SONIC YOUTH: Screaming Fields of Sonic Love
SONIC YOUTH: Goo

Music Videos
Available on laserdisc and VHS

Sonic Youth is one of those bands that never seemed to be a really good match for the MTV philosophy. Noisy? These guys are noisy. Ugly? I wouldn't say so, but photogenic wouldn't be a word I'd use either. In performance, they're a loud, self-absorbed, and irreparably avant garde rock band. Hell, they're not even Youth anymore (as far as I know, singers Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, who are married, are both in their 40s).

It's a good thing their music videos don't rely on posturing and pretty faces. The material on Goo, a video which includes their entire major-label debut album, is obstinately low-budget but undeniably well-produced. Even when they're commissioning Poison director Todd Haynes or NYC underground figurehead R. Kern to direct grungy little videos, the end result has a major label gloss to it that proves that even if SY still has its punk sensibility intact, they figured out pretty quickly how to have fun with Geffen's money (hell, they've scored two laserdisc releases, haven't they?). The best (video) tracks on Goo take cues from experimental filmmakers, combining a stream of consciousness cinema sensibility with the grinding, otherworldly contortions of tone and rhythm that make Sonic Youth one of the best acts going. Watch out for "Mote," which stacks trauma next to trauma onscreen and runs it through the optical printer over and over again a la Bruce Conner.

The newer release, Screaming Fields of Sonic Love, contains the older videos. The companion CD, which came out a few months ago, is an excuse for DGC Records, which recently reissued SY's back catalog, to pick up a few extra bucks from listeners who won't shell out for entire albums by releasing a "greatest hits" collection of minor label stuff. The videos, consequently, are a lot of fun, coming from a band that wasn't sure they had it in them to ever make it big but was running at full tilt boogie regardless. Best may be the two tracks from the short-lived NBC program, Night Music. Where else are you ever likely to see the Indigo Girls singing "I Wanna Be Your Dog" on the same stage with Iggy Pop?

Bargain Hunters' Note: Goo has been showing up in laserdisc cutout bins lately, so take note. I've seen it at both Camelot and Tower in recent months. And if you're really broke, yes, both vids are available on VHS.


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Reviews by Bryant Frazer
bryant@deep-focus.com