Sonic Youth's Inspiration For Washing Machine ?
 

I was just curious if anyone knows the inspiration behind any of the tracks to washing machine. I remember when Nurse came out they said Neuromancer influenced "pattern recognition" and jack kerouac influenced "umade bed".

The only influence i remember hearing about washing machine is that thurston wrote "the diamond sea " for kim and then recently born coco. What about the other tracks though? where did the whole washing machine concept even come from ? Maybe some old interviews from the WM era could shed some light ?

I remember hearing that the song "Washing Machine" was based on a nursury rhyme that Kim Gordon knew growing up, and I have a bootleg where Lee says that "Skip Tracer" was based on the talking blues style.

Past that, I'm stumped.

The album in general, in a very very abstract way, seems heavily influenced by blues to me. Possibly why they went to Memphis to record? What an incredible record! There's nothing out there that sound like it, whatsoever (that I've heard).

I think it is the best album ever by any artist!

i always got kind of a sassy blues vibe from washing machine
"my heart spins around like a washin machine, never saw the devil look so damn clean"

well, sy wanted to change their name to 'washing machine' around that time, allegedly to 'cleanse' themselves or the music scene or blah blah. i don't actually remember how much of that was serious and how much was silly rock joke ha ha.

i wonder if pavement's late '94 'wowee zowee' sessions @ easley made SY consider it for washing machine. could be?

definitely a twisted blues feel to some tunes, lee's licks on 'no queen' and the title track are pretty fierce.

in general i doubt there was a universal theme to the record...becuz is "about a girl i saw once" (kim saw a girl holding her boyfriend's hand and wanted to write a song that would empower her). junkie's promise is fairly straightforward. saucer-like seems like some type of new york thing but i don't know...washing machine is anyone's guess, i've heard kim introduce it many different ways at various shows..unwind...trouble girl...panty lies...i think they're all very different themes......

i'd always heard lee was the inspiration for 'diamond sea' lyrics, but could be waaaay off on that (ie: he wrote em, or contributed to em)

GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT RECORD.

"till you fall in love with the diamond ring" makes me think it's about kim

ive always tought it was very blues influenced but noone ever seemed to share my opinion.
washing machine is the best blues song ever.

EJS has some bluesy stuff as well. They listen to a lot of stuff. It may have just been a phase or something.

I'm guessing that Pattern Recognition was influenced by the book Pattern Recognition. It's another Gibson novel in the same vein as Neuromancer. SY have bunch of songs about those "cyber punk" books.

They used to buy drugs at the laundromat.

Is that seriously true? Thats pretty funny if it is.

That like...completely satisfies my nostalgia of Washing Machine being this sort of Suburban drug record.

All I know is that this album is seriously amazing. I'm just glad that they went form EJST&NS to this record. It's quite a departure. (I do like EJS but it just seems that every other SY record kills it.)

To do a record like no other!!!

I maybe crazy but i always took Washing Machine to be an iconic symbol/metaphor for the suburbian, family life that Thurston and Kim had obviously just entered into with the birth of Coco. All the other SY albums before it seemed to me to be albums relating to youth, WM was the first album where we see the grown-up (relatively speaking) Sonic Youth. I don't think the album has a concept as such, but i think the songs all relate musically and lyrically to a more mature side of the band. I think the images on the cover-art are the best example of that!

I know what you mean. The whole album has some sort of surreal 1960's suburban middle-class american feel to it. Probably a new child brought back nostalgic thoughts of their own childhoods.

Yeah definitely. In particular 'Little Trouble Girl'. Nothing symbolises that kinda nostalgic 60's suburbia like Phil Spector songs, and that song was obviously meant to be a subversive take on that. Someone aptly described it as "Mock Phil Spector". I think all the greatest SY albums stir up a lot of mental imagery when you listen to them, and this album does that in the most brilliant way. I think its very Sonic Youth to take something like a washing machine and turn it into such a ponient symbol.

