[Unattended] review By Kent Manthie<\/strong><\/p>\n Something finally great rolled into San Diego on Thursday night: Sonic Youth played at the San Diego House of Blues.<\/p>\n SY now are officially a quintet with the addition of producer\/engineer extraordinaire, Jim O\u2019Rourke, who is or is not a member – I get differing opinions on that – Mark Ibold, ex-Pavement was recruited to be the \u201cfifth Youth\u201d but O\u2019Rourke showed up downtown San Diego on January 7.<\/p>\n The show was packed – a sold out show, not surprising, given their preeminent status as the best art-noise-rock band around and the NYC downtown, grittiness of their style doesn\u2019t hurt either.<\/p>\n Sonic Youth, misnomer though it may be nowadays, still haven\u2019t lost the touch that they had back when they were young and carefree when they put out such classics as Sister, EVOL, Bad Moon Rising <\/em>and their 1989 classic Daydream Nation.<\/em><\/p>\n This time out, supporting their latest CD, The Eternal, <\/em>which still has the same intensity that\u2019s gone into all their previous works, <\/em>SY did a smattering of new tunes off the new album and, no doubt, wowed the crowd with the intensity of the new stuff, opening the show with \u201cNo Way\u201d and then \u201cSacred Trickster\u201d. Always loud as hell and full of artfully crafted feedback, guitar noise, not to mention the bombastic drumming from Steve Shelley, the band did its usual innovative antics and had to be fired up to play<\/p>\n I know I haven\u2019t forgotten the two times I\u2019ve seen Sonic Youth, the last time being in Minneapolis in June of 2000, when they played, with Stereolab, outside, on a stage set up in the space in front of the Walker Art Center, one of the two very cool and hip museums in that city (along with the Minneapolis Institute of Arts). Stereolab played first and, WOW, I was blown away by how well they pulled off their show live, that having been my first time seeing them (the second time I saw Stereolab was, coincidentally, at the San Diego House of Blues). Anyway, that night after Stereolab wrapped up their amazing show, the warm summer night\u2019s sun started waning and soon darkness fell and Sonic Youth took the stage, not to be outdone by the previous band, they really lived up to their tag as a \u201cdowntown art-noise-rock band\u201d and delivered a masterwork of a show, doing strange but interesting things with their guitars to make unique sounds and textures and with Kim even playing trumpet on one of the tunes. It was magic. The other time I saw them was when, along with Social Distortion playing first, SY opened up for Neil Young, on his Ragged Glory tour, with Crazy Horse in 1991, just after the first Gulf War had started – this was like January 16 or 18th<\/sup> and Neil didn\u2019t let that go unnoticed, doing a Hendrix-like, anger-filled \u201cStar-Spangled Banner\u201d to get the show going.<\/p>\n For their\u00a0encores,\u00a0SY did two classics:\u00a0 “Shadow of a Doubt” and\u00a0“Death Valley ’69”.\u00a0 My biggest\u00a0regret is that I didn’t get there to see the show due to a\u00a0miscommunication and subsequent transportation issues,\u00a0the only thing that’ll make up for that will be when I see them\u00a0live next time. \u00a0– KM<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sonic Youth – House of Blues, San Diego January 7, 2010 [Unattended] review By Kent Manthie Something finally great rolled into San Diego on Thursday night: Sonic Youth played at the San Diego House of Blues. SY now are officially a quintet with the addition of producer\/engineer extraordinaire, Jim O\u2019Rourke, who is or is not a member – I get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[573,582],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-nightlife"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1735,"url":"https:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2010\/01\/01\/sonic-youth-plays-hobsd-17\/","url_meta":{"origin":1795,"position":0},"title":"Sonic Youth plays HOBSD 1\/7","author":"Kent","date":"January 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Sonic Youth SurvivesAydin Guner In terms of their age, one could compare Sonic Youth to the dinosaurs, albeit with cool hairstyles and a knack for loud guitars. 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\nThe show was mostly a showcase for the newest of their tunes, the stuff from The Eternal , <\/em>which also included songs such as \u201cAnti-Orgasm\u201d, \u201cAntenna\u201d, \u201cLeaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso), \u201cWhat We Know\u201d and much more.<\/p>\n