STARPOLISH: By the way, I have to ask you, since I have the pre-release: is the album called Nurse, or Sonic Youth Nurse?
RANALDO: It's Sonic Nurse .
SHELLEY: It's partially our fault because we changed the name from Sonic Youth Nurse to Sonic Nurse . It's never been just Nurse, but it's kind of confusing.
STARPOLISH: And on the back of the CD, does that say Surfing Nurse?
SHELLEY: Yes. When you get the real booklet, it's a series of paintings by this artist, Richard Prince. He took these pulp novels from the 60s that all had nurse in the title and he made paintings based on these book covers, which are beautiful; his paintings are amazing. I don't know, there's like five or six of these paintings in our CD booklet and each one of them is a different title, whether it's New England Nurse or Surfing Nurse, so we've changed one of them to be called Sonic Nurse.
STARPOLISH: That's pretty cool. I was thinking that I'm old enough to remember buying record albums, and they'd have great album art and my bedroom walls were decorated with posters. I was the kind of kid who read all the credits to see which guest musicians played on the album, so I wonder if people seemingly satisfied to download music on a computer lose the connection that I had as a kid.
RANALDO: Well you lose one connection, but there are other connections going on, you know? When we were kids that was one of the few games in town. Now kids are distracted by computers and the Internet and video games and whatever; there's a zillion other things going on so, the impact of a record is not the same as it was in our lives when we were kids. That's just a given at this point. So kids today are making different connections, I suppose.
Embracing the Internet
STARPOLISH: I think maybe community is one of the things that makes up for that. You don't have the booklets, but now you are able to connect with people. With kids in my neighborhood, if you got along with them and listened to the same music, that was your community. Now with the Internet, that community has became vastly larger. I guess that leads to something I think you alluded to earlier, when you were talking about the business and putting a new album out. And that is that you have pretty well-defined fans, and to me it seems that the people who can leverage the Internet perhaps the most effectively are bands like yours, that just have a fiercely loyal community who are going to support you financially by buying things. So I'm wondering if you, as you move forward, have thought about having a direct approach to your fans via the Internet as opposed to going through a record label and trying to handle that on your own.
Article comments
1 - dave
the closing song on Washing Machine is Diamond SEA!!! not STAR!!! if your going to write a review get your facts straight!!!!!!
2 - POO
UR BAND IS THE BEST !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3 - _sheccid_
is my favourite band!! it's great i love them, kim gordon you are so fucking pretty, i lover her xD
4 - HW Saxton
Never heard of the band:"Fuck You All!".
Are they a punk band or what?
5 - sydney
they're a post-punk band... garage-rock sort of experimental indie band. Almost leaders of the indie rock movement in America over the late 80's and early 90's.
They mix alot of experimental noise and soundscapes, sometimes, with catchy melodies.
6 - HW Saxton
Sydney, I was responding in jest to the
way the comment above mine was phrased.
I'm aware of who Sonic Youth are,as well
as Wasted Youth,Reagan Youth & Big Youth
as well.Sarcasm,does not carry well over
the Internet sometimes.Thanx.
7 - Jon Bob
Dave told you, and this is serious, really. If you do intend to redeem yourself or cover this mistake up, you should fix the whole damn paragraph, because it was Moore who did the vocals on DIAMOND SEA. Gordon (Kim) is a female, and for the 19 minutes of this spectacular track you obviously never heard, its easy to tell that thurston is not a female singing. Kim plays great bass on this track by the way, you should know (sarcasm). You dissed my favorite band, now i'm gonna find you like jay and silent bob and kick your ass!
8 - Jon Bob
Thanks for doing the SY piece, though. They're totally cool, and barring that 3rd paragraph i have no complaint. I can forgive, but we can only hope that they will be so merciful and not destroy you, thats right becuz they buy and sell people like you all the time, they'll probably cook you for breakfast and let the leftovers spoil in the fridge when they're not even thinking about you cuz theyre too busy on the road rocking and being totally cool. I'll leave you alone now, i'm sure you've got some homework and studying to do .