Later this week, the Quietus will be publishing a feature on the live recording of Sonic Youth’s performance at the Smart Bar in Chicago, released by the band last year. We spoke to Lee Ranaldo for the piece, and he suggests that it might just be the first in a series documenting the live career of the group: “We have tons of tapes, we have been in the process of digitising everything for the last few years and creating a major database as well – it’s been a daunting task but [it’s] coming along!" he said "We had always thought it would be a cool idea to release live versions of the songs from various periods, especially as our songs mutated so much and really found their final ‘form’ by being played live once we were done recording the records – which to me function more like snapshots of what the songs later became in live performance.”
He elaborates: “The idea is to present a definitive Daydream live set, or Washing Machine era live set or NYCG&F, or Sister, The Eternal etc, seems pretty cool to us. So this set is hopefully the first of many such archival releases.” Aaron Mullan (Of Tall Firs and Michael Rother’s Hallogallo) who worked on mastering the record explains the choice for working with this tape as a jumping-off point “The ideal archival offering would meet a list of criteria: it should be an unreleased and sonically compelling recording of an amazing performance, which not only sheds some light on the known Sonic Youth catalogue for the serious aficionado, but also capture the attention of the general fan. It’s a pretty tall order, but I think this tape from Chicago 1985 fits the bill.”
