[Rob Instigator]

I have always been curious as to this. I find that when talking to music lovers who are NOT fans of sonic youth, it gives me a better understanding of the people like me who are large sonic youth fans.

I think it is a crucial step in the brain, or a trait. I do not know if it is learned or inborn. I feel that what connects most sonic youth fans is their ability to appreciate sounds that to many other people are cacophony. some call it noise, or skronk, or scree, or feedback, or walls of sounds, but I think it is best described as cacophony or polyphonic cacophony.

To me music that is just a dude on a piano singing is too sparse, not enough sonically going on to keep my interest. The song has to be very good for me to get into it, a la some beatles songs.
I prefer music that contains a wide spectrum of sounds all at the same time, whether that means symphony orchestras, sonic youth, gamelan music (as discussed in another thread), salsa music, bebop, or punk rock. even bands like The Cure who do not actually play skronk, have a multi layered trait to them that forces the ear to grasp more than a couple of musical strains at one time. That is the music I love the most. That is the music that pays me with repeated listens, rewarding me every time.


what do you guys think about this? Does your general musical tastes run to the polyphonic, cacophonic?

[Glice]

I know plenty of people who listen to a wider range of music than many Sonic Youth fans (on this forum at least) and very few of them like Sonic Youth.

I know plenty of people who adore cacaphony but hate Sonic Youth.

I know a few dyed-in-the-wool indie kids who adore Sonic Youth.

Not a judgement call, just in case you were wondering, more an observation.

[Rob Instigator]

that's odd. I have found, in the 16 or so years I have been listeing to sonic youth supreme number one, that sonic youth fans, REAL fans (meaning people who actually enjoy the music, not just name drop them cuz they own dirty) have extremely wide range in music tastes.

way wider than the majority of "punks" or of "goths" or any other subculture.

I mean, look at the insane array of music discussed on this forum. most epol on here are not casual sonic youth fans. they discuss so much music, so many types. most of it is cacophonous, or polyphonic in it's way.

[Glice]

Personally, I would disagree with the last sentence. Not having a dig at yourself, and I think there are a few people here with a pretty broad taste, but not everyone here has so broad a taste. I have a mental list of around 10 posters who have introduced me to things I wouldn't've known. Relative to my social group, I've got a fairly but not very broad taste. Here, I feel a bit like John Peel.

*Edit: Curse you, Mr Priest, for inserting yourself there.

*2nd Edit: I'm in a shit mood mind you, so should probably be ignored.

[Hip Priest]

I see it as just an openess. You don't have to like something different the first time you hear it - you may never like it at all, but so long as you're willing to try new things out then sometimes you'll find something that you like or something that you love, and life will be richer.

[Danny Himself]

Love for Sonic Youth connects us all. It's pretty simple.

[Hip Priest]

Good old love, eh? It's a blessing.

[Danny Himself]

It is. Praise the lawd!

[luxinterior]

I wouldn't really consider "just a dude on a piano singing" to be sparse. I don't think sparse has so much to do with the number of instruments/sounds involved. Rather, I think it concerns more when a person does or does not use said instruments. A guy pounding away on his piano throughout an entire song is probably not going to have a sparse sound to it.

I'll use the Bad Seeds as an example because they're my favorite group and an example of a full band that can still manage to sound sparse, as in they know when to tone it down to an extreme and when to build it up. Especially the earlier records, on songs like Wings Off Flies and Blind Lemon Jefferson. I still enjoy groups that have that non-stop rock aesthetic, but as a whole it's just become less and less satisfying to me over time. And now I'm seeing that many of my favorite songs from whatever artists aren't really songs that are full of sound. I mean like Tempo House which is one of my favorite Fall tracks, or something like that.

I don't have much experience with Sonic Youth fans off this board but I can't imagine that they'd be that much more open than other music fans. I don't really consider Sonic Youth to be that radical of a band. Maybe for a little bit there, but after that it just seems like rock, or pop, or whatever you call groups that are catchy and appealing. I mean you can hum along to their music and get verses and choruses stuck in your head after one listen which to me is pop songwriting, and they've had their jam band moments, but for the most part I don't think that there's some Great Big Thing that separates them from all other bands.

I think you just want to believe what you believe because you're such a fan of them, and not because it's reality.

[terminal pharmacy]

the human ears when actively listening can only discern four sounds at once, however our brains are able to shift focus so fast that we fool ourselves into thinking that we can hear more. music is music and people will always have exceedingly different tastes, i think that the thing that draws sonic youth fans together is sonic youth's music.

[Rob Instigator]

Oh well.

[PAULYBEE2656]

he! nice thread rob. i agree with you to a certain point. any sy fans i know really have an openness for pretty much anything i throw at them , example, ive given my good mate a copy of a coughs album, magik markers, pere ubus new one, deerhoofs new one and vampire cant and he loved them all in equal measures. i gave a mate of mine an introduction to sy with daydream and sonic nurse and he thought daydream was terrible!!! he is a korn fan!

also age has a lot to do with it. if u came up to music buying age pre nirvana, you would see sy as being gods, as being revered, after nirvana, most would have caught on to the nevermind steam roller and lynched on to others from there. not always th case but generally it is.

actually, im not sure what im tryin to say, im sure its an ability to listen to music thats outsidfe the box, thats outside the easy going structure....

sy is for folk who buy more than 10 albums a year and are not willing to be easily influenced by factions such as the media, print or otherwise. sy is music fan territory in the same way stockhausen is. god this is bullshit what im saying here.......

sonic life..................

