Sonic Youth have once again dug through their archives, uploading live record Hold That Tiger to their Bandcamp.
The record was recorded in 1987 and released as a bootleg in 1991.
“Originally released as a semi-official bootleg LP in 1991 by friend and music writer, Byron Coley, on his Goofin’ imprint (we would eventually hijack the Goofin’ moniker for our own band-run label a few years later),” explains drummer Steve Shelley.
“The recording was nearly 60-minutes in length, so to prevent manufacturing a cost-prohibitive double lp, the master was slightly sped-up to fit the entire concert (us blasting through a finely-tuned set of songs from Sister, EVOL and a nightly encore tribute to the Ramones), on one single lp.
“Cramming the grooves of the vinyl in such a way resulted in Hold That Tiger playing at a lower volume on the stereo, thus the ‘one hour long – don’t have a cow! – crank it up’ sticker affixed to the front of the original lp cover.
“A few years later in 1998, Hold That Tiger was remastered for CD re-issue. The audio quality was improved from the lower fidelity lp but unfortunately the slightly sped-up performance was not corrected – until today. We are pleased to make available the best-sounding version of Hold That Tiger – SY performing full-on in 1987.”
Sonic Youth has been largely inactive since 2011, and archival releases have been a rare occurrence. However, in March, a trove of a dozen live shows from various eras of Sonic Youth’s history were uploaded on Bandcamp.
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Drummer Steve Shelley, who umpires the Sonic Youth vaults in New Jersey, heard from fellow musicians about the profit margins of Bandcamp.
“A lot of sites, the musicians are the last ones in the chain as far as getting paid,” Shelley says. “So Bandcamp feels different. Eighty-five percent is humongous compared to other digital platforms.”
Thus the decision for the archive dump. Earlier this month, the band released Blastic Scene, a 1993 live tape from Lisbon.
On June 5th, and July 3rd (the first Friday of each month) Bandcamp will waive their revenue share on all sales from midnight to midnight PDT each day, in an attempt to put money into the pockets of artist’s whos livelihoods have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
