SONIC YOUTH - GOO

It's Thursday and the sun is shining. The fact that I am stuck indoors in a temporary building with utterly useless air conditioning should be a mere detail, but it's not, it is a defining factor. It is hot and shitty and my arms keep sticking to the desk.

If I was in Sonic Youth I would be fine because by default I would be totally, utterly and completely cool rather than being able to feel my balls sliding around against my legs. As a side note and I don't know this for a fact but I imagine Thurston Moore to have the greatest record collection on the planet (I wonder if Kim Gordon keeps hers seperately?). Anyway my choice of words might indicate I am hot as a motherfucker right now, the air is stale and the t-shirt on my back peels from my chair when I sit forward.

I had my I-Pod on random, listening to it in an attempt at distraction when 'Dirty Boots' came on. This spurred me to revisit the entire album. Given that this site is purely about records I understand that this could be seen as cheating but my defence lawyer would have you know that I have listened to a vinyl copy of GOO more than twice this year and am more than happy to take a Polygraph test to proove as much.

That in mind I shall move on. Of everything New York's Uber-cool godfathers of the alternative scene have procuced and despite cries of 'What about Daydream Nation?' I have to put GOO at the top of the pile. Why? Take a look at the sleeve and dare to ask me that again... But it doesn't end there. We are talking about the album that has 'Mote', 'Titanium Expose' and 'Tunic (Song for Karen)' on it, not entirely sure what else you think you need.

My path to GOO actually involves Christian Slater and a cassette copy of the soundtrack to the awesome 90's film 'Pump Up The Volume' - 'Titanium Expose' features at the end of one sides. I bought the tape from a record shop in Halesowen (in the Midlands) on a trip to visit my Grandmother. I saw the film whilst on holiday in Hemmet CA. I was staying with an Asian exchange student by the name of Mike Chen and after being hugely impressed not just with Christian Slater's performance but also the soundtrack I began my hunt for a copy.

Thinking back to that time I am faced with sevral somewhat surprising revelations:

That I was still buying pre-recorded cassettes on and off as recently as 1990.

Following the above, I developed something of a minor obsession with Christian Slater watching everything else I could possibly find with him in it. In retrospect, this phase of my life may well have involved some kind of homo-erotic attachment to said actor.

There was a great record shop in Hemmet called 'Sacred Heart' sadly at the time and in possession of my very first CD walkman and was consequently 'all about the CDs' and ignored everything else in the shop apart from an awesome Samhain 'Initium' T-shirt which I sold on Ebay for mad dollar to someone in Japan last year.

I think we are all beyond the need for me to dig too deeply into the music on GOO. It has been around forever and must surely have played a part (however minor) in the lives of anybody reading this. With the exception of a couple of false starts and possibly the inclusion of KRS ONE on 'Kool Thing' (which dates it) it's pretty close to perfect and makes any top 50 that I might care to compile.

Anyway, it's still too fucking hot... kind of like Christian Slater circa 1990.