Bad Moon Rising - Sonic Youth

I haven't been posting as much due to, you know, life and that but also because I've been doing some writing for a web site. This writing is eating into my blogging time, anyway whatever. So I've decided to include some of these writings here in a little series called Tim's Ultra Rough Guide To Rock. This first one is on Sonic Youth's Bad Moon Rising. I think I could write a major article by expanding this small piece or maybe being this concise is just right.

SONIC YOUTH - BAD MOON RISING

This is a weird album. Bad Moon Rising has a mysterious atmosphere that just hangs and engulfs all in its path. This is the most singular Sonic Youth LP making it unique in their catalogue. Like David Lynch did with Blue Velvet, Sonic Youth shine a light on the dark underbelly of the suburban American Dream. Perhaps coming to the conclusion that it may in fact be a nightmare. Sex, mental illness, hippie optimism and its ultimate disillusion, subversion, nihilism, death, transgression and power are all covered lyrically here. Sonically the clangs and the air of alienating dissonance mirror that of the urban sprawl and the squalor it entails. This LP moves at a creepy catatonic pace that parallels life in the sleepy suburbs. The pace only picks up with a burst of violence that is Death Valley 69. A bit like Charles Manson’s endgame to those dreaming of a hippie utopia throughout the 60s.

*This really is a concept LP which would have been very uncool at the time. How did it get past the taste police, I wonder? This has me thinking about a piece Simon Reynolds did a few weeks back about a Thurston Moore quote about 1985. The gist was that in 1985 Thurston thought it was quite radical to reference music from the rock no go zone of 1968-75, citing Green River as the catalysts for this move. Perhaps this double think allowed him to make a concept LP in 1985 as well.

*Bad Moon Rising got reissued a month or so back I've just noticed making this post quite topical and not as pointless as I thought.

*Then there's this (below) that everyone seems to be reading, even my Mrs who's not even a Sonic Youth fan (While she was a massive Pixies fan, she was more into your Guns & Roses, Temple Of The Dog, Mother Love Bone, Jane's Addiction, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains and Screaming Trees in your late 80s into early 90s rock period). I've only read the first paragraph and it's a fucking classic. She calls Thurston Moore a phoney. I sense it will be a great read with a start like that. She's has quite a gift for writing amongst her many other talents.

Sonic Youth - Gila Monster Jamboree

Just discovered this on the youtubes, how excitement! Wicked soundz & Visionz from Sonic Youth in the Mojave Desert in 1985. Bad Moon Rising tunes. Bob Bert on drums. Lee wears orange jumper and sings Death Valley 69. Intense Kim with Michael Jackson Sticker on her bass guitar. Thurston reads one track's lyrics from a notebook! 40 minutes of glorious cacophonous sonic sculpture man. The sound of the late 20th century. Check it out!

Terry Melcher - Terry Melcher LP

How did I end up here? Well a while ago a friend of mine told me he was gettin into The Byrds. I'd been tellin him for a while he should check out Gene Clark. So then I thought I'd do a post about the best Post-Byrds records. Then as I was thinking up some crap to write I remembered this song I'd heard about 7 years ago on the radio by sometime Beach Boy songwriter and Byrds producer Terry Melcher. It really struck me as quite edgy and unhinged and has stayed with me ever since. I've never been able to find a physical copy of the above LP but I finally tracked down an MP3 of said artifact. Anyway I can't figure out which of the tunes it was because there is quite an intense unhinged quality to a lot of the trax. There is something in his voice that is so real and slighly terrified. This is a man who was friends with Charlie Manson and was supposedly the real target for one of the Manson murders. I'm sure he did his fair share of coke and was quite paranoid. His mum was Doris Day talk about yin and yang! That was LA though wasn't it?!. The sweetest most innocent harmonies coming from some of the most mental people in town ie. The Beach Boys. Anyway did I miss the Mojo where they said this was a forgotten classic or am I one of only a few who think this is pure gold from LA in 1974. Doris even does backing vocals on Terry's version of These Days which makes it brilliantly haunting. When he says he's 'OK and so is LA' in a jaunty tone you don't really believe him particularly when it's a sentiment expressed to his shrink on Dr Horowitz. Particularly affecting is the booze hound lament The Bars Have Made A Prison Out of Me. His sense of desperation for something to believe in is palpable in songs like Beverly Hills, Halls Of Justice and The Old Hand Jive. His spirit though is broken but he keeps on going, just, and thankfully so because this is a fucking great record! Features such luminaries as Sneaky Pete, Hal Blaine and Chris Hillman. Terry's old buddy and sometime Beach Boy Bruce Johnston co-produces.