diRty at Thirty:
Sonic Youth’s Grunge-Era Classic at the three-decade mark
To all you fellow Gen-X’ers coming to grips with receding hairlines and expanding waistlines, here’s another one that might be hard to take in: Sonic Youth’s Dirty turns thirty years old this month.
Released on the 21st of July, 1992, Dirty was the band’s second album after signing to David Geffen’s DGC label, their ninth major studio release overall, and second double release (if one doesn’t count the semi-official, live double album from late 1985, Walls Have Ears). It can be easily construed as the band’s major contribution to the grunge era. True, an argument can be made that virtually every record the band released from 1982 through 1998 contributed to the grunge ‘movement’ in some manner and to some degree. But Dirty was released at a point when grunge had just become a media buzzword, the Seattle scene was relatively fresh and interesting, and Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain was still alive and active. To further qualify it, 1990’s Goo was released a little too early to ride the grunge wave, and 1994’s Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star was released after the likes of Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots and The Smashing Pumpkins had already ascended to stardom on the coattails of grunge, drawing the majority of the media’s attention.
The album is truly a product of its time. The band — guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, bassist Kim Gordon and drummer Steve Shelley — had started working up new material shortly before embarking on a brief tour of Europe with opening act Nirvana in August of ’91 — a tour documented in Dave Markey’s film, 1991: The Year Punk Broke. Songwriting and recording continued in the fall, with many of the new numbers taking on a harder edge in the aftermath of touring with the brash Seattle band. A lyrical sub-theme began to develop in December, when the band received word that their friend Joe Cole, son of actor Dennis Cole and roadie-roommate of Henry Rollins, had been shot dead by armed robbers in LA. Considering the commercial success and cultural phenomenon that Nirvana’s DGC debut had become by the spring of ’92, it came as no surprise to learn that Nevermind producer Butch Vig had been assigned to oversee the project, working with mixing engineer Andy Wallace again in the process. Throw in the fact that 1992 was an election year in the US, with an incumbent George Bush Sr. hopelessly estranged from the Rock The Vote generation, and you have Dirty in a nutshell.
‘100%’, the screechingly frantic and drum-heavy opening track with vocals by Moore, pretty much sets the tone and pace for the entire album. Like ‘JC’, Gordon’s chanting grunge-rap rocker from side four, it also pays tribute lyrically to the slain Joe Cole … The hard-hitting ‘Swimsuit Issue’ more or less picks up where ‘100%’ leaves off, with Gordon intoning her thoughts on the sexual harassment that had been going down in their record label’s office at the time (“I’m just here for dictation / I’m not your summer vacation”). Title and all, the number can also be taken as a metaphor for the sensational 1991 William Kennedy Smith trial (and acquittal) that centred on his alleged beachside rape of Patricia Bowman. A similar feminist ire also drives Gordon’s ‘Shoot’, the laidback side-two groover that focusses on domestic abuse and ‘enslaved’ wives … The Moore-sung ‘Theresa’s Sound-World’, which features a crescendo of whirling guitar and woofer-bending bass, strives to be the quintessential Sonic Youth number, it seems. Indeed, it may be the album’s best track … Closing out side one is the jarring, chaotic ‘Drunken Butterfly’, which sounds like Gordon’s hardcore take on a Doors classic (“I love you / I love you / I love you / What’s your name?”) … Side two includes ‘Wish Fulfillment’, Lee Ranaldo’s sole contribution to the album vocally and lyrically. A ballad with an upbeat chorus, it’s one of the album’s forgotten gems … Clocking in at just under six minutes, Moore’s ‘Sugar Kane’ is the longest track on an album of relatively short barn-burners. Somewhat reminiscent of a classic Rolling Stones number put through the white-noise filter, the edited version was the best of the album’s four singles … The second side closes with ‘Orange Rolls, Angel’s Spit’, a rather loose rocker which sounds like it may have evolved out of Daydream Nation’s ‘The Wonder’ or ‘Hyperstation’. It may also mark the start of the snarling and moaning that would increasingly define Gordon’s vocal delivery over the next decade or so … Side three kicks off with the upbeat, bass-driven ‘Youth Against Fascism’, which features Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye on additional guitar. With Moore intoning the likes of “Yeh the