Sonic Youth - Live in Denver 1986 (2020)

An all-ager-rager in Denver; I am so glad this one is up cuz my late '80s live-tape-swapping-obsessive self has always been hopped up about this 1986 gig. It was right off a Europe run and a week later flat-splat into a summer Evol USA tour, SY were kicking around in a hot van gigging everywhere, coast to coast and back with the likes of Saccharine Trust and Dinosaur. It's well documented in Lee journals and Thurston's epic/hilarious Forced Exposure tour diary, the latter of which has a great shotgun-seat-sourced pic of T at the wheel as the van left the Lincoln Tunnel behind, off to finally join the trail their newfound SST brothers and sisters were also carving out town to town. Seems like a lot of those tour setlists understandably hit heavy on Evol tracks, even the previous year's Bad Moon Rising tunes took a backseat ("Death Valley '69" reportedly only played once this whole tour). But the Denver kids at the Turnverein (German Castle?) got the band midtour in ferocious form though with only five new tunes, six if you count the later-released "White Kross". The mix on this is perfectly hot-board, guitars skull-split left and right, drums sounding amazing, the whole band almost blurry and slo-mo at times. Very much woozin it up through an especially-psychedelic middle stretch of "Death To Our Friends"/"I Love Her All the Time"/"Flower"/"Green Light" that must have melted stoner kids' brains. You lose sense of which guitar is which as it all congeals into a big trippy gelatinous pile. Then a "Brother James"/"Kill Yr Idols" one-two punch that sounds like the rawest craziest versions I've heard, and finally "Expressway" taking one last peak then cooling it down (then my tape cut off). No knowledge of openers Death Valley Girls, Cage of Reason and Happy Girls, but lots of inspired stuff was in place in Denver's early '80s: Tom Headbanger gigs, Bum Kon, The Frantix, pre-SF Jello. Imagine this to have been a cool event for sure. Blasted this tape a lot in the car and it had a Feelies '86 gig on the other side, so it was especially great to see them together on a bill later in 2008 at Battery Park. Someone I traded with and got this tape from made me a pink tie-dye J-card too which was nice icing on the cake! Hope you like this loud and large set like I do.

Track List:
01. Tom Violence (Live) (03:21)
02. White Kross (Live) (02:45)
03. Shadow Of A Doubt (Live) (03:46)
04. Star Power (Live) (02:54)
05. Death To Our Friends (Live) (03:34)
06. I Love Her All The Time (Live) (04:43)
07. Flower (Live) (03:13)
08. Green Light (Live) (03:00)
09. Brother James (Live) (02:45)
10. Kill Yr Idols (Live) (04:17)
11. Expressway To Yr Skull (Live) (03:21)