On July 4, 2008, some 27 years into their run as a band, Sonic
Youth played a free concert in New York’s Battery Park City as part of the
River to River Festival. At the time, the show was mostly remarkable because of
the opening act — the Feelies were playing their first live set in a generation
that day — and Sonic Youth was always playing somewhere. As one post-punk behemoth
after another reformed to a burst of enthusiasm, Sonic Youth soldiered on, carting
the storied rack of guitars and towers of amps, Gordon and Moore preternaturally
young, in short skirts and presciently cool band tee-shirts, respectively. The
band was always on, always different, delivering searing, idiosyncratic
performances out of three decades of material, and if you didn’t catch them
this week, they’d be back in a few months. Their last record was called The
Eternal, and if you were a rock fan of a certain age, that was Sonic Youth:
eternal.
