Philadelphia Weekly

Illustration by Alex Fine

As every good little hipster knows, the mighty Sonic Youth are set to grace our fair city once more, in celebration of 25 years of ... well, what, exactly?

Depending on how charitable you're feeling, we're talking 25 years of continually pushing boundaries, endless innovation and effortless cool. Alternately, we're talking a quarter-century of inflicting some of the most self-indulgent, atonal art-wank ever unleashed upon an unsuspecting public.

It's a tough call, kids. So we've left it to two of our finest hacks to duke it out in an epic battle of who gives a shit. Let the battle begin.

By Steven Wells (swells@philadelphiaweekly.com)

�

Every music hack worth his salt leaves in his wake legions of spittingly furious fans of shit bands-like the stout lad who shouted out my name while I sat on a tube train. I looked up, smiled, waved. Fatty stood on the opposite platform, pointed to a CD of U2's greatest hits, and roared, "Cunt!"

The shittier the band, the madder the fans. So it should be no surprise that, despite the fanatical attentions of Travis, Morrissey, Stereophonics, Pixies and Belle and Sebastian partisans, hell hath no fury like a Sonic Youth fan scorned.

I once wrote a review that stated the utterly irrefutable fact that Sonic Youth are rubbish. It was like firing a flare gun into a rainforest canopy jam packed with psychotic howler monkeys. Even now, years later, they gibber and froth and toss their fecal matter in my general direction. This might lead one to conclude that Sonic Youth are in fact the shittest band ever. And one would be right.

My first encounter with SY came when the skinny Nietzsche-quoting, bleach blond, black-clad skinny lad who fancied himself the New Musical Express office intellectual reverently placed one of their LPs on the communal turntable.

"This has no tunes," I said.

"It's punk, you deaf bastard!" sneered the po-mo ponce.

"And yet it also lacks polemic, originality, wit, dynamic or indeed anything to suggest this isn't muzak churned out by aliens who, having studied the popular music of earth, reveal themselves as soulless replicant automatons through their inability to recreate an even vaguely passable pastiche. Aaaargh! Fuck! Stop stabbing me!"

For it was then that poodle-boy attacked me with a letter opener. The war has continued ever since.

Sonic Youth are a sacred cow dressed in the emperor's new clothes. They simply put out almost impossibly bad album after impossibly bad album, and are worshipped for it by a vast army of aesthetically insane poltroons.

I once concocted a theory that Der Yoof are in fact session musicians in the employ of some sinister avant-garde musical genius who instructed them to make "alternative" rock music that lacks all the characteristics that distinguish "alternative" rock music from, say, wallpaper paste. But that would just be too interesting.

I met Sonic Youth once. Thurston Moore turned out to be a smug prick. Being a smug prick myself, we got on well.

We argued about art. I pushed social surrealism as an alternative to the tired old ploy of repeating Duchamp's urinal gag again and again.

He looked confused, and said I was insane. At which point I realized I was dealing with an intellectual fetus.