How do you get acquainted with Sonic Youth?
 

Thanks to my uncle Alex!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !:)

Whereas I can tell you the exact date that I got into The Fall, I think it was a gradual thing with SY.

Having said that, I'm pretty sure the first thing I heard was 'Starpower', in Probe Records in Liverpool. I liked hearing a woman sing on that type of music.

the first thing I heard was Confusion is sex , and exactly I WANNA BE YR DOG...I love that song!!;-)

Right. I really liked Starpower, but I was a kid (15 when Evol came out) with not so much money, so the love of SY built up gradually. But the next LP, 'Sister', was a big factor.

in like 1993 a friend gave my a tape of dirty, and it sounded like nothing i ever heard of, so i started digging into sonic youth

I saw Ed templeton's part in a skate movie and he used the song Mote (which is also the first sy song i've ever heard) so i started to check them out, to be honest i thought they sucked balls in the beginning but after a while i started to realize that this was one of the greatest bands in rock-history

Satan said to me "Hey man, check this out." Thanks Satan!

Go on then, I'm interested. When and where? For me it was when Peel played Inch, I'd heard so much about them but not really registered if I'd heard them before, and then it was like... fuck me. They sound like that? And then, as a lowly 14 yr old, I bought Levitate.

For SY the moment I got them was when Peel did Meltdown on the radio... I didn't really get the set until the solo on Karen Koltraine which was just... fuck me. Guitars do that?

I saw a review in People magazine of all places for Daydream Nation. The picture of the band intrigued me. I was around 14 years old and deeply in love with Megadeth and Jane's Addiction and Minor Threat and the Misfits and the early chili peppers and Jimi Hendrix.
I thought, "these 4 people look like regular dudes!" and the sounds described in the review were just something I HAD to listen to.
Before I managed to buy the album though, I was watching 120 minutes and taping videos (as I did with my VHS for about 6 years) and I saw the teenage riot video and recorded it. I CAME IN MY PANTS> I recognizzed the name, "sonic youth" from the review, and the song rocked harder than anything I had ever heard, anything, and it was NOISY and loud and abrasive and h sang NOT noisy and abrasive,a nd the video looked like NOTHING on MTV, a schizo pastiche of idols and heroes, many of which I could not recognize until years later. I GOT ROCK HARD. My nuts were begging to burst forth a musicl cum of such intensity.
I went and bought daydream nation on the Blast First cassette, anyone remember those? thuirston mentioned once how th Blast First cassettes smelled, they smelled like motor oil or some sort of engine cleaner. I distinctly remember that smell, never ever lessening, and so I associate that industrial smell with the noise on daydream nation. It was also the LONGEST record I owned at the time. I would listen to it like a christian listening to jeebus.
nothing was the same after that

There's this druggie site that my brother showed me http://www.paperrad.org and in one of the animated cartoons, it displays SONIC YOUTH for about 6 seconds in middle of the cartoon and it's irrelevant, but I thought they had a cool name and I bought DIRTY and grew on it.

My dad had the album dirty and played it constantly in the early 90s

I heard Sonic Youth on the freeform radio station from UC Davis which I was hooked on early. This radio station converted me from a breakdance-obsessed kid into a listener with eclectic tastes.

First time I dialed it in, they were playing a Kraftwerk song that I recognized from the "Breakin': Electric Boogaloo" soundtrack, and then the DJ mixed into some gloomy/doomy British postpunk, and eventually threw on some stuff by The Fall and Wire. I wrote these names down on an index card and intended to buy their stuff at the mall. Back then, I thought that every record and cassette ever made was for sale at either the Wherehouse or Musicland/Sam Goody....little did I know I had slipped into the portal to obscurity.

I was listening for a few years before a Sonic Youth song had struck me to the point that I wrote the name down and began hunting for it. I was about 12 or 13, and the song was "Tom Violence." By then, I had discovered Barney's Records in Davis, and they carried more independently released stuff that I was hearing on the radio.

I got "Evol" on cassette and wore it out, and replaced it with the LP a few years later. None of my other friends liked them despite my incessant urging for them to listen....not until "Daydream Nation" hit.

I can't really remember, but I was a proper little riot grrl when I was younger. I loved Hole. I probably bought my first SY record because of Courtney Love.

ahahahahah:p :D

with grate, yes, hahaha indeed.


I made a mix cd of SY songs becuz I was going to see them in a couple of weeks and wanted to hear some more stuff than sunday and kill yr idols... that got me started, then the live show made me go buy DDN the next day. But the show did it for me. I fell in love with a new favorite band ever.

used to hang out at a tiny record stored called Hit Records in Texas it was around 1984 I was flipping through the latest 45's the guy working put on their first EP as music in the store...I bought a copy

Its funny I actually discovered Sonic Youth through The Simpsons, the Homerpalloza episode! I fell in love with the smashing pumpkins' Zero song, So I downloaded the song and decided to check out the other bands mentioned in the episode. I just fell in love with Sonic Youth's sound and their revolutionary innovation. Now Sonic Youth, The Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails are amongst my all time favourite bands. Thanks Matt Groening!

I remember listening to the radio in Italy and they were broadcasting a live SY gig in Turin.After the gig the radio presenter was asking questions to the audience and people were absolutely SPELLBOUND!!!!And so was i at home,alone in my bedroom,full of joy in my heart because i had found THE BAND i was looking for.

Fairly Oddparents got me into 'em. In the episode where Timmy wishes life was like a comic book. All his friends get superhero names and one of the kids powers was to release powerful bursts of noise. His name was "The Sonic Youth" I recognized the name and bought DDN soon after that.

don't mention it.