NOTE: I wrote all this and went to upload to sonicyouth.com/mustang, only to discover that the server is not allowing new files. Until this is resolved, any updates will be made at the mirror site: SONICLIFE.CA

Hi everybody! My name is Chris Lawrence, I created the five "megasites" in the sonicyouth.com/mustang directory and have been maintaining them for nearly 30 years. Since I took 2025 off aside from a few minor, "secret" updates that I was unable to ignore, I wanted to check back in and let anyone who's still reading know what to expect this year.

For starters, to those who are still here, let me say: thank you! In a world where social media, influencers, and AI bullshit has taken over, I take some sort of pride in providing genuine well-researched, original content with interesting angles on a particular topic, in this case being Sonic Youth and their history. I started this site in 1997, when I was turning 15 and looking to establish some sort of online presence. It was pretty common to start a "fan page" for a band back then, sometimes offering a broad assortment of things pulled from various sources (pictures, interviews, rough discographies, news, etc). Many bands didn't even have their own website yet, so fan pages served a real purpose, connecting like-minded individuals from around the world to discuss shared interests. Some sites took it further, with a narrower focus on specific areas, like a history of concert dates with set lists or a collection of guitar tabs, which were my first two attempts to create a dedicated resource. At the time, the band was roughly halfway through their career, and I never would have guessed I'd be sitting here 30 years later, preaching to a dead internet.

Over time, most of the unique data these fan sites offered became integrated into more collaborative databases encompassing all bands, with anyone able to offer their individual edits and contributions. See Setlist.fm, Discogs, Harmony Central, etc - these are fantastic resources that don't rely on one dedicated webmaster having to keep on top of everything, and indeed the concept of an individual fan-page has mostly died off, or been transferred to social media platforms. I was fortunate to have Sonic Youth give me my own corner of their website in 2002, which certainly put more eyes on my work and encouraged me to being even more creative with my content. I'm still proud of the five individual resources I created, and while adult life interfered (as it does), I still always tried to keep the most important pages updated during the band's lifespan.

The 2020 lockdown rejuvenated my dedication to researching my favorite band, and set in motion what I consider some of the best content I've created: the Song of the Week series, the Timeline, the "Early Sonic" deep dive that I'd been trying to formulate for ages, and beefing up the Gear Guide to be (in my opinion) one of the most interesting fan-driven equipment archives for any band, period. Sure, I still code in Notepad using html tricks I learned at the turn of the century, and maybe that's part of the charm (my goal is still to create more functional mobile displays, though I maintain that this is really a desktop resource). It's free content, and always will be, so bear with me.

I do have a partner, a full time job, other hobbies and interests, including my own music, which I've been writing and recording since around the time I coded my first website. Recent years spent creating Sonic Youth content really overshadowed all of these other life factors, so I decided to step away completely in 2025 and focus elsewhere, particularly a project I'd been putting off for years, remixing six albums I recorded on four-track between 1999 and 2004. I figured the quarter century anniversary was probably my last real opportunity to dig out all of the cassettes and revisit everything, which led to a 7-disc "digital box set" containing 88 original songs, plus a bunch of additional bonus shit. It felt good to finally get it done, but unfortunately spending so much time in the past made me want to create new music (I was also heavily inspired by seeing Yo La Tengo do four nights with no repeats in San Francisco, and I wrote nearly 40 songs within weeks of returning home). I love writing music, seeing how these tiny ideas turn into fleshed out songs, and truth be told I had an amazing year not thinking about Sonic Youth.

But that's not entirely true - in June 2025, something so monumental happened that it almost forced me to derail all of my own plans. An incredible researcher and content creator named Osty Gale stumbled across a video in the Yale Archives of Sonic Youth's May 9th, 1982 performance at Danceteria. It is the earliest known video of the band available, and after three songs from the self-titled debut, they drop three surprises so shocking I felt like I immediately had to update the "Early Sonic" piece (I didn't, but I did an unlisted update to the Timeline and Concert Chronology). We could finally hear the only known early 80s version of "Mildred Pierce", the only known performance of an otherwise unknown tune called "Sweet Smell of Success", and the earliest known take of "Shaking Hell", with Richard Edson on drums. By now the video has circulated heavily, but it was jaw-dropping news at the time.

Shortly thereafter, the Sonic Youth "Gossip" Board, a forum for discussing the band on their own website, which had been active since 2002, was permanently lost. As an old-school Internet dude, I graduated from alt.music.sonic-youth to this forum, and after nearly a year of deactivation, I do admit I feel lost. I fucking love Reddit, but mostly for true crime and television fixations - for whatever reason, I don't think their layout promotes sustainable in-depth conversations on bands. This is just one of many "me problems" in the modern age, but as a Sonic Youth enthusiast I find myself wondering where to go for discussion. I'm almost considering purchasing a vbb license to see if I can wrap my technologically stale brain around creating my own forum, but we'll see. For now, I post occasional major updates on Facebook, but this site continues to be where I want to publish content.