president sucks / He’s a war pig fuck”, it is easily the band’s most overtly political number … This is followed appropriately by the 59-second ‘Nic Fit’, a hardcore rave-up originally recorded by The Untouchables in the early ’80s — a band led by Ian MacKaye’s brother, Alex, interestingly … Tastefully toning things down a notch is ‘On the Strip’, one of Gordon’s more introspective (autobiographical?) numbers. An overlooked gem in the Sonic song catalogue, it’s another contender for best track on the album … Closing out side three is the tuneful rocker ‘Chapel Hill’, which is supposedly based on the murder of North Carolina bookseller Bob Sheldon in February of ’91. It’s interesting to hear Moore singing about “a bookstore man meets the CIA” in a year when the former head of the CIA was running for his second presidential term … The fourth side includes Moore’s ‘Stalker’, a track exclusive to the double LP configuration. An account of a stalked film star (Jodie Foster?), musically the number resembles a cross between Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Saturday Night Special’ and The Sex Pistols’ ‘Anarchy in the UK’ … The penultimate ‘Purr’ is a fast-paced rocker which gets even faster at the mid-section. The most light-hearted of Dirty’s Moore-sung numbers, for some reason it’s probably the least memorable track on the album … The album closes with Gordon’s whimsical ‘Crème Brulee’, a folkish pop number that would not have sounded completely out of place on the third Velvet Underground album. Apparently improvised on the spot by Gordon and Shelley while Moore fooled with an amplifier, the track was captured from the control booth by Ranaldo, allegedly unbeknownst to the others.
I think it’s safe to say that Dirty’s cover art is largely a reflexion of the album’s more light-hearted tracks, while the title reflects the anger of ‘100%’ and the more political numbers. Photographed by artist Mike Kelley (1954–2012), the cover, inner sleeves and CD booklet feature images of stuffed toys. The cuteness and the ‘dirtiness’ only cross in early pressings of the CD, whose tray liners feature an image of performance artists Bob Flanagan (1952–1996) and Sheree Rose (b. 1941) naked and defiling a bunch of stuffed animals. Oddly enough, no official pressing of the double album has ever featured a gatefold sleeve, not even the Australian limited edition, which was pressed on orange vinyl and cloaked in one of three different cloth covers.
As was the case with most Sonic Youth albums before and after, Dirty came with a number of promotional EPs, ‘companion pieces’, and B-sides. As Byron Coley observes in the liner notes to the Deluxe Edition, “The band recorded enough songs for two full albums and more. […] There were enough fully formed songs to fill a third LP.” So we have Ranaldo’s ‘Genetic’ and Gordon’s ‘Hendrix Necro’ comprising the B-side to ‘100%’. Both originally intended for the album, they were scratched by Geffen executives at the eleventh hour. Having written only two exclusive numbers for the album, Ranaldo was particularly taken aback, and briefly considered quitting the band. Recorded for the BBC, the ‘Mark Goodier Version’ of ‘Purr’ serves as the B-side to a ‘clean-ex mix’ of ‘Youth Against Fascism’. The CD version of the single also includes Gordon’s ‘The Destroyed Room’, a number previously named ‘The Bedroom’ when a live instrumental version was included amongst the live tracks on the Dirty Boots EP in ’91. ‘The Destroyed Room’ is also included on multiple versions of the (shortened) ‘Sugar Kane’ single, along with a 1990 cover of The New York Dolls’ ‘Personality Crisis’ (previously released as a flexi-disc in an issue of Sassy Magazine), a ’91 cover of Alice Cooper’s ‘Is It My Body?’ (recorded for a Cooper tribute EP on Sub Pop), and an early instrumental version of ‘Shoot’ entitled ‘The End of the End of the Ugly’. Complete with an additional instrumental, the nine-minute ‘Tamra’ (later included on the ‘Drunken Butterfly’ CD single, along with ‘Stalker’), this set of tracks was released in Australia in February of ’93 as the Whores Moaning EP. Also commemorating the band’s 1993 Australian tour was the seven-inch Burning Spear EP. Sold with CD copies of Dirty, it features live versions of the title track, ‘Swimsuit Issue’ and ‘Teen Age Riot’ recorded at the Big Day Out festival in Melbourne. Also recorded on the Dirty tour was TV Shit. Released on twelve-inch vinyl and CD in 1994, this truly bizarre EP consists of four live takes on Youth Brigade’s ‘No Part II’, and features The Boredoms’ Yamatsuka Eye, Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis and Mudhoney’s Mark Arm. With the exception of the alternative ‘Purr’, all of the B-sides and the Dirty rehearsal recordings were collected for the 4-LP / 2-CD Deluxe Edition of Dirty in 2003.
