Y'know, you can only come up with so many posts about snow.
I did a YouTube search a little earlier this evening, looking for a cool, suitable clip of Galaxie 500's "Snowstorm" from their magnificent On Fire album, but came up short (there is a passable live clip of it, but that didn't cut the mustard for me). In any case, whilst scouring around for same, I stumbled upon a couple of live clips of Sonic Youth -- yeah, them again -- plowing through their (kinda) breakout hit, "Teenage Riot." Inspired by same, I sought out a clip of its official music video.
I still vividly remember seeing this clip on MTV for the first time in the living room of the ramshackle off-campus house I lived in during my senior year of college. Bereft of any glossy effects or professional sheen, "Teenage Riot" is basically just a hastily-assembled, suitably anarchic collage of super 8 clips of Sonic Youth performances and road movies, sloppily spliced with loads of footage of other musicians and underground luminaries. While I'd already counted myself as a fan (drawn to the cause by the Bad Moon Rising album three years earlier), I remember being actively thrilled by this video. One has to remember that at the time -- circa 1988 -- one just didn't routinely get to see video of underground bands like Sonic Youth. Even catching blink-and-you'll-miss-'em shots of the Minutemen and Minor Threat in this clip was a tremendous kick.
Twenty-two years (!!!) later, the clip is still an entertaining snippet of the "college rock" history, considering everything that happened in its wake. Ironically, I don't really consider myself that huge a fan of Sonic Youth these days. I lost interest pretty much immediately following the Goo album, and haven't really looked back.
In any case, in watching it again this evening in a quasi-"Where's Waldo" capacity, I managed to spot and name the following cameos: Pussy Galore, Jad Fair, Patti Smith, Redd Kross, Nick Zedd, Pee Wee Herman, Mark E. Smith of The Fall, KISS, Iggy Pop, Harvey Pekar, Black Flag, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, Sun Ra, Neil Young, Daniel Johnston, Mike Watt of the Minutemen/fIREHOSE, Joni Mitchell, Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat, William S. Burroughs, Nick Cave of The Birthday Party, Tom Waits, D. Boon of the Minutemen and Blixa Bargeld of Einsturzende Neubauten. Can you spot anyone I missed?
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