Daydream Nation

The "Eric's Trip" demo appears as the last track on the eighth side of vinyl. "Daydream Nation" was Sonic Youth's sixth album, and their first double-LP, clocking in at just over 70 minutes. This was their last album recorded for an "independent" label (though "The Whitey Album" was released afterwards, it was ready to go prior to Daydream's conception), and was arguably the record that drew the strongest major label attention. It kicks off with the anthemic "Teenage Riot", again pairing Kim and Thurston vocally, and never lets up, boasting an unprecedented three Lee songs, another Mike Watt appearance (on the solemn piano/amp burnout collage "Providence"), and the sprawling "Trilogy" which closes the record. Three singles were released from the album, along with various live versions of "Silver Rocket", and all 4 songs had video clips filmed. A two-disc deluxe edition w/ the remastered album, live versions of all tracks, and compilation tunes was released in 2007. In 2014, the band reissued the original album in CD and vinyl format on its own Goofin' label. After recording an entire LP under their beatbox/sampler driven alias "Ciccone Youth" in late 1987/early 1988, Sonic Youth began composing the songs that would end up on "Daydream Nation". They debuted the new material at 6 shows in June '88, some songs fairly close to their finished versions, some songs radically unrecognizable ("'Cross The Breeze" originally had Thurston singing, Lee's original vocal on the seldom performed "Rain King" twisted the song into a whole other piece). They recorded the album in July and August at Greene Street in NYC with Nicholas Sansano. A preview of the album was released in September, a 7" single featuring a live version of "Silver Rocket" from one of the June shows, along with a noisy clip of a Beatles tape played thru a squealing amplifier & an instrumental re-titled version of "Eliminator Jr". Kim took a break from SY to tour Europe with Lydia Lunch as "Harry Crews" in September, which resulted in an album project down the road, featuring material from the tour. Following this SY did a brief European tour, performing the bulk of the album (only "Total Trash" was excluded, and "Providence" was not played for obvious reasons), and only a handful of old material (which was routine at this point). "Daydream Nation" was released in October (on Enigma in the US, and Blast First once again overseas), followed by a North American tour that finished in early December. Their tour sets focused extremely heavily on Daydream material, the only old songs being "I Love Her All The Time" "Brother James" and "I Wanna Be Yr Dog". By this point, "Rain King" and "Total Trash" were being very rarely played. In early 1989 they expanded their usual tour territory and played in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and even the USSR ("Daydream Nation" was released in Russia edited down to a single LP!). They followed this with another European tour, bringing Sub Pop superstars Mudhoney along for the ride. A few older tunes began leaking into the set, but for the most part 1988 and 1989 tour shows exclusively covered "Daydream Nation" material (a practice SY would revisit about a decade later, with "A Thousand Leaves"). Apparently even they got tired of the material, exhuming a ton of old songs for a one-off gig in NYC in July '89, featuring only 4 songs from "Daydream" in the set. Towards the end of the year, they did their first network television appearance, on a short-lived show titled "Night Music", tearing thru a ferocious version of "Silver Rocket" and gathering everybody in the building to join them on "I Wanna Be Yr Dog". This riveting performance was captured on the "Screaming Fields of Sonic Love" video, along with the 4 videos released from the album: "Teenage Riot" "Silver Rocket" "Providence" & "Candle". The album was reissued on CD by Blast First in 1992, with a subsequent DGC reissue in late '93, featuring liner notes by Jutta Koether. The cover