This is a heavy nostalgia trip for me. Recorded live and released first on cassette tape in 1984 it was before my time aka before I was “cool” but captures the early live Sonic Youth experience. I bought this later on CD when I was living in Philly and then later sold it to a CD store during a short spell of unemployment and sadness while living in NYC in the mid-90s. I also hung around the periphery of Thurston’s mise en scène at that time and even once handed him an embarrassingly bad mix tape of my homemade sounds. During some after-show banter on this album, they mention the Cats Cradle in Chapel Hill and I grew up in the Triangle during the 80s, so there is that connection too. So in repurchasing this out-of-print gem I was buying some personal history. On another later major label release in their song about Chapel Hill they sing “too bad the scene is dead” so all irony aside maybe this album is when the scene was still alive for ‘the Youth’. This album is, I agree with the critics, a bit unfocused. Nonetheless I agree too with the art critic Richard Schechner in his article “The Conservative Avant-Garde” when he says that periods with the most experimental works are also the lowest “quality” but yet the most “avant-garde”, “creative”, or against the status quo. This is how the avant-garde functions. Periods of high quality or high production value invariably succumb to the pressures of profit and corporate sensibility. As Schechner also says, “There is nothing outside the corporation.” I can see why they haven’t brought this back into print. Nonetheless, this offering is perhaps some low value production but high value ‘avant-garde’ and grinding mass of moody sonic assault and atmosphere not to be missed by fans of art rock or those with interest in the historical period.