Customer Reviews

Screaming Fields of Sonic Love [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'll not attempt to review Sonic Youth's musical prowess, as it's hard to convey what I like about them. Suffice it to say, they are as gods to me, so they can do no wrong. :)

Screaming Fields of Sonic Love compiles a great variety of videos and performances from Sonic Youth over a long period of time. Several albums are represented- Bad Moon Rising, Evol, Sister, Ciccone Youth- The Whitey Album, Daydream Nation (arguably their best work).

The videos' quality varies wildly- Richard Kern's video for Death Valley '69 is gritty, disturbing, and has a visceral impact; Kevin Kerslake's videos are fairly pedestrian, but improve over the course of the video (I found his video for Shadow of a Doubt- Kim on top of a train- boring); the cheesy Addicted to Love video is funny if you're a fan, but your non fan friends will just roll their eyes whenever it's on.

The live performances, while obviously displaying no special effects or other video tricks, are interesting- although one wonders why Iggy Pop keeps showing up. The opening performance is a downer; SY begins playing a noisy clangy song, "Inhuman", and it gets cut off in the middle. If you enjoy SY's guitar noodlings, the inability to hear the entire live performance is grating.

Over all, of course, there's quality and cohesiveness (or lack thereof). Musically, SFoSL is very good, peaking (IMO) with the songs from Daydream Nation- the era represented on this collection is my favorite, and thus boosts this to a favored position over "Goo". Cohesively, this suffers. With songs from so many albums, there is no real theme tying anything together. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be an "early hits" collection, an "early history" retrospective, if it's the favorites of the band, or what. (The album suffers from this, too.) I'm not sure what the package is trying to represent.

Regardless of any complaints, this video is well worth the time and money. Amazon.com's current price is very favorable, and if you're a SY fan, there should be no question about purchasing this title. Just buy it!

I remember a time when music videos were an artistic medium being explored by generations... and this video takes me back to just such a time. If you like music or music videos this purchase is a given - They just don't make 'em like this anymore. Which brings me to my point; Sonic Youth fans are my least favorite people in the world. The pretentious masses of art-prog-socio-fanettes that buy tickets to SY shows will tell you whatever they have to in the hopes of seeming somehow "above" this collection (and EVERYTHING ELSE). But the bottom line is that it rocks, and that's all I need from my rock music.

This long form music video by Sonic Youth contains excellent Early Sonic videos. It has videos such as "Shadow of a Doubt", "Addicted to Love", "MacBeth", "Death Valley '69", "Teenage Riot" and others. These videos were probably never seen on MTV, muchmusic or anywhere else. The videos are taken from all the Early Sonic albums such as Confusion Is Sex, Bad Moon Rising, Evol, Ciccone Youth and Daydream Nation. This video is a must have for all Sonic Youth fans! Once you watch this video, it will make you wanna pop open a bottle of beer and trash your house! You will not be disappointed! It would be great to have this reissued on DVD!

Sonic Youth's video compilation, Screaming Fields of Sonic Love is a very good collection of Sonic Youths video's and performances from various filmed events. It is a great view of the band before the 1990's and is the only film of Sonic Youth that I know of, that show Sonic Youth outside of the corporate spotlight. To improve the film, Sonic Youth should have included more, and maybe even earlier performances of the band if possible. This film deserves four stars just for the fact that it is a view of the band from its earlier years.

Well, these are old Sonic Youth releases.THe videos are poor in quality, but the songs are pretty Sonic.Videos are also so funny, you can't really piss on them . 3stars OK?

wonderful angry noisy bohemic scary frightening amusing unadulterated cosmic flowing entertaining nihilistic avant garde stoic anti capitalist uncompromising funny impressive undeletable repeatable repeatable repeatable repeatable repeatable repeatable......................

worth it for the video and live silver rocket and the early vid for my friend goo