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:
“Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“In benevolent natures the impulse to pity is so sudden, that like instruments of music which obey the touch ... you would think the will was scarce concerned, and that the mind was altogether passive in the sympathy which her own goodness has excited. The truth is,—the soul is [so] ... wholly engrossed by the object of pity, that she does not ... take leisure to examine the principles upon which she acts.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)