JRNLS80s Book

Sonic Youth spent most of the 80s sleeping on floors, driving used vans, touring across a neurotic America and the globe beyond. Before they became part of the national bloodstream, they created an underground swell, encouraging adventurous listeners to jack into their matrix of pantonality, feedback, and chiming scree. All the while, Lee Ranaldo was drinking in the landscape, the clubs, the people; recording a journal of this wild ride.

Publishers Weekly

Ranaldo (Road Movies) is the guitarist for Sonic Youth, arguably the most vital and enduring band to have emerged from American punk rock. They cut through the vapidity of '80s Top 40 and enabled the angry rise of Nirvana and company to megastardom, and still, after two decades together, make music that is innovative and influential. Ranaldo's writings from the decade that made the band a legend are collected here. However, both the fan looking for a comprehensive tour diary and the rock historian searching for insights will be disappointed. This thin volume is too crowded and the writing is too varied--stream of consciousness prose, performance poetry, song lyrics, letters to friends and family. It is as dense with noise and as far-flung as a Sonic Youth tour circa 1985. The long prose pieces tend to be the best of the lot, the most enjoyable of these from the Australian tour in 1989. Some observations hit home: of London, Ranaldo observes that "the same old rock scene stuff is going down here as anywhere, only the haircuts have been changed to protect the innocent." But too much falls flat. In particular, the poetry (hard to distinguish from the song lyrics that are also reproduced here) simply shows how much better it would be to listen to Sonic Youth's albums than read this. Photos, illustrations. (Apr.)