On topic with Washing Machine, does anyone have this:

"Following Lollapalooza, SY did two shows overseas, one in Barcelona and one in Paris (the latter of which provided 4 songs for an eventual bonus disc included with "Washing Machine")"

or the audio from their performances on Letterman (diamond sea), the state (dimaond sea) and conan (no queen blues).

I have those 4 songs. Letterman performance is on www.youtube.com

could you share those, man??? what are they???

i still have an interview with kim from a magazine somewhere from around the time it was released. she mentions that little trouble girl was written for a movie that's situated in the 50's and that they were specifically asked to deliver something in the style of the shangri-la's.

she regularly introduced the song by saying,
"this is a song about the future," or "this is a song my mother taught me."

Does anyone have the performance of No Queen Blues on Conan?

it's this movie apparently.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116442/soundtrack


i didn't know they performed no queen blues on television? if so, i'd like to see that too.

While the album does have a 70s suburban feel to it, it's not totally suburban in meaning, as there are a few references to specific streets in NYC in the lyrics.

"I was walking down Lafayette Street..." (street where Kim and T live).

If you PM me or something I can send you them.

Teen Age Riot
Starfield Road
Eric's Trip
The Diamond Sea

All live. I have a different live Diamond Sea too somewhere..

I second that request!

yeah exactly, that's how i feel as well. i can't describe better than you with my poor english. great album. in my top 3. the studio they've recorded this burned to dust.

no queen blues, such a excelence! if this was aired on tv, we have to find it somewhere!

listening to my fave record ever right now. I don't do it that often.

on topic: this record is OBVIOUSLY about the change that parenthood brought in Kim and Thurston's life. It is so obvious.
Especially Diamonf Sea, Panty lies, little trouble girl (becoming a parent yourself makes you think about what kind of child you were and what the relationship between you and yr parents was about), washing machine (Here's a quarter go put it in the washing machine).
Again it is very safe to assume that the whole washing machine is to be taken literally AND as a figure of speech also. When you become a parent, yr washing machine is yr best ally and then at the same time your whole life feels as though you're startinga brand new life altogether. It cleans some of the deepest wounds and makes you focus a whole lot more.

I could relate to the music for a good twelve years and then it hit me YET AGAIN BUT EVEN HARDER when i became a father.
I wrote a song called "BOY" that really is very akin to a mix of Diamond Sea and Snare girl which are like part1 and 2 of the same song.

Nobody gets to contradict me on this one as i'm IN THE KNOW.

i'm not even talking about the bluesy feeling og the whole LP that anyone can hear (gtrs) >>>> post-delivery blues or baby blues as they call it.


Aside from that, lots of other themes are developed on this one LP (Skip tracer or Junkie's promise>>>Kurdt / multimillion dolar lawsuit blah)

I hate to sound like a broken record, but:

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to greedrex again.

I had thought that maybe Washing Machine had to do with the commodification of music into something such as mainstream as a Washing Machine. Or relate somehow to how SY entered into that.

Also WMs are very musical...

agreed
(closely followed by evol)

i´m pretty sure that becuz is influenced by because the night/Patti Smith

I realize this is almost 3 years old, but they played "Junkie's Promise" on Conan, not "No Queen".

I think Thurston was doing laundry on day, he slipped in a puddle of Tide, and cracked his head on the washing machine. Then he dreamt an entire album. When he woke up, he wrote it all down backwards, and this album is the result of that.

damn. does anybody have any videos of them doing no queen blues live, i just wanna hear that intro

I've always wondered if on Washing Machine the song they are referencing the story about the velvet underground and their ban on blues scales, since the instrumental part owes big time to both the velvets (the guitars which fade in after KG's singing in the first part of the song are very VU) and blues. I do wonder since Thurston Moore likes his rock history parables, so in my mind it makes sense that they would have a go. Probably it's just pure coincidence.