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There’s a moment on an old Sonic Youth live recording where, seeing that Thurston Moore is having trouble getting his guitar into its proper, highly unconventional tuning, Lee Ranaldo says, “We promise a new tuning every night, ladies and gentlemen!” It’s a throwaway line, but there’s poetry to it: Where else, in 1987, could you see a group of ostensibly avant-garde artists not only addressing the crowd, but making fun of their own avant-garde art while doing it? For 30 years, the band shaped the outer limits of sound-noise, free improvisation, modern classical-into something like rock music, bridging the visionary impulses of experimental art with the naive zeal of punk.
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