Since May, producer Nigel Godrich has been digging through the treasure trove of archive footage from his live performance series From the Basement and uploading them online for your viewing pleasure.
Full sets from Radiohead, PJ Harvey, Queens of the Stone Age, Fleet Foxes, have all rocked up on the From the Basement YouTube channel.
The latest instalment in the series features a full Sonic Youth performance from 2007. Recorded during the band’s tour celebrating their 2006 record Rather Ripped, the set includes three songs from that album and Daydream Nation cuts ‘The Sprawl’ and ‘Hey Joni.’
Check out Sonic Youth performing From The Basement:
Sonic Youth have spent isolation digging through their own archives. Back in May the band unleashed Blastic Scene, a live album recorded in 1993 in Lisbon, Portugal.
The recording was initially only released as an authorised bootleg in 1995 in Portugal, where only 1,300 copies were produced.
“When Sonic Youth first went into Portugal, it felt like uncharted territory,” Thurston Moore stated. “We had blasted through Spain and Italy but Portugal seemed a bit disengaged from hosting any band as on the margins of experimental rock music as us.”
“When we arrived in Lisbon we realised that we were to play in a bullring. The stage was makeshift but sturdy enough with a fairly decent PA. I think anyone with the slightest interest in punk, post-punk and beyond in Lisbon was there, which was not more than a couple of hundred.”
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In addition to Blastic Scene, the band also uploaded their live record Hold That Tiger to Bandcamp. The record was initially recorded in 1987 and released as a bootleg in 1991. 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.
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.
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.”
