Sonic Youth and Little Feat in Arkansas

While it can't hold a Richter to my Snoopy collection, my lovingly-amassed Sonic Youth memorabilia still stands a formidable pile o' crap in itself--it contains, for instance, what is surely one of the largest displays of SY printed matter owned by a single person (as is consistent with the letterlust in the soul of its tender).

My favorite scrap of Sonic sundry is actually a poster: the classic one that came in the Daydream Nation vinyl box set way back when. Against the unbeatable red backdrop--the very pulse of life itself--stands Thurston's mighty Drifter, a gutted and slutted guit rewired with bass strings, all the more better to fuck with drumsticks, my dear. The stick jammed between the fretboard and strings is actually a joke on the part of Lee Ranaldo. While the implement itself is real, let it be known that Steve Shelley has never used personalized skinslappers.

Best of all, though, is the 1988 tour itinerary. The Youth are traversing America from East to West to South to East, across several months at a time of the year that is not summer. As well as hitting up the cities every schlumbnutted racket-gang marks for death, SY also will be playing in places that, 20 years later, they avoid like a lard'n'cheese sandwich: Madison, Wisconsin. Santa Clara, CA. Tusca-goddamn-loosa. The entire state of Florida.

While the band will likely not be doing a full-scale tour as they prepare their new album this year, Sonic Youth are still doing dates here and there. One such announced is the Dickson Street Music Festival in Arkansas, where SY will headline the second date on April 26th.

There are many great things about this. Sonic Youth have, per the indispensable Concert Chronology featured on their website, never played the state of Arkansas. So you have the novelty factor (although this may inspire someone to emerge from the ethernet and email Chris L. a long-ass, poorly-punctuated single paragraph story about how Sonic Youth not only played Arkansas back in 1985, the show was held in some two-bit weed dealers piss-reeking basement and Thurston Moore gobbled mad acid and then chased it with Flinstones Vitamins before they started up and then fell asleep on stage during "I Love Her All the Time" but the cool thing was he woke right the fuck back up just in time to sing the last part!).

We are also dealing with the reality that Little Feat, a funkin' country-roll band once feared/respected by the likes of Jimmy Page, will be playing immediately before them. There is a very real possibility that SY may be outshone by a 18-minute jam on "Lonesome Loser". There is an even greater chance that Thurston Moore will dedicate a song to "the righteous dudes in Little Feat. This one's for them, dudes." All the SY fans in the crowd will expect something rare to mark the imperial occasion, oh raw power, I can feel it! Then the band goes into "Turquoise Boy".

The downside? It's another goddamn festival gig. It's been over a year since I've seen the Youth in a club, and that was in fucking Milwaukee, stuffed to the gills with alcoholics who didn't even the decency to ruin their livers with beer that wouldn't be spat out by a pig. Furthermore, April 26th is the date my mother leaves on a jet plane to visit her hometown in Kentucky, where she will stay for two weeks. I really should be there to see her off, considering all that she's done for me. Like that whole letting me be born thing, which, occasional dips in the existential kiddie pool aside, I am grateful for.

I think I'll wait, and Patrick the Reliably Sensible concurs. Most likely we will end up seeing them at a New York date or two. I may even hit my 40th Youth gig this year.


Sonic Youth