Music
The album's lead track, "Dirty Boots", evokes old blues slang in its declaration that "It's time to rock the road/And tell the story of the jelly rollin'/Dirty boots are on/Hi de ho."
The second track, "Tunic (Song for Karen)", is about Karen Carpenter, a pop drummer and singer who died from anorexia nervosa. It imagines her in heaven, happy, playing the drums again and meeting new friends Dennis Wilson, Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin.
The album featured the single "Kool Thing", on which Chuck D from the rap group Public Enemy guested. The song is purported to be about the disillusionment that bass player Kim Gordon experienced after interviewing LL Cool J for Spin Magazine the previous year. "Are you going to liberate us girls from male, white, corporate oppression?" Gordon asks in the song. The album version of "Mary-Christ" fades out with a portion of the intro to "Kool Thing". This is because in the recording session for "Mary-Christ" the band went right into "Kool Thing", but this take of "Kool Thing" was not chosen for the album. "Kool Thing" was featured prominently in Hal Hartley's indie film "Simple Men."
"Mildred Pierce" is one of the first Sonic Youth songs ever written. It is also one of the few to use standard guitar tuning. The title comes from the Joan Crawford film of the same name.
The album's title derives from the song "My Friend Goo", a portrait of a friend who "sticks just like glue." According to the Sonic Youth website, a considered title was "Blow Job?" for a while. This was also the working title for "Mildred Pierce".
Read more about this topic: Goo (album)
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“For do but note a wild and wanton herd
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;
If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze
By the sweet power of music.”
—William Shake{peare (1564–1616)
“Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;
Yet slower yet, oh faintly gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
“Woe weeps out her division when she sings.”
Droop herbs and flowers;
Fall grief in showers;
“Our beauties are not ours”:
Oh, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature’s pride is, now, a withered daffodil.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“Westminster Abbey is nature crystallized into a conventional form by man, with his sorrows, his joys, his failures, and his seeking for the Great Spirit. It is a frozen requiem, with a nation’s prayer ever in dumb music ascending.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)