Tomorrow Is the Question: New Directions in Experimental Music Studies

1. Goodbye 20th Century! : Sonic Youth Records John Cage’s “Number Pieces”

15 Goodbye 20th Century! Sonic Youth Records John Cage’s “Number Pieces” Elizabeth Ann Lindau Alternative rock band Sonic Youth have been at the forefront of experimentation in rock since their 1981 debut at the East Village’s Noisefest , where they used drumsticks to beat detuned guitars with screwdrivers jammed between their strings. For nearly three decades, the group has distilled punk, hardcore, free jazz, experimental electronica, and mainstream pop into an unmistakable musical language marked by innovations in guitar tuning and technique. In addition to their well-known roots in US punk and its offshoots, Sonic Youth have a more surprising connection to experimental composition. Perhaps the most obvious example of the band’s interface with “high art” music is the 1999 release Goodbye 20th Century!, a double album consisting not of original songs, but of conceptual, graphic, and indeterminate works of new music performed in collaboration with percussionist William Winant, composers Christian Wolff and Takehisa Kosugi, and sound artist Christian Marclay. Goodbye prominently features works by John Cage, a composer regarded as a father figure by a new generation of experimental musicians in not only “classical,” but also jazz and rock music. This essay examines Goodbye 20th Century!’s popularization of experimental composition and Cagean aesthetics. I am interested in how Sonic Youth have used their renown as an alternative rock band to disseminate what is typically regarded as esoteric music to new audiences.Through analysis of its renditions of Cage’s “number pieces,” I argue that Goodbye demonstrates a compelling new performance practice of indeterminate scores. These scores, which are often portrayed as democratic or open to people 16 • tomorrow is the question with a range of musical experiences, have nonetheless become the domain of specialists and insiders claiming a personal connection to the composer, reinscribing the very hierarchy of composer-conductor-performer that the New York School claimed to disrupt in the 1950s. By drawing on their experience as improvisers and their lush vocabulary of sounds, Sonic Youth and their collaborators offer an alternative to professional new music performances , which tend toward the sonic asceticism of high modernism. Sonic Youth challenge the presumed authority of this beautiful but austere aesthetic and serve as important promoters of Cage’s work. The band that would become Sonic Youth formed in New York City at the end of the 1970s. Connecticut teenager Thurston Moore (b. 1958, guitar, vocal) relocated there in 1976 and quickly became involved in the emerging punk scene. Through performances at clubs and art galleries, Moore met art school graduates Kim Gordon (b. 1953, bass guitar, guitar, vocal) and Lee Ranaldo (b. 1956, guitar, vocal). Soon enough, Moore and Ranaldo were playing in Glenn Branca’s massed guitar ensemble, one significant hub in the emerging network of art and pop collaborations in New York during this period, which also included the short-lived no wave movement. No wave bands combined the primitivism of punk with the artiness of the avant-garde and were known for their seriousness; deliberately amateurish guitar playing; refusal of song forms, melodies, and recognizable hooks; and, above all, the use of noise and dissonance. In 1984, after two no wave– style albums and a series of drummers, the band finally hired Steve Shelley (b. 1962, drums), completing its familiar “core” lineup. Sonic Youth’s juvenile band name belies their long-held status as parental figures in the alternative music scene. Although they never achieved mainstream popularity, they are taste makers who are respected by younger musicians. They spent the 1980s “paying their dues”: working day jobs, going on small tours, and recording for independent labels such as SST and Branca’s Neutral Records. Following the release of the double album Daydream Nation—perhaps their most ambitious and critically acclaimed release before or since—they were signed to the major label Geffen Records in 1989. Two years later (after two albums that did not sell as expected ), they convinced the label to sign the then unknown band Nirvana. Their recommendation paid off. After the huge commercial success of Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind, Geffen granted Sonic Youth a contract extension, bonus, and cash advance.1 Despite their relatively poor album sales, the label retained Sonic Youth as a sort of magnet band that might attract up-and-coming, potentially more successful groups. Goodbye 20th Century! • 17 In 1996 Sonic Youth rented and moved into Echo Canyon Studios in New York’s...