More than 20 years after they first formed as a band, Sonic Youth continues to produce important music and tour the country. Guitarist Lee Ranaldo recently spoke with The Culture Shock from a tour stop in Austin, Texas, Friday, June 23, 2006, and talked about new technologies in the business as well as the evolution of a Sonic Youth fan.

Hello?

Is this Lee?

Yes it is.

Hey Lee, this is Patrick Douglas. How are you doing?

Hey Patrick. What’s up?

Not a whole lot. You guys in Texas today?

Yeah, we’re in Austin.

Is it pretty damn warm down there?

Oh, yes it is. Where are you?

I’m up in Montana.

Ok. I think it’s a slight warmer here maybe.

Yeah. It’s probably never warmer here than anywhere else in the country.

(laughs).

How’s the tour going thus far?

Pretty good. We’re only a little over a week in, but the new songs are really shaping up live where we’re having quite a good time.

You guys are gonna be up here next week and I’m assuming you guys have played Missoula before. What do you think when you look at the schedule and see Montana on there?

We’ve played Missoula and we’ve played, somewhere else, Billings maybe? I’m not sure. I’m really looking forward to it. I love it up there. I love the country up there. The one or two other times we’ve been there have been really, really great. I’m definitely looking forward to it.

I recently heard a bootleg copy of one of your shows from D.C. from last week and you guys sound incredible right now.

We did two sets in D.C. and the second set was definitely one of the best of the tour so far.

I’m not sure which one it was. But it was really nice. What do you think about that kind of technology these days where people can hear a show that you guys did last week?

You know what, I’d have to say that I’m pretty into it. I’m a big computer and Internet user and I love the idea of that kind of instant transmission of stuff like that. If it’s something you’re passionate about and you want to find out about it, you can go online and get all kinds of stuff from downloading recent concerts and stuff. Empirically, it’s great. I understand there’s a lot of sort of intellectual property rights to be figured out about all that kind of stuff. You always want artists to get paid for what they do, but at the same time there’s certain aspects of what’s going on with the Internet and how it’s changing the shape of the culture that’s just phenomenal.

What do you think of today’s technology overall in respect to writing and recording an album, say in comparison to twenty years ago?

It’s real different. More than anything else, it’s real different the way you mix an album today. Ultimately it comes down to whether or not you got the goods musically. The different recording technologies are one thing, but they don’t really, they’re not gonna make your song better if it’s not good already. That kind of stuff. I love just as many records made back when it was done with one microphone straight onto tape as 45-track recordings done on all digital or something like that. It’s always cool to see stuff like that progress, but it’s not really the ultimate reason or be all and end all of how this stuff works. It puts more impediments in the way than actually getting stuff done, you know. Sometimes if you’ve got the song, you just lay it down and you don’t need a lot of technology for a good song.

You bring up a good point. You guys are traditionally known for making really good, raw albums. Does the technology impede your abilities to record these days?

No it doesn’t. We have our own studio and it’s half digital and it’s half serious old style analog and it’s all good as far as we’re concerned. The music is really where it’s really at.

Do you guys ever feel like a brand new band when you’re out there touring behind a new album and a fresh set of songs?

Well, I don’t know if we feel like a brand new band, but we certainly feel like a fresh band. I still feel like some aspects are as fresh as ever for us, just in the way that we tackle stuff and the way our working methods are and stuff like that. In a lot of cases, they’re still the same as they were when we were younger in terms of … we try to keep a lot of stuff fairly intuitive. We don’t try and get overly technical or overly scripted on how we do stuff. We just kind of fly by the seat of our pants a lot and we like to keep it that way just because it keeps things real.

Listening to “Rather Ripped,” I’m especially fond of how it starts out with “Reena” and “Incinerate,” they’re really both great tracks. How did you guys approach the production standpoint of this record and ultimately the mixing of it?

You know what, we approached it really basically. We recorded this record really quickly. I think that’s part of the reason why it has that immediate sound. We went in (music plays in the background). Sorry the band is soundchecking, the opening act. We went in and laid the stuff down really quickly and spent a few weeks in our own studio, overdubbing. Just kind of did it really directly and quickly and not too many overdubs, not too much fooling around in the studio. Just kind of laying the stuff down live the way we normally do.

Sometimes you hear bands talk about albums that are fun to make. Was this a fun album for you guys?

It was a pretty fun record to make. Usually records take a lot longer than this to make, so for us in a certain way, it was kind of fun, just the fact that it was fairly quickly done. It was kind of cool.

