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xgirl, where are you?
March 30th, 2005yesterday i was fully intent on writing Something Important here but of course, within a block of saying goodbye to my friend whom i walked home with, The Idea was erased from my memory. you wouldnt think that i’d forget something which has incensed me so much in the past few days – the “scandal” over sonic youth playing penn’s spring fling – but oh, i did.
in the year 2005, sonic youth should not be polarizing band. while the youth of today aren’t frolicking in the screaming fields of sonic love, and MTV no longer covers their every exploit, the band hasnt dropped completely off the radar. sonic nurse was one of the musical highlights from 2004 and their collaborations / support for newer fun trick noisemakers like gang gang dance has kept them relevant to people of a certain age.
kids arent rejecting their sound, its what they stand for – that’s whats really interesting here. while we balk at the objection, i think we forget that kids at penn are quite conservative. [much like most of america, of course.] sonic youth are emblematic of a generation that they’re rebelling against. talk about anything in a liberal sense in front of these kids, and we might as well be part of lollapalooza’s traveling sideshow of yesteryear. these are the kids that treat any talk of sex, as a dirty, shocking act.
when the kids comment on the DP website about how bush is a more relevant / influential artist, im not sure whether the kids are referencing the band or el presidente – a pretty chilling thought to mull over in this spring weather.
March 31st, 2005 at 9:54 am
I hear you, but I’m not sure it’s a liberal/conservative thing. I went to a state university during the Reagan/early Bush I years, admittedly a similarly conservative time, and my memory is that MOST college students preferred jam bands, prog-rock, the more commercial alt-rock (REM drew very well twice), and whatever was on the top 40. The college radio/showgoing crowd was always a minority. Sonic Youth did play Rutgers once circa Sister, and they drew the same couple hundred kids and townies who always went to shows like that. I’m not sure it’s so different two decades later. To the average student, Sonic Youth is *not* a household name, even though to us they’re as venerable as the Rolling Stones or the Who. Your average UPenn kid will go to Jimmy Eat World or Taking Back Sunday, something palatable and easy, but SY remain just a little too edgy for full campus acceptance.
I do think the situation has been way overblown on campus. Mission of Burma played Mizzou last year, and no one complained. Rabble-rousing college students getting riled up over things that ultimately don’t matter; gotta love it!
March 31st, 2005 at 10:14 am
of course most college kids prefer “alt-rock” jam bands and the ilk – thats the nature of college. But calling UP “not that conservative” is pretty far off the mark. the arguments over sonic youth are symbolic of the liberal vs. conservative struggle thats happening on campus [which has historically been very very liberal], something that very few people are really talking about.
[seriously, you need to be here to see how truly heated the discussion is – last week this one really quiet, polite student i work with flew completely off the handle at the mere mention of their name]
March 31st, 2005 at 10:24 am
Someone’s gotta tell Thurston et al. about this controversy if they don’t know about it yet. I bet they’d think it’s hilarious.
April 1st, 2005 at 3:48 pm
the thing is, if they gave it a chance, i’ll bet the Penn contingent that goes in for the Dave Matthews Band and the Dead would probably go bananas for Sonic Youth. i don’t think the essential aesthetic is all that different. i even think the old whine100 fans would find enough in the set they liked. it’s still all a matter of getting hung up on something as trivial as name-recognition.
i do fear for chan marshall, tho.
April 1st, 2005 at 3:53 pm
you know, this gets me thinking: these bands like 15 (or even 10?) years ago would be considered “college rock” - implying that a college audience would be open to something a little more outre. but here those college audiences are demanding bands that are essentially mainstream rock acts, which makes me wonder: has the paradigm shifted that drastically, or was the whole “college rock” thing a canard from the get-go?
April 2nd, 2005 at 11:54 am
it would have been OK to like these bands 15 years ago, even if one were into other kinds of music. sonic youth was a unifier, not a divider! i can only speak for my experiences at my alma mater and on penn’s campus [which are as different as night and day]. it still boggles my mind that a band like modest mouse is blaring out of the fraternities that flank either side of my building [while i have stopped listening to the band for the most part, unless its in a purely nostalgic sense with a group of friends at someone’s apartment or i am giggling along to the kidz bop version of “float on”] – the people who make up its core audience today would have mocked the group barely 10 years ago.
“college rock” as it existed to generations before is misleading. so how do we define it in a contemporary context?
April 2nd, 2005 at 12:00 pm
also: the idea of chan having to perform to a pack of drunken fraternity dudes, who will no doubt spend their time heckling her, is worth the cost of admission alone.