I should tell you that although I do like Sonic Youth quite a bit, I'm not one of these SY groupies that has every single piece of music they have ever released and can speak intelligently about Thurston Moore's guitar tunings for every show they played in New York in 1983. That being said, I thought last night's show at the stuffed Gypsy Tea Room (it was the most crowded I've EVER seen the place, although the temp inside was surprisingly cool) was completely captivating, and the band looked and sounded fresh, energetic, and relevant. A couple of friends and I spent a bit of our drunken evening discussing how different the Sonic Youth show felt compared to the Dinosaur Jr. show we saw a couple months back. Both bands were favorites of ours back in the day, and we all still listen to both on a regular basis. And although this might be obvious considering that Dinosaur was simply on a reunion tour playing old hits, it seems that nostalgia was the primary motivation that guided us to the Dinosaur show at Gypsy, while a genuine curiousness and anticipation to hear new material is what primarily motivated us to go see Sonic Youth. None of us had seen them in what seems like a very long time, and although it was nice to hear some old stuff ("Kool Thing," "Eric's Trip," and "Catholic Block" among others), the new material seemed as timely and relevant as anything else Sonic Youth has ever done, and many of the songs off their latest album made it on to our list of favorite songs of the night. I continue to be impressed by how challenging and artistically valid Sonic Youth still is after all these years, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if I went to see them the next time they came through Dallas in support of yet another pretty fantastic record.

And what was close to being the absolute highlight of the night for us, despite all the great music we heard? It would have to be the fact that Pavement's Mark Ibold was touring with them on the bass. How fucking cool is that?

As for today, Theater Fire is playing at the Fort Worth Weekly Music award show at the 8.0 Bar at Sundance Square, and Doublewide is having its anniversary party starting early this evening. The line up:

6:00 - Pinebox Serenade7:00 - The Strange Boys8:00 - Saboteur9:00 - Lions10:00 - Max Cady11:00 - The Golden Falcons12:00 - Skeemin No Goods

In the Courtyard:

6:40 - not confirmed yet7:40 - Travis Hopper8:40 - Laura Palmer9:40 - JC10:40 - Emil Rapstine (The Angelus)

Not that all of these are our favorite acts or anything, but it should be a good time if you just want to relax a bit on a Sunday afternoon. Be sure to check out Emil Rapstine.

just kidding. i don't know what i was saying. being a necro-maniac impairs my thought process. i'm gonna go do ma' dead granny now. BONG!

just fucking kill kim gordon alfuckingready. and while you're at it... kill fucking thurston howell the 3rd as well. suckers....

Yeah, I was in nerdy music heaven once I saw Mark on stage with them.
I loved it (almost as much as the other 4 times I've seen them).
I can't wait for them to come through again and do more of a varied set of their songs.

Ah, Mark Ibold. The reason I play bass....

sonic youth was soooo good BUT I think I could have done without Awesome Color. Awesome Color just didn't have anything special to offer and all I could think was "why did sonic youth take them on the road?"

Either way... Sonic Youth was good enough to make up for the lack luster performance of Awesome Color.

yeah, awesome all around (save for what seemed like a short set). and i would still totally do kim.

sonic youth were so goddam great and played their asses off!! i really wish they would've played longer.

The show at Bar of Soap was cancelled. I mentioned something about it on the previous post. The bands were looking for a place to fill in, just to play. Brimstone Howl is one of my fave garage bands right now. Too bad...as far as I know nothing came through for them.

Sonic Youth were indeed very good
last night. Mark was definitely the
icing on the cake. I haven't seen
them in years, although they don't
seem as loud as they used to, they
are as good as ever. I was shocked
at the extremely short set from a
band with so much great material.
Especially with the fact there were
two encores. The other down side
was the idiot elitists that were
grouped behind me and another that
were grouped behind some friends
at the other side of the place.
They talked during the whole fucking set about the previously
mentioned elitist things to talk
about by stonedranger. All the
while unknowingly sounding
completely full of shit with
bogus facts and history. Never
actually even watching the band.
And probably compiling the setlist
in a little elitist notepad so
they can blog, brag, and disect
on their myspace and such.

fuck.... i hope not

and i'm not at all sure how the tah dah's fit into the whole "bar of soap" scene.... sometimes i walk into that place and i'm like "damn, i don't have near enough facial hair or tatoo's to be in this joint"... but the tah dah's and their style of music make me think i'll probably go unnoticed.

it's not BAD per se... but it's not something i'd suspect some burly motherfucker puts in his diskman when he drives his huge shitty van around town.

there's also supposed to be some kick ass garage rock bands playing w/ (of all bands) the tah dah's @ the bar of soap... so i'll be splitting time between the doublewide and bar of soap tonight, i think.

bar of soap is just around the corner, so it could make for a fun evening/afternoon of music, food, drinking, and wondering around exposition.