[PAULYBEE2656]

Originally Posted by terminal pharmacy

............. i think that the thing that draws sonic youth fans together is sonic youth's music.

and their humour and the ability to anything they want regardless of record company contracts etc.....

...and the noise, dont forget the noise

[luxinterior]

Originally Posted by terminal pharmacy

i think that the thing that draws sonic youth fans together is sonic youth's music.

Whereas I think the thing that draws Sonic Youth fans together is the Sonic Youth board. The music part, I can do without.

What is really funny to me is the idea of people browsing through the board while listening to Sonic Youth music. I mean that is just hilarious. I don't think I have ever done that.

Think of it in the same way as those 40-year-old men who like to watch Britney Spears videos on mute. And I barely understand what I mean by that.

[jennthebenn]

i'm listening to ELO whilst browsing...and not even widely-tolerated
early ELO, it's "Discovery".

i've had a good bit of interaction with other sy fans offline, thanks in large
part to this online world. the only surefire thing we have in common is
that we know we are better people being sonic youth fans than we would
be had we no knowledge of the sonic life. even the fans who are no longer
as rabid as they once were, even the people who find the so-called
"noise" scene more to their tastes, hard to imagine they would be were
they are in terms of auditory adventurousness without having first passed
through the portal of sonic youth. which is even cooler than the portal
he-man passed through.

oh, and read "better people" as "more open-minded musically", not like listening to sonic youth is going to inspire you to give blood, save cows from being slaughtered, or volunteer for a suicide hotline.

[Rob Instigator]

with taste in music being so subjective, it is hard to narrow it down to any one thing, which is why I asked abut everyone's "general musical tastes."

i cannot listen to love songs, for example. The standards love songs. For example, I LOVE Tony bennett's singing. I enjoy hearing him perform, and I love how he keeps JAZZ squarely in the center of his musical world, but I am not moved by the love song lyrics. I know of many Bennett fans who lsiten to him expressly becaus he still sings the great american songbook, love songs by cole porter, and so on. I find his phrasing and voice to be the draws for me.

sure the "average" ear can only discern about 4 different "sounds" at a time, but that is the average. the "average" music listener has no idea how to deal with sonic youth's music, much less stockhausen, wolf eyes, deerhoof, Godspeed You Black Emperor, John Cage , etc.

I think that much of this is learned, not innate. people start somewhere and either stay in that area or they seek to expand their musical world. sonic youth fans, for the most part, are music-world-expanders, always ready and willig to try something new,always ready to give a new act or a new genre or a new sound an open-minded listen.

Of course this is all filtered though my own personal experience, and I am a 33 year old sonic lifer.

There is so much music out there, from all human history.
when i first really paid attention to country blues and to the blues in general it blew my fucking mind away. when I first paid attention to peruvian guitarists, it blew me away, when I first gave myself a mission to expand my jazz vocabulary from just Miles Davis and Coltrane out to the far nether reaches and everything in between, I was rewarded beyond belief.

I think people who love or at least appreciate all of sonic youth's output are the adventurous type of music lover.

robert crumb, to cite an example, is an avid and overwhelmingly obsessed collector and lover of old country delta blues recordings. he is an avid music fan you could say, but he is not interested in giving just any music that comes across his ears a chance,. he is a focused indivudual and I think a lot of "mainstream" music fans, and some avant garde music fans of course, have that same mindset. they could care less about a new band, unless it falls into their pre-set criteria as to what they want to listen to. (e.g. Metal fans, and old school hardcore punks back in the day)

My mom LOVES music and playing music and listening to music, but if it is not ABBA, or Neil Daimond, or Puerto Rican songs, or Josh Groban, or The Bee Gees, she does not know how to even begin to apreciate it. I wonder if this happens to all of us at one time, if our brains just stop adjusting to new sounds. Hopefully not, and this is another reason the members of sonic youth give me hope.

just talking about music.

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by luxinterior

Whereas I think the thing that draws Sonic Youth fans together is the Sonic Youth board. The music part, I can do without.

What is really funny to me is the idea of people browsing through the board while listening to Sonic Youth music. I mean that is just hilarious. I don't think I have ever done that.

Think of it in the same way as those 40-year-old men who like to watch Britney Spears videos on mute. And I barely understand what I mean by that.

You ahve never browsed through the forum with the SY MIx Tape playing?

[luxinterior]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

You ahve never browsed through the forum with the SY MIx Tape playing?

Well I've never made a Sonic Youth mixtape, so no.

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by luxinterior

Well I've never made a Sonic Youth mixtape, so no.

I meant the one on this websites frontpage
http://sonicyouthmedia.com/alt-main/index.php

it is now on Mix Tape Number 5.

[noumenal]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

Does your general musical tastes run to the polyphonic?

Yes, definitely. I teach counterpoint, so I'd better like it. But seriously, yes.

However, polyphony is easy to achieve when the different lines are made up of noise with no discernable pitch, so "polyphonic cacophony" is a bit of a compromise. I still like it though. For me, "polyphonic cacophony" is justified when the lack of rigor concerning pitch is made up for through heavy motivic development, a lot of interplay between voices (whatever that means), and an effective musical shape and logic.

An exception: pentatonic noodling a la the Allmann Brothers gets old fast. This is what I call "lazy black-key polyphony." AKA, bad jazz. I like ABB though. Duane was the man.