I recently found out that Kurt Cobain worked with Sonic Youth and that he admired them so I thought I'd download some of their songs.I listened to "Teenage Riot" and "Stones" and it doesn't sound anything like Nirvana or any grunge bands  ???
So I'd just like to see what you think of Sonic Youth:Can you actually classify them as grunge??
I'm not saying that Sonic Youth are s*** for not sounding very grungy,I'd just like to see your opinion
THANX ;) ;)

there not grunge. sonic youth came out of the alternative music scene of the 80s. they were a college rock band. kurt cobain also admired the pixies, in fact, "smell's like teen spirit" was an homage to the pixies.

Hey Sputnikcorp,thanx for that info!!

Sonic Youth are pre-Grunge, non-New Wave indie rock (period about 1987-1990).  Nirvana really aren't that grungy themselves though, imo.  Yes I'm serious.

Actually grunge never really existed as far as i'm concerned, it was just a term coined by the media that record labels & everyone else jumped on which snowballed into a "supposed" new genre. They were all low-fi alternative indie feedback rock bands. Nirvana was actually "pre-grunge" themselves because Bleach actually came out in 1988 or 1989 & the word grunge itself wasn't a popular term till about mid to late 1991. The media always called Nirvana the forerunners of this music genre when in actual fact Pixies & Sonic Youth among others really were, because they were doing the same sort of thing just before & influenced Nirvana the "supposed" forerunners. Record labels jumped on the band wagon trying to sign a sh!t load of bands from Seatle hoping they'd be another Nirvana when in actual fact close to none of the bands from Seatle even sounded remotely similar. Geography does not neccesarily dictate style or sound. As for Teen Spirit the actual influence came from Kurt's girlfriend (not Courtney) writting "Kurt smells like Teen Spirit" on a wall. Teen Spirit was a deodorant at the time. Grunge, i hate that word, a big marketing gimmick. They just took Kurt's vintage style of dress & combined a whole & took all the music of the time & neatly put it all in one basket for marketing purposes, how convenient. I remember smashing Pumkins used to get called grunge aswell, what happened aren't they grunge anymore? LOL My point is that labels are stupid, period.

OK if i must use the word grunge, then i would actually disagree & say Sonic Youth were actually a bit grungy.  Lots of feedback & a slightly similar lo-fi, ringy, watery guitar sound. Nirvana was very derivative of bands like Sonic Youth & Sonic Youth to me sounded much more like "grunge" than bands like Peal Jam & Sound Garden which sounded way too clean. Sound Garden & Peal Jam actually sound like just rock bands to me & i remember Sound Garden being on a music award show in 1991 & they were up against hard rock & hair metal bands for best metal album for Bad Motor Finger. Again a perfect example of why labels A& catergories are pretty stupid. The roots of "grunge" actually go back earlier than the 90s, Kurt often said that they were just a punk rock band & Pat Smear(Foo Fighters) a friend of the band & seen in the background in MTV Unplugged was in an 80s punkrock band called The Germs. My point is they all hung out together & listened to the same music & were were influenced by almost all the same bands. They all came out of the alternative music scene of the 80s & the fact that one was a college rock band & the other wasn't means very little.

By the way when Kurt said he thought of Nirvana as being just a punk rock band he didn't mean the likes of Blink 182, Greenday or Offspring, they aren't even punk bands & yes i can say that & categorise in this case because punk was an actual movement & not a fashion at one point in the 70s & early 80s (believe it or not) & not just a term that became popular. Obviously Nirvana didn't deal with the same subject matter lyrically but the influence of the raw guitar sound is there. Punk was anti establishment & never about meeting girls at rock shows, zits or break ups. The main thing that was great about it though was it never had slick production & it all sounded nice & raw the way it should. These older punk bands along with some UK indie bands paved the the way for the later alternative music scene which in tern influenced the "so called" grunge phenomenon. There's a lot more that happened in between aswell like punk also branching out into stuff like deathrock which then spawned a gothic scene (no i don't mean Marilyn Manson) etc etc etc. Process of evolution, it's just a pitty there's nowhere to go with it anymore so we just get lame watered down clones doing an awful job of trying to emulate the past & anything new that comes out is usually crap & not that new or revolutionary at all. I think MTV &  record campanies have killed music. It's truly sad to see what the next generations have as musical influences & if MTV radio & TV has anything to do with it we're in big trouble. The dumbest buy the mostest, that's the name of the game :P. Ooops i seem to have gone off on a tangent, oh well enough of my rant.