I won’t judge Jessica Hopper’s review of Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation on the album itself, since that wasn’t her intention in the first place [“The Fountain of Sonic Youth,” June 15]. Hopper’s criticisms on the “reissue” album and its evocation to recall the fountain of perpetual youth is quite bizarre if not lacking in any substance.
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Yes, people grow older. Yes, albums become touchstones of people’s lives. And, yes, some of us (without apprehensions or misgiving I might add) enjoy reliving past times through the music–the very soundtrack–that evinced those affective moments we like to recall as memorable or, in the least, remembered (be they in the many guises of angst, love, hate, fear, paranoia, etc).
Needless to say, “punk” elicits many myths, if not nostalgic notions of its historic rise. When Hopper claims that the genre is “nihilistic music made by angry kids, and its nature is to die, to be extinguished, to destroy itself” is historically false and a romanticized version of punk. If this were the case, none of the albums, bands, or histories that is punk would be remembered, listened to, or spoken about.
Farris Wahbeh
