Frosted Rock (and Sonic Youth)

#11

01.11.10

I find it interesting that often times I can be searching for a beautiful or sweeping landscape to photograph, when sometimes if I just take a moment to look downward I can find attractive subjects.  Such was the case with this frosted rock, small cones and a lichen. 

I had to sharpen the photo and increase the color saturation to make the colors match what they looked like live and in person.  I think it made the photo a little grainier than I'd prefer; but I like it anyway.  The rock and lichen would have been attractive enough alone, but the addition of the frosted small cones gave it a little extra something.  I didn't place those cones  there; it was just a small gift from the wind to my mind's eye.  

Once I got that first picture I started looking around for similar subjects and found these:

Here is an iPhone photo of a moss on tree bark from earlier last year:

I have decided to break from the breathy, quiet, contemplative and mellow-toned tracks that I have been featuring thus far in the blog.  It was inevitable; my music tastes are wide-ranging and eclectic.  My goal is to choose music that I find beautiful and interesting, just like photos, but hopefully ones that the average person will not be familiar with.  This song will serve as the "bridge" from jazz and folk to more driven, louder songs that I think are equally beautiful and interesting.  

It is appropriate that Sonic Youth serve as that bridge.  They have been grinding out experimental and avante-garde "noise" music since the early 1980's.  During that decade it seemed you had your choice of "classic rock" (e.g. Zeppelin, Floyd, Clapton, Beatles, Stones, Doors, etc.) or "metal" (e.g. Ozzy, Maiden, Crue, Ratt, Twisted Sister, Poison, Cinderella, etc.) or "new wave" (e.g. Depeche Mode, Thompson Twins, Howard Jones, New Order, etc.).  I don't factor in classical or country, because I had no interest in either of those genres at the time.  Punk was still an underground sort of thing, but I can remember a few friends in Jr. High wearing trench coats featuring inked Anarchy logos and the names of punk bands scratched on their binders (e.g. Black Flag, the Clash, Sex Pistols, Stooges, etc.).  I was unfamiliar with those bands at the time, too.  And I don't consider Top 40 a genre... sorry to all the folks still listening to Huey Lewis and the News, Mike + the Mechanics, Wham! and Weird Al Yankovic.  You'll get no love from me, there.

I know my big three categories are broad, but that's what I recall.  I fit squarely within all three mainstream genres, favoring Pink Floyd, Ozzy, and Love and Rockets out of each respective movement at the time.  All-the-while there was what I'll call a "fourth movement" brewing, and which I totally missed out on.  It had the intensity of hard rock, the experimentalism of new wave, but without all the "visual stylings" that had taken over rock and new wave once MTV and music videos were born.  R.E.M., easily one of my three favorite bands of all time was born from (or gave birth to?) this "fourth movement".  Hmmm... maybe I'd give that credit to the Velvet Underground.  I'd put Talking Heads in this group, too.  All of this in preparation for the opinion that a crown jewel in that movement has to be Sonic Youth.  

This band just wasn't going to play what was popular or expected of them; they were going to make noise and lots of it.  On first (and sometimes second, third, fourth and fifth) listen, it may just seem like chaos and reverb; distortion and noise.  But there is definitely beauty and form woven in these deeply textured songs.  I can get lost in some of their songs.  One such example is Hits of Sunshine (for Allen Ginsberg) off "A Thousand Leaves".  It was the first SY song I ever heard, playing on late-night programming of KJQ in Salt Lake City around 1987.  The song features an eight and one-half minute stretch of repeated bass and percussion lines with overlying experimental guitar that just sends me to the moon and  beyond every time.  When I first heard the song, it unsettled me due to it's length and seeming lack of melody.  But the piece stuck with me, stewing in my subconscious for several years.  In the early 90's when the alternative rock and "grunge" movements were taking off, a common theme from mega-successful bands like Nirvana et al. was the unanimous praise for Sonic Youth as a major inspiration.  I recall reading an interview with Kurt Cobain in Rolling Stone magazine during those years in which he commented that it was ridiculous that everyone was liking and buying Nirvana's albums, while not doing the same for Sonic Youth's albums.  I may have the magazine wrong, but I remember the comment clearly.

I still didn't jump on the Sonic Youth bullet train until the mid 1990's when I got to hear them play live as the opening act for R.E.M.'s "Monster" tour in Salt Lake.  My friend D.R.S. had procured nice club box seats for us and our wives, so we had a great view.  SY was promoting their latest album "Washing Machine" but it was their live performance of the ever-cool Bull in the Heather from the prior album "Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star" that dyed my wool in the color of Sonic Youth from then 'til now.    

Today's song Stones comes off a later album, "Sonic Nurse".  I picked it for the title, and the following lines:

Camera on the haunted stones
Blood-shadow gentle painted scorn
Now it's dancin' ink across your skin

Hieroglyphic-lover nature-friend

By the time this album was released, the SY style had become a little more focused and accessible, yet it still displays their brash insistence on experimentation true to their original post-punk sound.  Distortion, reverb, and extended "improvised" sounding solos are still a mainstay.  Every SY fan has a favorite album or vocalist... I prefer the vocals of Thurston Moore over his wife Kim Gordon's or guitarist Lee Ranaldo's.  The only other person I know who respects Sonic Youth as much as I do, my good friend M.C.D. also prefers Thurston's vocals, if I remember correctly (he gifted me a Thurston Moore solo CD recently that I was previously ignorant of, and which I absolutely love.)  

The band has been able to maintain such a high standard over the years;  even to the point that I feel their last three albums collectively stand alongside, if not atop, their earlier groundbreaking albums beginning with "Sister" or "Daydream Nation".  I wish I could say the same of my beloved R.E.M., or even a band like U2 - but I cannot do that with honesty.

Okay, I do believe I am done now.  Once again, the music seems to be staging a mutiny against the photos in my blog.  I hope it is a battle that rages on for the remaining 354 expected entries, but I also understand that the average reader likely does not have the time or interest for all this crap I bother to write.  No worries.  If people just check in from time to time to look at some photos and maybe listen to a minute or two of music... well, then that alone is flattering to me.  However, I suppose I really am doing this for me first, and hope that some wandering soul out their likes it too.

Until tomorrow... thank you for looking, listening and reading.  CCE