So there’s been tons of articles about how Sonic Youth likes Joni Mitchell, there was an article in one of those guitar player magazines in the 1990s (anyone have a copy?) where Lee Ranaldo said something to the effect of “If only we could make an album someday as good as a Joni Mitchell album,” plus see the quote at the bottom of this post. Lee Ranaldo has listed Joni Mitchell as one of the “musicians, artists, and in particular guitarists that influenced” him. Sonic Youth has a song called “Hey Joni” on Daydream nation, and uses a lot of alternative tunings as does Joni Mitchell. Thurston Moore in an interview said, “Thurston Moore: “Joni Mitchell! I’ve used elements of her songwriting and guitar playing, and no one would ever know about it.” (I think it’s pretty apparent though!) The New York Times, about Daydream Nation, wrote in 1989 “The band (which includes Steve Shelley on drums) will start out a with a hippie-ish rural guitar part, but with open tunings that sound like a slightly ominous, electric version of an introduction to a Joni Mitchell song.”
I think you can hear a lot of influence of the Joni Mitchell album Hejira on Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation–a lot of lots of chorus on the guitars and some of the strumming and harmonics etc, not to mention a lot of the weird chords and tunings (oh and did you notice part of “Candle” comes from “Every breath you take” which is pretty funny, and the beginning of Silver Rocket is kind of Ozzy Crazy Train-sh). Some of Kim Gordon’s talking-ish interludes in songs on Goo sound like a similar Joni Mitchell talking-ish interlude on a song on I think Court and Spark or Hissing of Summer Lawns.
But also check out this 1991 Joni Mitchell song The Windfall–part of it reminds me of the 1990 Sonic Youth song Tunic! Who knows if she had recorded it first or played it live and Sonic Youth saw it or she checked out their albums, but I think there’s some relationship there!
Check out the upward bass slide constant in The Windfall–it’s a lot like the upward bass slide in the chorus of tunic. And the chord progression throughout the song reminds me a bit of the main chord progression starting at around 1:02 in Tunic. So yeah, they should make an album together! Or play some shows together!
Here’s a quote from an interview with Lee Ranaldo from 2009…
“my favorite _____ is:…
-album: blue, by joni mitchell, has been sustaining me these last few weeks as our tour has grown long, playing over and over on repeat in my iTunes. what an amazing achievement this record is.”
Sonic Youth even has a line in the song “What We Know,” which echoes a line “I could drink a case of you” from one of Joni Mitchell’s famous songs “A Case of You”: Sonic Youth: “I’m in a state of shock/I’m creeping up and down your block/I could drink a case of you”
“D: Definitely all really fun stuff. I know you guys recently curated All Tomorrow’s Parties out in LA. I myself really wanted to go, but being a poor college student around midterm time couldn’t quite make it out. But was putting together a concert like that something you guys had really wanted to do. Did it give you the ability to find all the bands that you really would have loved to have played with over the years and just put them all on a massive four-day bill?
L: Well, it was, it was that to some degree. A lot of the bands we chose we’d already played with and really grew to love like the Boredoms or Quixotic or whoever. But it was a chance to start with a dream list, and it had a lot of crazy names on it at the beginning, like Ornette Coleman and Dylan and Neil, and Neil almost did it, actually, and you know, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. ”
So, c’mon, let’s have a Sonic Youth/Joni Mitchell album or tour!!!
So, always having been a fan of San Diego indie/postpunk/math rock/pre-emo/indie prog band Drive Like Jehu, I always wondered about their unique sound, sounding like a mix between stuff like Sonic Youth, Fugazi, and King Crimson. Lately though I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of their parts remind me a lot of Rush! Which, isn’t taboo to say anymore, as opposed to the early 1990s, after bands like Don Caballero, the Fucking Champs, Mars Volta etc, and even bands like Daft Punk have brought prog rock back to the spotlight after years of mockery from punk rockers etc.
Especially listening to Rush’s Tom Sawyer–the main part of the verse, when the guitars come in after the lyrics “A modern-day warrior / Mean mean stride, / Today’s Tom Sawyer / Mean mean pride,” is quite reminiscent of the main riff to Drive Like Jehu’s O Pencil Sharp, and almost exactly like the outro to Drive Like Jehu’s Turn it Off, and also sounds quite a bit like some Pitchfork parts.
Rush-Tom Sawyer
Then Rush’s Red Barchetta–quite reminiscent also of the guitar and bass on some of the more tuneful Pitchfork songs like maybe Twitch or something (pre-Drive Like Jehu band with the same singer and two guitarists etc). Especially the guitar riff at 1:16 in the video below, that postpunk sounding guitar part that comes after the first verse part in Red Barchetta, that could be from a Drive Like Jehu song (such as the main riff of Human Interest) or a Siouxsie and the Banshees song. And check out the harmonics and everything!
Rush-Red Barchetta
Pitchfork–Flatland Farming/Drop Dead
Two of the least remarkable Pitchfork songs (Placebo, Twitch, etc are much more remarkable), but the only ones I could find on YouTube…
“The Sure Thing,” an article by Malcolm Gladwell in the January 18, 2010 issue of the New Yorker, subtitled “”How Entrepreneurs Really Succeed,” is like a mini-business school in six pages. It speaks to a lot of questions I always have had about business and economics such as why there are opportunities for “arbitrage” and price differences, with discussions of pricing, asymmetrical information, value creation, etc. Definitely a great read for the curious (how do those people establish and defend viable businesses, how does pricing work, etc). You’ll need to pick up a paper issue or have an online subscription to read it.
Internet Explorer forever has caused web programmers huge problems, being one of the least, if not the least standards compliant browsers available, and hard to work with and behind the curve compared with other browsers like Firefox. For example, IE doesn’t support SVG graphics programming. So some engineer(s) have created SVG Web, which uses lets you use SVG scripting then uses Flash to enable SVG in IE. However, that only solves one part of the problem, using SVG in IE–but even once you get SVG working in IE, you’re still stuck with all the flaws of IE and the problems of cross-browser scripting that are exacerbated by IE’s flaws!
So, programmers at Google, who ran into many problems and wasted a lot of time trying to get Google Wave to work with IE, basically said screw it, and made a plugin for IE, Google Chrome Frame…that basically runs the Google Chrome browser in IE! So, basically, instead of having to deal with all of IE’s flaws, web programmers can just prompt IE users to install Chrome Frame! I’m all for this, as instead of having to use SVG Web and still deal with IE’s quirks and flaws when doing SVG scripting, you can instead just require users to install Chrome Frame. Sure, there are arguments about users having to install something to use a webpage, but that’s often the case with Flash, and, if it causes Microsoft to wake up and make IE more standards compliant, that would be great.
I was in a restaurant listening to some good Andrew Bird songs I had never heard before, when this “Shazam” smartphone application informed me that the band was Beirut, and not Andrew Bird. Um, wait, what? Really? Because…the singing styles and much of the instrumentation are very, very similar. I wonder what they think of each other, since, I’m not sure how many people would be able to tell their singing styles and much of their instrumentation apart on casual listens. I mean…Andrew Bird has more whistling…and Beirut has more horns, I guess? I’m not trying to be snarky or anything, the Beirut songs are very good and I’m definitely going to listen to them more, just, I was really surprised!
Andrew Bird–A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left
The Trickle-Down 