Almost too Marfa-lous for words: Sonic Youth does a small Texas town for free
11/10/07 17:23
By SAM LADACH-BARK
MARFA -- I have lived in Texas my whole life. I grew up in Dallas and now live in Austin. I've done a fair amount of road travel through El Paso, down to Port Aransas, to Houston and back again.
Along the way I've passed through innumerable small towns -- population 2,000 or less -- without even noticing them. You've passed right by them, too, perhaps stopping for gas or directions, but nothing more. A Dairy Queen and a small five-shop Main Street is all I ever thought existed in these towns. My recent adventure in Marfa changed all that.
If you've ever driven west through Texas, perhaps to El Paso or New Mexico, chances are you drove past or through Marfa without even knowing it. In a lot of ways that's how Marfa would like to stay.
Two weeks ago I found out that Sonic Youth, one of the most influential experimental rock groups of the 1990s, was playing a free show in Marfa. I had no idea what to expect. I had never even heard of Marfa, but knew I would be there to find out.
On Saturday, Oct. 6, my adventure in West Texas began. Sonic Youth had played a sold-out show in Austin the night before. I was there, but I already had made plans to meet them in Marfa. It was the mystery surrounding the show that drew me in. Why would they play a free show in a town with little more than 2,000 residents? The vague description on their tour Web site read: "October 6th: Marfa, TX at the Thunderbird Motel."
I envisioned Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo rocking out in a hotel lobby, jumping off couches and playing with the crowd closed in all around them. Maybe the cops would get called in. Perhaps everybody is tripping on acid, or they would be playing for a crowd of less than 100 hardcore fans. Either way, for better or worse, I had to be there to experience it. A heart-pounding Sonic show Friday night and a six-hour drive the next morning. I felt like such a "Dead-head."
Our drive was pleasant, but not exciting, and we arrived 30 minutes before show time. Not knowing whether Marfa was in a dry county, we stopped a few towns back and loaded up a cooler with imported beer. As it turned out, though, Marfa is not dry -- actually far from it. It seemed like they had no alcohol restrictions at all.
As we pulled up next to the Thunderbird, a procession of young and old folks double- and triple-fisting beers was walking toward the show. Similar to New Orleans relaxed liquor laws, beer or wine was everywhere you looked. Maybe it was a lack of law enforcement or a "don't ask, don't tell" mentality. I've never been in any Texas town that was so laid back.
Our cooler in tow, we discovered that 400-plus hipsters, punks and aging hippies had shown up looking for an unforgettable show. Inside a rather large warehouse that looked like an old mechanics shop, a raised concrete platform was littered with amps, pedals and Thurston's 10-strong guitar collection. We found ourselves less than 10 feet away from the stage. We were in live music heaven.
A crowd that previously had formed drinking circles outside and around every corner surged forward at the first signs of life on stage. Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Renaldo and Steve Shelly emerged. Sonic Youth had claimed the dingy arena.
"Incinerate" from their latest release, Rather Ripped, instantly filled every crevice of the room. Precisely picked riffs were bounding from Lee to Thurston and back again. The crowd also was rewarded with several songs from their 1988 classic Daydream Nation, including "Teenage Riot, The Sprawl, Eric's Trip" and "Trilogy."
The crowd's energy went past the boiling point and the band fed off it intravenously. I felt transported back to the late '80s, to a basement nightclub in New York City where Sonic Youth might have first unleashed this album on the world. We banged and moshed into each other; all we needed to complete the look was baggy jeans and flannel. Their set the previous night in Austin felt nothing like this.
Thurston jumped, banged and dropped with ferocious intent, taking his guitar on a psychedelic road trip. Lee rolled drums sticks up and down his guitar with an ear to ear grin while Steve laid down some maracas on snare. Kim twirled, moaned and danced like she hadn't aged a day since 1988. She is irrefutably the hottest 54-year-old woman in history. Michelle Pfeiffer has nothing on Kim.
When they first called it quits the crowd would hear nothing of it and cheered them back on stage for two encores. Closing out the night, Kim wailed "Shaking Hell" from 1983's Confusion Is Sex. It's hard to believe that a band more than 25 years old can still play so flawlessly.
Fulfilled, dazed and exhausted, we caught a glimpse of the band as they headed to their trailer, every hipster too afraid of their own shadow to do anything but clap and cheer around them. For me that was enough, more than I could have imagined or hoped for -- even without the cops and the couch-jumping.
I'll never overlook a small town in Texas again. You never know what might be happening in an old garage hours after you've already left without looking back.
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