Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth: more than just nostalgia
On Friday, I saw Sonic Youth play their 1988 album Daydream Nation in its entirety as part of the ongoing Don't Look Back series. In some ways, this concept - where bands from the golden age of alt rock play their classic album start to finish - suited New York's oldest teenagers perfectly; their propensity for turning up and playing three hours of white noise and skronk-jazz was always a strong factor against going to their gigs, so at least here you knew what you were getting.
Predictably enough, they were great - note perfect, surprisingly muscular-sounding and still clearly in love with the whole sensation of kicking up a racket on stage. But there was something slightly depressing about the whole thing. It was partly the sensation that, with the passing of time, these are bands that really belong to a different era, and that this series is a kind of down-tuned version of those interminable nostalgia tours that cart Tony Hadley and Leee John around provincial conference centres to waggle their arses at hen nights.
The poignancy is heightened by the fact that Sonic Youth and their ilk represent something that no longer exists; the spirit of experimentation and counter-culture is still alive and well, but you just don't really find it in guitar music in any meaningful form. "Indie" is the default soundtrack for the mainstream nowadays, a cosy jangle that plays out in Top Shop and Victoria Newton's Bizarre column. And for a lot of people who came through admiring bands who refused to do interviews (Fugazi), encouraged people to steal their records (Crass, Conflict) and were unashamedly intellectual and arty about what they did (Sonic Youth), that's a shame.
Another part of why the Don't Look Back gigs have been such a spectacular success is that many of the acts who've taken part (The Stooges, John Martyn, etc) can't physically keep doing this for much longer. And once they're gone, that's it. In Don Letts' superb 2005 documentary, Punk: Attitude, Thurston Moore made the point that pre-digital technology, so little of the 70s and 80s underground was documented that actually seeing the gigs constitutes a sort of "secret history" of alternative music. The bands that are Don't Look Back's stock-in-trade are a kind of living history - like the blokes who shuffle down to the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, but with Fender Jazzmasters and tinnitus. Enjoy them while you can.
