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Originally Posted by Rupert 'Stiles' Stilinski
I was wondering if anyone knew of a place where people that considered Sonic Youth the best band in the fucking world could gather and discuss how fucking great they are.
I don't like to bitch, but this board has been ruined by self-righteous people that have absolutely no band loyalty. I respect everyone's opinion, but there is such minimal discussion of the actual band on this site that it is disgusting. And when people do discuss the band, they often only state how much they dislike them. I respect people's opinions on the new album, but how could you refuse to buy it? I feel like (having adored this band for the large portion of my life) that I would buy an album of Steve Shelley making armpit fart noises simply out of loyalty to the people that have given me so much pleasure.
How can there be no in depth fanviews of their show yet? Obviously the people that went and rocked out at the show and showed their love of the band do not post on this forum.
Wouldn't it make more sense to post on a board of a band that you LOVE rather than a band that you don't really like (or only likeDD)?
The board used to be a fun place to post because even when everyone was getting in each other's grill, we still shared a love for the greatest band on the planet and could go back to that as a sense of unity.
It's impossible to come on this board anymore without getting angry... and that totally sucks.
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Hmm.
I think it's more to do with the band. Stating the obvious, it's worth bearing in mind they've produced lots of albums over nearly 30 years. What this means is that there are distinct eras, and SY have never been a band to stick to one style for their entire career - there's obviously common elements to all their albums, but they're hardly a NOFX or that kind of band who basically re-use the same riffs ad infintum.
It's difficult thinking about bands in this way - there are very, very few rock groups who have produced relevent and invigorating music for longer than 10 years. You look at the big boys of the rock canon - yr Dylans/ Beatles/ Led Zeps/ Bowie's, and none of them managed to make an entire career of great albums. Most bands produce about 5-10 years of relevent albums, then split or go into creative lulls, never to return (cf Dylan/ Cash/ Bowie/ (arguably) Reed).
If you're into a band that only have up to 5 albums, there's no point thinking about criticising them as a fan - they don't have enough of a corpus. With SY, because they have such a variety of GOOD material over their career, it's inevitable that not ever SY fan is going to have uniform favourites. My personal faves are CIS, Evol, ATL, NYCG&F - I shan't go into why these are my favourites, but suffice it to say that what I appreciate about the band fits into a different category of discussion to those whose favourites might be DDN & Dirty. I'm not claiming superiority, merely a difference in opinion.
If you compare the ramblings of the SY diaspora to any other band/ group/ musician with a comparable corpus, you'll probably find that the SY fan is a lot
less of a dick about the albums they don't like than the fans of another musician. I'm thinking of Coltrane, Davis and the Fall's fanbase (for instance) here.
It's fair enough that you feel the fans should be a little less dickish about their appreciation of SY, but I for one believe it's entirely a compliment to SY's music that there is such divided opinion on it. It's certainly a lot more interesting than an endless regurgitation of 'I like song x'. 'Well, I like song y. But they still rock'. 'Yeah dude, their 2 albums both rock'.
Yes? No? I hope you don't think I'm laying into you, but I do think you have to appreciate that SY are not a band that have made 20+ versions of the same album and how this varied corpus has affected their fanbase.