So, back to this site! It's not going anywhere, and it hasn't been left for dead. I confess to being less dedicated to certain aspects of it, especially now that the band has been dissolved for 15 years, but in lieu of properly updating the pages individually I wanted to offer a general "what you might have missed in 2025" review, and what you might expect in the future.

DISCOGRAPHY - This is not the first online Sonic Youth discography by a long shot, but I initially created it because I wanted to highlight all of the different artwork from various singles, compilations, alternate versions, etc. It served its purpose for a long time, but obviously Discogs is a much, much better domain for this kind of data now. I still think there's a lot of well-organized specific info about Sonic Youth on my page, but I acknowledge that the long text rundowns for each album are kind of outdated and don't paint the most accurate picture compared to the info that was available when I launched it back in 2002. The band hasn't released much lately, aside from another version of Hold That Tiger, but we do have something exciting to look forward to: Diamond Seas is coming April 18th for Record Store Day, featuring 32 live versions of "The Diamond Sea" edited together into two unbroken sides of vinyl. This is presumably a teaser for further Washing Machine deluxe content, so stay tuned...

SONG DATABASE - I loved putting this resource together, but I can admit it needs a serious overhaul. Realistically, it's only missing a handful of actual songs (such as "Sweet Smell of Success", which surfaced in 2025!), and all of the general data is accurate, but I've unearthed so many interesting details while working on the Song of the Week series that really should be integrated into the Song Database. Having said that, it's not a priority.

TAB ARCHIVE - Song of the Week *is* a priority, but I'd like to get a head start on it because past efforts to create in-depth weekly content have derailed virtually every other aspect of my life. Finishing a bunch of articles and then releasing them at my leisure is definitely the approach I want to take. I love all the feedback I get on this series via email, and I know there are people who genuinely enjoy it. I have all kinds of ideas, but I sincerely doubt there will be any new content until later in the year. But we will hit the ground running! In the meantime, I may revisit some past articles that still haunt me, like "Rain King" and its inconclusive tunings.

GEAR GUIDE - I keep waiting for a guitar magazine that I haven't already documented to pop up on eBay, but I think that market has dried up. One thing worth sharing is the July 2025 issue of Guitar World, which featured an interview with Thurston about Sister, which you can read here. I have some e-mails from other dedicated fans who have provided me with some awesome details that I need to find the time to integrate into the site, which is a priority for the near future. It always blows my mind to see a picture or video of the band using an instrument I haven't seen, or way out of the accepted time frame, or by an unexpected member, etc. There will be some good stuff when I do update!

CONCERT CHRONOLOGY - I did add newly surfaced set lists via "secret" updates last year, but if you didn't notice they were the aforementioned 05/09/82 Danceteria show (my eternal thanks to Osty for finding it!), 08/29/91 Stuttgart (one of the few remaining shows from the 1991: The Year Punk Broke tour - thanks Fabian Beyer!), and 10/06/92 Cincinnati (a great Dirty tour show - thanks Nick Serra for all that you do!). In case you missed it, Kims Gordon & Deal performed "Little Trouble Girl" for the first time ever on John Mulaney's show back in March 2025, which was kind of wild.

There's one other puzzle that I have yet to solve, involving a video shared by veteran SY collector Alan Harwood on YouTube. It's actually in two parts (this & that), and is allegedly a film of the band's November 6th, 1985 performance at the Underground in Croyden. However, the set list and banter is an exact match to what was shared with me decades ago as November 9th, 1985 in Ladbroke Grove. This is the infamous gig where "She's in a Bad Mood" was unearthed for a one-off performance with Steve. I have photographs from the Ladbroke Grove show, and they don't match this video, so that suggests that it isn't from Ladbroke Grove after all. However, a tape of the Croyden gig already circulates, and is definitely a different performance. To complicate things further (thanks Roland Blattner!), a listing of all the Underground Club's November 1985 dates indicates that Sonic Youth played there on November *10th*, not the 6th. Unfortunately the Croyden video is too dark to make out any truly identifying features of the venue (the "Underground" logo should be visible on the wall behind the drum kit), but it does appear to start with a small clip from the November 8th video of "Expressway" from the Zap Club in Brighton Beach. Whether this is on the master, I'll have to inquire, but it would suggest that the "Croyden" video came afterwards, likely on the 10th. So, what is the four-song tape previously attributed to Croyden? And what did they actually play at the Ladbroke Grove show? More questions than answers at this point, but something we'll explore further... (I have not updated the CC or Timeline to reflect this new info)

I have a wealth of other live SY submissions to sort through courtesy of all the awesome people who still send me emails - I apologize for my trademark lack of follow-up, but I save it all and will integrate it "soon". I just wanted to let everyone know that I haven't abandoned the page, nor my ability to drone on about the past and how much fucking better the Internet used to be. Thank you thank you THANK YOU for reading this far, for caring about this ancient website, and for continuing to offer new information and keeping my sad devotion to Sonic Youth history an active part of my life.

xox Chris Lawrence
soniclife.ca (mustang mirror)
sonicyouth.com/mustang (historic site - temporarily unavailable to update)