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Sonic Youth: The LA Doors Go Jazzy

Is it jazz? Who cares!
08 juli 2000, Jazz Festival, Kongsberg (N)

Tekst: Torgeir Kjeldaas

Publicatiedatum: 08 juli 2000

The Festival, situated in the small town of Kongsberg an hour drive or so outside Oslo, Norway, was held for the 36th time this year, but with an odd twist: A rock band was going to perform! Well, I know Morphine attended the same festival some years back, but they use saxophones...that's jazz isn't it?
With Sonic Youth appearing at a jazz festival, it's hard to know what to expect. The most reasonable thought when knowing them as a band is probably that they would do a weird, experimental set with a lot of noisy stuff - or maybe they would go completely jazz? As it turned out, they didn't.
The venue was set in a small part of a sporting hall, allowing about 1000 persons to enter, making it an intimate and nice atmosphere. Of course, being in a sporting hall, no smoking was allowed. Well, I thought jazz was just as much about cigarettes & alcohol as music. I was wrong. There was beer, all right, but the most expensive Norway has ever seen. Never mind that.
The band entered the stage with Thurston Moore exclaiming "Hi! We're The Doors from Los Angeles?nice to see you all!" The tone was set. Sonic Youth started out presenting some of their new material from their latest release "NYC Ghosts & Flowers" before having a go at "Sunday" off the "A Thousand leaves" album. By now they really had the crowd going, and as Steve Shelley did the characteristic drum intro for "Schizophrenia" the audience went into a frenzy.
A nice new addition to the band was Gastr del Sol's Jim O'Rourke. According to the Sonic Youth official web site, they have asked him to join the band, and he's agreed, at least until the end of the year. As Kim Gordon is playing more and more guitar, he fits really well into the group, doing some bass parts here and some guitar there, and even some synth, filling out the sound and adding a new dimension of noise. On the visual side there were some nice details too. Various video flicks from different landscapes of New York City made us feel invited to the land of Sonic Youth, forgetting that we really were in a small town in Norway.
Those of us who feared the gig would be too experimental were proved wrong - it evolved into a mere hit parade, including "Kool Thing", "Bull In The Heather" and "Teen Age Riot". It seemed too good to be true. The perfect moment to pinch your arm to believe what was going on.
At the first encore it was time to remind us of where we really were: At a jazz festival. The band teamed up with Swedish hotshot sax player Mats Gustafsson, and Kim brought out a trumpet which she most of the time used to torment her guitar with. Noise of another world?if you hadn't pinched your arm yet?now was the time. All good things must come to an end, and after the second encore the lights went on and an extremely pleased audience reluctantly started to leave. The band themselves, though, didn't want to leave so soon, and came on to end this beautiful night with a fabulous version of "100%". If this is what they call jazz, then hey, I like it!

http://www.kindamuzik.net/live/sonic-youth/sonic-youth-the-la-doors-go-jazzy/320/
Meer Sonic Youth op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/sonic-youth