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Originally Posted by el micky
'The reality is that the post-punk and slacker generations are now becoming a middle age and middle income demographic. I remember a few years ago driving home and listening to NPR and they were talking about Wire on All Things Considered and thinking, wait a minute, they used to talk about Joni Mitchel, but now they've figured out I'm out here listening, and I'm a demographic. Such is life. Indie culture is relatively mainstream these days. Rolling Stone reviews bands and compares them to Big Black even though when Big Black was around they completely ignored their existence.'
when SY were starting, folks like us would have said it was rubbish that there was no mainstream recognition of underground music. now the underground has become the mainstream and still we complain because now its not the same.
be careful what you wish for
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I didn't really spend a lot of time complaining that the underground didn't get recognition. It wasn't until Sub Pop and the first wave of grunge that I began to realize it even could, and then the bad side raised it's head pretty quickly.
I'm glad Sonic Youth get as much recognition as they do, because they deserve it as incredible musical innovators. I must admit, I'm also kind of glad that they are still of a level of popularity that I can almost always see them for under twenty bucks and often walk right up to the front of the stage. It was pretty sad having Nirvana get so big that it became impossible to ever see them in their proper element again.
It just seems lame to me to see publications that completely ignored what happened when it was going on now reference it as if they were part of it (Rolling Stone is the biggest example, but then I guess the did write positive reviews of Husker Du and the Replacements, so maybe I'm overstating the case, Spin had Sonic Youth in the first issue, so they were never so bad). Rob makes a valid point that the people writing for them now aren't the same people who wrote for them in the late '70s and early '80s. Rock is dead, long live rock...