I saw Sonic Youth for the first and only time in 8th grade at my very first 107.7 The End Deck The Hall Ball.  At the time I was more excited to see Buck-O-Nine and No Doubt then the noisy, thrashy drone that was Sonic Youth.  I remember only that they played in near darkness and that lines of lights flickered behind them.

“The Empty Page” a track off the band’s Murray Street a relatively painless starter for those not in the Sonic Youth know (i.e. myself), reminds one of classic rock, the sort of noodling guitars and linked notes you’d expect from Phish or The Grateful Dead.  Or at least it makes the case for classic rock.  At it’s heart “The Empty Page” is just an off-branch of the noise rock Sonic Youth helped popularize.  It’s a torn t-shirt and burning cig wrapped in long hair and smelling of patchouli.

Sonic Youth - The Empty Page

Leonard Cohen was a itch I never chose to scratch until early this year at the beloved insistence of the woman I love.  His second album, Songs From A Room, is in near constant rotation in our tiny home, Cohen’s sparse, somber bits of storytelling daggers of sadness that continuously surprise me.  His third album, Songs of Love and Hate is bigger, more orchestrated, and I always find myself shocked at the grating anger Cohen spews on to recordings.

“Diamonds In The Mine” is the greatest example of this, a growling, spitting bit of vitriol seemingly wrenched from the very darkest depths of Mr. Cohen’s fractured soul.  I have no clue at whom Cohen is aiming his laser-pointed rage, but whomever is on the receiving end, I feel for you, as Cohen, his lyrics sharp as they may ever be, eviscerates, well, nearly everything.  I cringe each time he says, “The trees are burning in your … promised land” the ravaged muscles of his throat rending the words in to near non-existence.

Wipe the sweat from my brow, this one has me quaking.

Leonard Cohen - Diamonds In The Mine

Spent a weekend in Tahoe bruising my body and pride attempting to learn to ski/fall down an icy mountain.  Victory was had by the end, and on the way back to the cabin, tucked away inside the warm body of a Volkswagen named Helmut, The Books crept every so gently out of the speakers.

There’s a mood-altering ability to The Books, a sort of pervasive silence that somehow filters out the noise of the world that lingers in the background.  Their music is a conversation of sorts between song and sample, ably straddling the line between ambient noise and impressively constructed song.  The Books are many things, but for a moment, my body sore, the snow-covered tips of trees coursing on by, my fingertips buried in my girlfriend’s arms, they were a perfect soundtrack.

The Books - Take Time

I’m just plummeting down the Tom Wait’s rabbit hole, and let me tell you it’s getting a bit weird.

You could consider “San Diego Serenade” a sort of schmaltzy romantic trip.  A lovelorn love-song peppered with cliches and sugary sap that’d make your stomach turn if it wasn’t in the glass-shredded vocal chords of the one, the only Thomas Waits.  This is a barroom slow jam, but not for the pink-and-purple Valentine’s Day set.  This is the wispy smoke of a cigarette curling around the dye-cracked hair of your lady love, the thin glimmer of a neon bar sign shaping her in to a supermodel.  The three fingers of whiskey wrecking havok on your stomach makes her skin feel like a million dollars, the walls of your hourly hotel room, a palace by any other name.

This is love pickled in gin, romance painted in fake gold.

Tom Waits - San Diego Serenade

I am extremely hungover right now.

I don’t even care for jazz all that much, but with nausea creeping up my innards and my head pounding, Charlie Mingus’ freak-jazz seemed the only thing I could process.

My usual wordiness has dissipated.

Somebody hold me.

Charles Mingus - Solo Dancer

For those who are following, I expressed a deep regret: I’d never given raspy-voiced industrial folk star Tom Waits a chance.  Aside from a few marijuana-inspired laugh sessions listening to “Underground” I’d, for some reason (blame my mother’s Mannheim Steamroller obsession when I was little) written T. Waits off.

Until this previous week when my lovely girlfriend, genius that she is, inquired, “Wait, you’ve never listened to Tom Waits.”  Quite quickly, I found a copy of Closing Time and devoured it, wrote about it, and then moved forward, somehow landing on this Wait’s 1999 studio album Mule Variations.

Where Closing Time is a seductive bit of dimly lit barroom lovin’, Muletime Variations is Wait’s raspy folkin’ self fully realized.  Perched atop a termite-eaten porch, twangy steel guitar in hand, Wait’s seems to rock back and forth, a discarded metal yard looming in the background.  This is the backwood folk of an earlier time re-filtered through a crackpot microphone on a broke-down railroad car with Mr. Waits himself seated behind it, conductor hat firmly in place.

A madcap ride indeed.

Tom Waits - Cold Water

A long time ago, in a tiny Eastern Washington town, at a radio station who’s listeners were mostly convicts, I was a hip-hop DJ.  I know, I know, from the selection of music I’ve attempted to stuff down your throat in the year or so I’ve been writing for Sound on the Sound this seems preposterous, but alack, alas, ’tis true.

Back in the days when I ruled the airwaves though, there was a duo named Emanon that steadily held my ear.  For some reason over the course of the last few months I’ve found myself digging in to my more hip-hop oriented past and again, for whatever universe-oriented, swirling-galaxy reason, I keep stumbling upon Emanon.

This track, off the duo’s (Aloe Blacc and Exile) The Waiting Room is a stunning gem, the kind of underground hip-hop track that makes you nod your head and appreciate good music, not grimace distastefully and wish for the early-90s to swing down and break some heads.

Oooh ooooh, that sample, it makes the heads spin.

Emanon - The Waiting Room

Sometimes I just don’t want to follow the beat of new music.  Thus, The Yester-daily Choice, the rare occasion where I share a bit of my love for things old and wonderful.

I wish I could say I’m a huge Leonard Cohen fan.  I’ve spent years of my life fighting with my older, sometimes smarter brother about Leonard Cohen and the level of boredom he invokes in me. Then I’m sitting in a dark basement apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn on Alex’s birthday (she with a broken rib wearing a silver dress) and I place the needle to this song and my whole life changes.

Congratulations Justin, you win.  I still disagree that Eat The Rich by Aerosmith is the greatest album of all time though.  And I still disagree with your purchase of Depeche Mode.

But this, this is amazing.  Count me a lifetime fan.

Leonard Cohen - The Old Revolution