Groups start side projects for all sorts of reasons. It can while away time between album releases/tour schedules, allow for musical experimentation in areas that may alienate their core fans if done under their established brands or just give an opportunity for collaboration with other artists without risking those brands. But when the members of Sonic Youth hatched a plan for a side project in 1986, they weren’t doing it for any of the reasons stated above. Instead, they formed the side project to help a friend in need.
On 22 December 1985, D. Boon, guitarist and songwriter with Minutemen, died in a car crash, aged 27 years old. For his devastated bandmates, drummer George Hurley and bassist Mike Watt, Boon’s death not only spelt the end of Minutemen but also their participation in the music business. Watt fell into a deep depression, unable to contemplate making music without his friend.
Meanwhile, Sonic Youth, who had built up a friendship with Watt over the previous year after sharing several bills with Minutemen, offered him a shoulder to cry on while he processed his grief and managed to coax him into playing bass on a couple of tracks during sessions for their EVOL album. One of these tracks, a cover of Bubblegum by Kim Fowley, was to have something of an influence on their imminent side project given that the band recorded it by playing along to Fowley’s record then erasing everything but themselves from the recording. This would be repeated again during the EVOL sessions when Sonic Youth recorded a version of Madonna’s Into the Groove put through a mixture of stabbing discordant guitar, distant basslines, percussion, intermittent synth effects, a toneless Thurston Moore vocal and occasional snatches of the original Madonna recording being brought into the mix to harmonise with Moore. It wasn’t quite the “worlds in collision” stunt that it could have appeared at first glance.
Madonna and Sonic Youth were known to each other from Madonna’s pre-fame days fronting No Wave bands at Danceteria, “...sitting on Mike Gira’s lap...hanging out and smoking cigarettes” as Moore remembered it. Into the Groove(y) as the Sonic Youth cover became known was paired up with a one man recording by Watt of another Madonna song, Burning Up to create a 3 track 12-inch put out under the name, Ciccone Youth, a fusion of Madonna’s surname with the second part of Sonic Youth’s name.
Burnin’ Up sold particularly well in the UK, but in the main it achieved the purpose which Sonic Youth hoped it would and persuaded Mike Watt to stay in the music business. By the time 1987 rolled around, Watt and George Hurley were ready to get back on the horse again as fIREHOSE.
By 1988, Sonic Youth reactivated the Ciccone Youth name and used it to gather together both the material recorded with Watt in 1986 and several other tracks which didn’t fit the Sonic Youth mould. These included spoken word interludes on dying in a sinking boat such as Me and Jill or the business proposal floated during Two Cool Rock Chicks Listening to Neu!, a silent tribute to John Cage and a number of other offcuts and fragments heavily overladen with deconstruction, sampling, compression and other experimental tangents. They called it The Whitey Album though any similarities to The Beatles 1968 double-album are only to be found in tracks which recall the spirit of Helter Skelter, Revolution 9 and the unreleased What’s the New, Mary Jane?
But this is Sonic Youth we’re talking about and inevitably their love of straightforward pop would have to find expression in some form. On The Whitey Album, it came about through this version of one of the most iconic songs of the 1980s, Addicted to Love by Robert Palmer. It is arguable that Addicted to Love owes much of its iconic status to its striking music video in which Palmer was backed by a band comprised of identical female models, but it’s worth remembering that no less a figure than Noddy Holder regarded Addicted to Love as the song he would have most loved to have written. Ciccone Youth’s presentation of Addicted to Love is considerably less polished than Palmer’s original given that Kim Gordon is intoning over a karaoke backing track. No models in the video either, though Kim made the video herself using a film-your-own video booth at a branch of Macy’s and decided to go for a Vietnam War vibe. I’d spent many years regarding Addicted to Love as an 80s relic, I think I felt that even at the time that it came out, but this version of it has caused me to reassess my attitude towards it. The truth is that it’s been stuck in my head this last week both in its Ciccone Youth and Robert Palmer versions. Kim’s video may seem to give a subtle middle finger to the glossy decadence of the original video, but even reviewing that , I hadn’t realised just how tongue in cheek the Palmer video was. It’s a great, indestructible song and any way of performing it will ensure it remains an earworm regardless of whether you want decadence or grime.
Addicted to a good night’s sleep in my case...Peel was not so easily persuaded by itin either version.
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