{"id":39829,"date":"2024-01-04T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-04T17:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cultureaddicts.com\/?p=39829"},"modified":"2023-12-31T14:34:12","modified_gmt":"2023-12-31T19:34:12","slug":"sonic-youth-reissues-long-out-of-print-bootleg-walls-have-ears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cultureaddicts.com\/?p=39829","title":{"rendered":"Sonic Youth reissues long out-of-print bootleg \u2018Walls Have Ears\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sonic Youth reissues long out-of-print bootleg from 1986,\u00a0\u2018Walls Have Ears\u2019 which will be out February 9th\u00a0via goofin&#8217;. Listen to the pre-<em>EVOL<\/em>\u00a0version of <em>Expressway to Yr. Skull<\/em> via Bandcamp below. <\/p>\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"120\" style=\"position: relative; display: block; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/v=2\/track=622523152\/album=4282827736\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/artwork=small\/\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>Culled from three 1985 gigs in the UK during a transitional and transcendent time in the band\u2019s story, Sonic Youth\u2019s \u2018Walls Have Ears\u2019 appeared as a 2LP set in 1986, not just a live album but an artful tapestry full of live experimentation with songs, between-song tape segues, darkness, humor and audio verit\u00e9 on par with elements of side B of \u2018Master Dik\u2019 to come later. With a bit of complexity to the situation of the release itself. Deleted as quickly as it appeared, it\u2019s now issued for the first time officially under the band\u2019s auspices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The \u201985 shows were the second time the band appeared on British soil, picking up on a newfound high profile in the press after their 1983 London debut supporting SPK and Danielle Dax. That particular gig, while admittedly a technically-challenged, volumatically room-clearing one for the band, nonetheless wowed music scribes in attendance. This anarchic set cast the New Yorkers in a bit of an exotic light, Brits now getting juiced to the mythos of the emerging guitar-slinging American independent underground; an art\/punk band from NYC sporting casual attitudes and tees sporting Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and Prince made some good copy on top of their bludgeoning stage appearance. For Brits, Sonic Youth repped an all new avenue apart from the usual 4AD\/Rough Trade\/Some Bizarre hold on the scene, and were embraced. After a mostly dormant 1984, the band then established a new evolution within themselves via \u2018Bad Moon Rising\u2019 and found a home stateside on Homestead. In Britain, SY found its keyhole to the all-encompassing (even on an indie standpoint) music biz via Paul Smith, who was wowed by a cassette passed to him by Lydia Lunch. A promoter and label liaison who had forged many connections locally working for the likes of EMI and Cabaret Voltaire\u2019s Doublevision label, Smith ultimately founded his own imprint Blast First to take on \u2018Bad Moon Rising\u2019 and evangelized the band with P.T. Barnum-esque gusto, eventually acting as a strong portal for UK footing for others of the American underground (Big Black, Butthole Surfers, Dinosaur Jr.). Blast First continued to act as an overseas diplomatic envoy for Sonic Youth through their SST years as well as issuing their classic 1988 Daydream Nation outside the USA. But true to Barnum, Smith\u2019s injection into the band\u2019s creative sphere as a sort of de facto manager type was somewhat in guerilla mode, and the Smith-produced \u2018bootleg\u2019 of their \u201985 UK gigs surfaced much to everyone\u2019s surprise, just before EVOL, their SST debut, was to be released. It turned out to be a marker of the group\u2019s dissatisfaction that ultimately led to the band and Smith parting ways after Daydream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this 2LP set brimming with primitive classics like <em>The Burning Spear<\/em>, <em>I Love Her All The Time<\/em>, <em>Death Valley 69<\/em> and <em>I\u2019m Insane<\/em> (uncredited on sleeve), segues and live guitar changes ooze together threaded by Madonna tapes and vocal loops off the board (somewhat a necessity for distraction until the band had a full fledged stage crew to prepare guitars). Claude Bessy (French punk raconteur who moved to LA for a period to cofound Slash Magazine and notoriously appeared in the Penelope Spheeris \u2018Decline of Western Civilization\u2019 documentary) humorously MC\u2019s their intro to a October 30th ULU London gig with a lob at the indie label zeitgeist: vocally detailing how Rough Trade had come down on distributing the \u201cFlower\u201d 12\u201d for sporting a xeroxed, nude female on the cover. The message was that music was reality, not manufactured subcultures, and Sonic Youth was there to present Britain with a healthy dose of it. The first two sides of \u2018Walls\u2019 are massive, cavernous, with newly-drafted drummer Steve Shelley in tow taking on past tunes and unveiling <em>Expressway To Yr Skull<\/em> in glorious form. They tear it up especially on one trash-fi excerpt of <em>Blood On Brighton Beach<\/em> (actually \u201cMaking the Nature Scene\u201d) from a legendary outdoor gig November 8th where Moore, Gordon and Ranaldo\u2019s guitars treble-blast dissonant shockwaves over the black-stoned beach of Quadrophenia fame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The record\u2019s second slab spotlights an April 1985 pre-Shelley gig supporting Nick Cave at London\u2019s Hammersmith Palais and was one of the final appearances live of Bob Bert, again featuring some molten takes on <em>Brother James<\/em>, <em>Kill Yr Idols<\/em>, <em>Flower<\/em> (Iisted as <em>The Word (E.V.O.L.)