In honor of the grand new tradition of blog themes, I have decided to create my own. My own theme, that is. Anyone can follow suit, if they would like.
I feel like music is an integral part of life here on Suicidegirls. We SG's are a proud and peculiar bunch of misfits, and I believe it is music that first drove us all individually to realize that we were indeed different, that we were not cut from the same cloth as the majority of people around us. It was music that attracted us to others whom we could bond and commiserate with. Indeed I believe that is was music that saved some of us.
While I was running my errands this evening a Sonic Youth song came on and I thought, "This is the band that changed my life."
When I was 17 I met my first boyfriend. I was an awkward, young thing. If you think I look young for my age now, you should have seen me then! I was tall and lanky and rather flat chested. I had short dark hair and wore baby doll dresses with fishnets and Doc Martens because that's how we dressed in the nineties. I listened to Nine Inch Nails and Tori Amos, but inside I was craving something more chaotic and unique. That is when my first boyfriend played me Sonic Youth and from that point on I was hooked.
(A note about my first boyfriend: He was a lovely thing. He had chin length hair that curled ever so slightly and had a habit of getting in front of his face, but in the attractive way that it happens to rock stars. He had sharp, handsome, masculine features, not unlike that of a male model, and these deep set eyes that could light your heart on fire. He was a musician and he was older than me by about four years.)
He was apprehensive at first about playing Sonic Youth for me. I think he didn't think I was 'worthy' of it.
The first song he played for me was 'Teenage Riot' on the VHS of 'The Year Punk Broke', which SY was featured on, along with other bands like Nirvana and Dinosaur Jr. The first thing I remember thinking was, "That woman is herself" regarding Kim Gordon, who quickly became one of my idols.
What I loved most about Sonic Youth was the way their chords ripped apart and then came back together so chaotically, yet so flawlessly.
It was different. It wasn't like the shit they played on the radio.
Now, I grew up in a very insulated semi rural little town in New Jersey. Culture wasn't easy to come by where I grew up as New York City was well over an hour away and Philadelphia even further still. Sonic Youth opened my eyes to the possibilities of what was out there, beyond our sleepy, boring, drug addled town known mainly for it's shitty ski resort and the world most dangerous water park.
It was through Sonic Youth that I got into other seemingly unrelated bands like Stereolab and Sleater-Kinney. It was because I read that Thurston Moore was heavily influenced by The Velvet Underground that I picked up a copy of The Velvet Underground and Nico.
And it was through all these bands that I met people similar to me and I no longer felt such pressure to at least try and fit in (and probably fail miserably).
It was through music that I gained the confidence to fully and wholly commit 'social suicide'. An act that I do not regret, even to this day.
And I feel that, had I never heard Sonic Youth at that tender young age, I would have ended up at Rutgers, with blonde highlights, and in a second rate sorority. *shudder*