Sock Free Hideaway

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO 

17. Sonic Youth & Mudhoney:  1989, I don't know just where I'm going But I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can

PART 1

GETTING LOST in a vortex of noise was the perfect prescription for me as I neared the end of my troubled teens. 

I was joining the dots between the 60s underground bands by borrowing their records from Oldham Library. It was where I was first introduced to the Velvets, whose debut LP mesmerized me. I finally paid a small fortune for a British original out of an ad in the NME. Long before Vinyl Exchange opened. Songs about drugs were always going to gravitate me towards drugs. Waiting For The Man went around my head for at least another decade as I sat on buses, in the back of cars, and waited around in dodgy boozers and flats in far-flung places like Fitton Hill. 

The Stooges were a different proposition to the Velvets' hyper-self-consciousness and the perfect harder rock foil, sounding much more night-out and sexual. As I immersed myself in Iggy's world, I was going out less and less and was about as asexual as Morrissey. I was probably eating a lot more LSD than him, though. 

Sonic Youth and Mudhoney share the same, differing, yet harmonious, dynamics, as The Velvets and Stooges. The first LP I really got into was Sister, which felt truly special, sounding to my ears at least like a fully realized New Order. Its highlight Cotton Crown is a masterclass in detached harmony and evokes the ice maiden Nico duetting with someone even more wasted. It blows my mind still. Halloween, as covered by Mudhoney, loses Kim Gordon's enchanting sexuality but gains a wilder, more direct form of rock abandon, that shakes you to the core. In their honour I wore beads until one night in an LSD induced panic, I thought they were strangling me so snapped them off my neck. 

I also religiously wore my 501s, Vision Street Wear boots and Chevignon shirts to their faded and ripped dying embers. Wishing I was sitting in the semi-circle in Dave Booth's Hangout with all the cool winkle-picker and Sterling Morrison hair gang, but I had wavy brown hair and loved shaking it about in a frenzy better suited to the bedroom. Especially to Touch Me, I'm Sick. I later discovered that this infamous semi-circle hailed from Chadderton, which was very disappointing, as it was as every bit as dreary as my hometown.  

After hearing the far more exotically located Kevin Shields and Bobby Gillespie both infer that factories were weirder than rock 'n' roll, I misunderstood. Not realizing that they meant weird in a stifling shit way, I left my college enrolment queue to stay put in my job. After all, didn't Warhol himself work in a factory? I soon became imprisoned in an LSD and music existence, which sort of caused a need for the effortless, repetitious work I was doing. That I could do in my sleep. When I finally got the meaning of what they both meant, I was well and truly trapped. I kept playing Piss-Factory repeatedly, hoping something would change, but it never did.  

PART 2

BACK IN 1989 Sonic Youth were a heads down sensory assault that absorbed nihilism, feedback, pop culture, sex, hip-hop culture, and a subtler confrontational form of punk rock, as seen through a goofball lens, before deconstructing it all. So much has been written about them since that even Dave Clarke, the dreariest man in music, is a fan. Back then, they felt proper underground whilst looking seriously cool. Everyone was talking about the over-rated Technique that only found a pulse on a few tracks and not the dynamic and utterly compelling Daydream Nation. 

With hindsight, I shouldn't have worn my enviable collection of band tees for work coz they'd be worth a fortune today. Especially my Daydream tee. I actually swapped my Fall tee for a Sub Pop logo tee straight off Steve Turner's back and onto my own. It stank. I had no idea that Mark Arm was a junkie or Thurston Moore's father died when, like myself, he was 18. I also didn't know Paul Smith would get royally shafted either as he passed me the booze and ushered me around his backstage inner sanctum. This parallel world I was living in was brilliant. Swapping tees and talking about life and death with some of my favourite bands.

That Manchester show on a wet Monday in March was absolutely mind-blowing. So good that everyone rushed to call their bands Eric's Trip. Stunning support act Mudhoney hit the stage with them to play an improvised I Wanna Be Your Dog, then stage dived before it got really tedious. I woke up with post concert tinnitus still ringing around my ears and smiling really widely before heading off to Pizza Hut with my good mate Stu with the world of work a million miles away. I honestly assumed I was going to be a rock star. Don't laugh. 

However, by the time Sonic Youth played the Royal Court in Liverpool touring Goo, they'd sold out to some large extent coz they'd brutally jettisoned the lovely Paul Smith and coerced more impressionable young bands onto their major label to paper over the limitations of their own star potential. Going from purveyors of Avant-gardist guitar noise par excellence to taste-makers and curators. A massive climb down. Or was I just mad, jealous of all the people backstage? Probably.  

Mudhoney, by comparison, sounded properly primitive with their straight up garage and R&B. Amounting to a ball of sheer energy experienced live. Superfuzz Bigmuff is still one of my favourite spins with its redemption songs, dumb-ass, dirtiest grunge, skewed psyche, and soul overload, that really set the benchmark for anything they did after way too high. That said, When Tomorrow Hits is a mighty tune that shows they lived and breathed Ron Asheton and could do this rock 'n' roll malarkey in their sleep. 

My love affair ended in the melee at Reading when in the baking sun my mirror shades got knocked off my head. Attempting to retrieve them, I saw my life flash before me. I'd tripped over and was about to be trampled to death when luckily some really strong chap got me back on my feet. I've not worn converse boots since. 

 

Inner sanctums in exciting parallel worlds were often sought but seldom discovered, and never as much fun when they were. And working began to feel a lot fucking harder. Cheers Paul!