Like most fans at the time, the vast majority of critics initially saw Dirty as a major improvement over Goo. Rolling Stone’s Robert Palmer, for example, called it “a great Sonic Youth album, easily ranking with Sister and Daydream Nation among their most unified and unforgettable recorded works”. Entertainment Weekly’s David Browne went so far as to name it the best album of 1992, citing its “unexpected and welcomed depth and emotional range that broaden with each listening”. However, I recall at least one reviewer for some magazine exhibiting a degree of hesitation in regards to the album, pointing out that s/he remembered when a new Sonic Youth album was all that you would listen to for weeks. S/he went on to declare that Sonic Youth are as great as ever — it’s just that now you also have Nirvana, Hole, Soundgarden, etc. The reviewer was suggesting that Sonic Youth’s sound was becoming less distinguishable in a veritable sea of imitators and worthy alternatives.
Enthusiasm for the album most definitely waned, and waned within just a decade of its release. Of the band’s early Geffen albums, Goo was more likely to be regularly stocked by record stores, and its Raymond Pettibon cover art had reached iconic status. In fact, by the time the Deluxe Edition of Goo was being compiled in 2005, at least one member had had a change of heart in regards to the band’s initial two DGC albums. “I was shocked how good [Goo] sounded when we went back to remaster it,” states Thurston Moore in the liner notes. “It’s a better record than Dirty.”
I must admit to having had some trepidation about the title upon the album’s release. After an album that opened with ‘Dirty Boots’, B-sides consisting of the 8-track demo version and a remix of ‘Dirty Boots’, and a 1991 mini-album entitled Dirty Boots plus 5 Live Tracks, I thought Dirty was maybe a tad redundant.
With hindsight, I think the album’s commercial performance was impeded to a considerable degree by the band’s and Geffen executive Mark Kates’s choice of single releases. Despite being paired with a hip Tamra Davis- and Spike Jonze-directed video that reflected the lyrics, the wildly discordant ‘100%’ was not the wisest selection for lead-off single — or any single, for that matter. Released as the follow-up in December, ‘Youth Against Fascism’ — regardless of its sociopolitical lyrics and a Nick Egan-directed video to match — was a rather monotonous track lacking a hook and a well-defined chorus. It was definitely not commercial single material, and Mark Kates has stated that releasing it as a single was “one of the biggest professional mistakes of my life”. The album’s third single, ‘Sugar Kane’, was released in February of ’93. Complete with a Nick Egan-directed video that depicted the band in the midst of a Marc Jacobs ‘grunge’ fashion show for the Perry Ellis label, it would probably have been the best choice for lead-off single seven months earlier. A fourth single, ‘Drunken Butterfly’, was released exclusively in Germany and only on CD the following August. From an objective vantage point today, Ranaldo’s ‘Wish Fulfillment’, the criminally overlooked ‘On the Strip’, and even ‘Chapel Hill’ would have been better choices for follow-up singles.
As far as Sonic Youth albums go, Dirty may not be as great or as important as what many contemporaneous reviewers opined. It is, however, a musical snapshot of its time. To quote Byron Coley’s liner notes to the Deluxe Edition, Dirty “…has a special relationship to the context in which it was born — a blip of an era which we might think of as the Golden Age of the Alternative.” With the possible exception of the Singles soundtrack, no album released in 1992 says 1992 like Dirty. While albums such as Nevermind, Badmotorfinger and Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge may be more synonymous with grunge, the ‘Seattle sound’ and the like, very few albums encapsulate the ‘grunge era’ from an American Gen-X perspective like Dirty does. That’s no small accomplishment by any means.
