Sonic Youth, too young to be punk and too old to be alternative, is the key to understanding and appreciating what happened between then and now. In 1981 Sonic Youth formed amid the burnt embers of punk's explosion and No Wave's fizzle. In 1990 the band enjoined Geffen, its current label, with Nirvana, the group who changed it all. This book is an attempt to tell the story of the last fifteen or so years in rock-music history through a band that, although it has yet to sell a million albums or become an MTV or commercial-radio mainstay, somehow embodies a sea change in American popular-culture tastes.
