remains the original 14 songs on “Daydream Nation.” Until recently, I had not heard it in one sitting since high school. Back then I listened to it every day for three months, and what I heard were snippets of the indie rock scene, all in one place for the first time: “Total Trash” is a cheerfully sloppy low-fi jam, “The Sprawl” drags every shoe-gazing British mope rocker into the mix, “Eric’s Trip” has the driving exuberance of the Replacements, and the first part of “Cross the Breeze” finds the room for hyper hardcore drums.
Listening to “Daydream Nation” again, what really struck me was how it has not aged — more accessible in 2007, their guitars collide in long hurricanes of feedback any Jimi Hendrix fan would appreciate. But now I hear Metallica as well — on the final number, “Eliminator Jr.” (although the title is a nod to ZZ Top). What startled me was how overwhelmingly perfect it still sounded, how the band plays at that peak of energy most other bands take concerts to build to.
Apparently, I’m not alone: There are other double-album indie classics from the ’80s that stretched the idea of what underground rock was capable of (Husker Du’s “Zen Arcade,” the Minutemen’s “Double Nickels on a Dime”). But when magazines draw up Best-of-All-Time lists, it’s only “Daydream Nation” that takes a spot alongside “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Exile on Main Street,” and “London Calling.” It’s been added to the Library of Congress’ archive of seminal American recordings and referenced on The Simpsons. And you know what? Almost 20 years later, it’s still sounds cool.
But that’s another list.
Contact Christopher Borrelli at:
cborrelli@theblade.comor 419-724-6117