Knowing that this tour just started, looking back at your touring through the years, how have Sonic Youth fans evolved through this process?

I tend to think that our fans are pretty much open for anything we’re willing to throw at them. In a way it’s pretty cool. We go through changes, we’ll come out and do something like “Goodbye 20^th Century” record or some weirdo thing or come out and play shows like that. Our audience seems pretty willing to follow us wherever we’re going, which is pretty cool. I feel like they’re willing to allow us to help turn them on to new things, whether it’s the acts that we bring out on the road with us or whether it’s new stuff that we’re interested in the moment, so I tend to feel like our audience is pretty adventurous and open to new things. They don’t hold us too much to be the same old Sonic Youth if we wanna do something different.

Whether you’re talking about Sonic Youth in 1990 or Sonic Youth in 2006, you guys have an appeal for college audiences. How do you feel about maintaining that fanbase and appealing to that audience year in and year out?

Well, that’s interesting because that’s the age when most people are the most aggressively involved in music and most enthusiastically involved in it. To be in touch with that audience, it must be, we’re doing something right. Our audience is old enough that we’ve got people from all different ages that come to our show. There’s still people coming that came back in the early ‘80s that still come out to see shows. It’s not a big portion of the audience, but it’s cool that there’s really young kids, like 16, 17 coming to check us out and there’s 40 year olds, or people our age still coming to see us. I think the longer we go on, the broader our audience gets, which is kind of cool.

When you look at today’s music scene, from radio to the Internet to the demise of music videos, what do you think about it all?

I think it’s great. I think there’s so much good stuff happening still. We’re always finding interesting stuff to check out. I think the music scene is as healthy as ever in certain ways.  A lot of the stuff is fairly underground, which is always the case. We try and remain tapped into that.

You guys have traveled an exceptional road of, first of all creating a new and groundbreaking sound when you started out, then dealing with copycats in the ‘90s, now you’re still standing tall and creating great records with an insane and unprecedented amount of bands out there. How have you guys managed to go all of this time and still find the drive to produce amazing music?

I don’t know. It’s our souls to do so. We’re always most excited about the next batch of songs we’re gonna write. Creating new music is kind of one of the joys of doing this. It’s one of the more fun aspects of why we’re doing this, just being able to get together and create something out of nothing basically. It’s so cool. That’s half the fun for us. When it’s time to make new music, it’s the best time.

What did you guys think when you saw VH1 had the “100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock” and you guys were on there at number 54?

We were? (laughs). This is the first I’m hearing about this? Hard rock huh? Wow. Was it a specific song or what?

No it was the 100 greatest artists of hard rock. You guys were sandwiched between Blue Oyster Cult and Korn.

Wow. Well, we’re pretty hard rockin’, I’d have to say.

The strange list was the “100 Greatest Artists of Rock and Roll.” They had Michael Jackson listed above Nirvana and Van Halen.

Wow.

Yeah. The 100 greatest of hard rock has you four below Slayer and four above Anthrax.

Alright. Way cool.

Tell me a bit about these dates coming up with Pearl Jam. That should be a pretty stellar group of shows. What are there like four or five of them?

Yeah. Maybe even a few more than that actually. It’s like two or three in L.A., two in San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas. It’s a few shows. It should be pretty fun. We’ve toured with them before. We’re good friends with them, so it’s fun to hang out with them.

When you’re onstage, do you ever find yourself looking at the other three and find yourself overwhelmed with pride with what you guys have accomplished as a group?

Well, sure. We all recognize that we’ve got something pretty special when we play together. We’re amazed that it’s happening for as long as it has and we’re just really into it. It’s great. It’s kind of like an alternate family.

If you could set up your ultimate festival and you could pick any bands that have ever played, past or present, which bands would you choose?

I don’t know man, that’s a hard one. There’s so many different bands that we’d wanna choose on something like that. Luckily we’ve had our chance to play with a lot of our favorites over the years. Whether it was Nirvana, or Pavement or Babes in Toyland or Neil Young or Iggy. We’ve gotten to share a lot of stages with a lot of totally great bands, so I don’t know. I don’t know who I’d pick for that in particular, but it’d certainly be a long list.

Lee, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me amongst the soundcheck and all of that.

My pleasure.

For your information, the first three on that top 100 of hard rock was Zeppelin, Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix.

(laughs). Naturally.

You guys are at 54.

Alright. Glad to hear it.

See you down the road.

Take care.