<\/em>), <em>Ghost Bitch<\/em> and others. The emergence of the Jesus and Mary Chain in the world gave Brit scribes a lazy and easy parallel, addressed here with a wink with the inclusion of <em>Speed JAMC<\/em>, another offstage tape interlude playfully scrolling through one of that band\u2019s songs at fast-forward. In six more years the continual evolution of Sonic Youth would find them darlings of The Reading Festival, on tour with Nirvana in tow and continuing to smash down walls, but this document remains an essential representation of some lean and mean years of the quartet\u2019s throttling march out into the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Watch a teaser for the album featuring recovered VHS footage from &#8217;85 below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1QayvsctVxQ?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-CA&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Sonic Youth reissues long out-of-print bootleg from 1986,\u00a0\u2018Walls Have Ears\u2019 which will be out February 9th\u00a0via goofin&#8217;. Listen to the pre-EVOL\u00a0version of Expressway to Yr. <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"http:\/\/cultureaddicts.com\/?p=39829\" title=\"Sonic Youth reissues long out-of-print bootleg \u2018Walls Have Ears\u2019\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22,25,28,30,1907],"tags":[181,11440,1092,11439],"class_list":["post-39829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guitar-rock","category-live","category-music","category-new-release","category-news","tag-bootleg","tag-expressway-to-yr-skull","tag-sonic-youth","tag-walls-have-ears"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cultureaddicts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/67749462-B63E-4680-BB56-DD169037A30A.png?fit=1100%2C723","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B2TV-amp","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4728,"url":"http:\/\/cultureaddicts.com\/?p=4728","url_meta":{"origin":39829,"position":0},"title":"Sonic Youth release &#8216;Smart Bar &#8211; Chicago 1985&#8217;","author":"cultureaddicts","date":"September 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"In August 1985, Sonic Youth were touring across the states following the release of their recently released LP 'Bad Moon Rising'. This performance from August 11, 1985 at Chicago's Smart Bar was recorded on 4-track\u00a0cassette. This live recording consists of much of Bad Moon Rising and early performances of Secret\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;guitar rock&quot;","block_context":{"text":"guitar rock","link":"http:\/\/cultureaddicts.com\/?cat=22"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cultureaddicts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/sonicyouth_smartbar-cover-300x300.jpeg?fit=300%2C300&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":41173,"url":"http:\/\/cultureaddicts.com\/?p=41173","url_meta":{"origin":39829,"position":1},"title":"The Go! Team share \u2018Hold Yr Terror Close (The Orielles Rework)\u2019","author":"cultureaddicts","date":"February 13, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"2024 was a landmark year for\u00a0The Go! Team, marking\u00a020 years\u00a0since their groundbreaking debut album, \u2018Thunder, Lightning, Strike\u2019. From\u00a0sold-out live shows, including a full-album performance at the Roundhouse, to\u00a0exclusive vinyl reissues\u00a0and a\u00a0series of artist-driven remixes, the celebrations were nothing short of epic. But the party isn\u2019t over! As we dive into\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;guitar rock&quot;","block_context":{"text":"guitar rock","link":"http:\/\/cultureaddicts.com\/?cat=22"},"img":{"alt_text":"The Go! Team press photo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cultureaddicts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/image002-e1732374613732.jpeg?fit=725%2C378&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cultureaddicts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/image002-e1732374613732.jpeg?fit=725%2C378&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cultureaddicts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/image002-e1732374613732.jpeg?fit=725%2C378&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cultureaddicts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/image002-e1732374613732.jpeg?fit=725%2C378&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1052,"url":"http:\/\/cultureaddicts.com\/?p=1052","url_meta":{"origin":39829,"position":2},"title":"Music Video Addiction: Sunday October 16, 2011 edition","author":"cultureaddicts","date":"October 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"For a few minutes, forget about occupy this and occupy that, which seemed to be all over the news this week. We want to occupy your eyes and ears with some good music videos. Hope you enjoy. 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Members of Sonic Youth + share &#8216;Passion&#8217;","author":"cultureaddicts","date":"April 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Kino Kimino\u00a0is the brainchild of Kim Talon, who landed in New York City by way of Manitoba, headed across the river to Hoboken and connected\u00a0with\u00a0Lee Ranaldo\u00a0and\u00a0Steve Shelley\u00a0of\u00a0Sonic Youth. They recorded\u00a0the ten sweetly serrated, sometimes volatile, post-punk songs on their\u00a0debut album\u00a0'Bait Is for Sissies'. 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