Kill Yr Idols is the follow-up EP to Sonic Youth's second album, 1983's Confusion Is Sex.
Kill Yr Idols marks the first recorded release with new drummer Bob Bert, who would remain on board for the next couple of years, until he left to join D.C. noise-punk band Pussy Galore.
Kill Yr Idols takes the same ideas that the band was developing on CiS, and
condenses them, making them fit onto an EP. It is a dark, scary, and almost trance-like. Whether that is it is trance-inducing for the listener, or representative the music's hold over Sonic Youth as they performed it, is completely subjective. The record is harsh, and abrasive, with no attempts made to incorporate a melody or hooks into the context of the songs. This is quite possibly Sonic Youth's least accessible recording to date.
It was released on Zensor,(Zensor 10), in Germany, as a twelve inch vinyl EP. And subsequently re-released on DGC, attached to the end of the CiS CD re-issue. The original track list is as follows:
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Protect Me You
-
Shaking Hell
-
Shaking Hell
(Live at the Plugg Club, NYC, October 15th, 1983)
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Kill Yr. Idols
-
Brother James
-
Early American
Kill Yr. Idols (the song) has also been known under different names. The most notorious of which is "I Killed Christgau With My Big Fuckin' Dick", which was a live version, released as the b-side of the "(over) Kill Yr Idols" seven inch. The a-side being "Making the Nature Scene", both songs were recorded live at "The Loft", in Berlin, in 1985. It was the first release from the newly minted Forced Exposure record label, founded by Thurston Moore. The seven inch came along with the Forced Exposure zine, and was limited to 500 copies.
Though the song had different titles, the lyrics remained the same, and those lyrics,
have become a battle cry (of sorts) in some of the most embittered punk or alternative music circles...
I don't know why,
You wanna impress Christgau,
Yeah, let that shit die,
And find out the new goal
Kill Yr Idols,
Sonic Death,
It's the end of the world,
And confusion is sex,
Kill Yr Idols,
Sonic Death,
It's the end of the world,
And confusion is sex...
©1983 Sonik Tooth
Thanks to Expressway To Yr Skull for some of the info.