This year may not be going according to plan, but Sonic Youth fans can find solace in the fact that the band has been beefing up its archives on Bandcamp. Since March, they’ve shared 12 live shows, their out-of-print 1987 EP Master-Dik, and some live albums.
Today, Sonic Youth added another rare live album to the profile: Hold That Tiger — a “semi-official bootleg LP” that was recorded in 1987 and released in 1991. Here’s what the band has to say about it:
Originally released as a semi-official bootleg LP in 1991 by friend and music writer, Byron Coley, on his Goofin’ imprint (we would eventually hijack the Goofin’ moniker for our own band-run label a few years later). The recording was nearly 60-minutes in length, so to prevent manufacturing a cost-prohibitive double lp, the master was slightly sped-up to fit the entire concert (us blasting through a finely-tuned set of songs from Sister, EVOL and a nightly encore tribute to the Ramones), on one single lp. Cramming the grooves of the vinyl in such a way resulted in Hold That Tiger playing at a lower volume on the stereo, thus the “one hour long – don’t have a cow! – crank it up’ sticker affixed to the front of the original lp cover. A few years later in 1998, Hold That Tiger was remastered for CD re-issue. The audio quality was improved from the lower fidelity lp but unfortunately the slightly sped-up performance was not corrected – until today. We are pleased to make available the best-sounding version of Hold That Tiger – SY performing full-on in 1987 – via Sonic Youth Archive on bandcamp.
Listen to Hold That Tiger below.
Aside from the massive Sonic Youth archive dump, Lee Ranaldo has been active on Bandcamp this year too, as has Thurston Moore.
Read our interview with Ranaldo where he outlined the band’s archival release plan here.
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