pitchfork: Pitchfork: Starbucks to Release Sonic Youth Celebrity Compilation

Starbucks to Release Sonic Youth Celebrity Compilation





Thurston: "We asked all these different people to choose their favorite Sonic Youth song. Jeff Tweedy, Beck, Marc Jacobs, Portia de Rossi, Michelle Williams ... Starbucks is the new record store, right?"

When Pitchfork called up Thurston Moore for an interview, we expected to chat about his forthcoming solo record, as well as Sonic Youth's legendary 1988 album Daydream Nation, recently reissued and being taken on tour this summer (including, as you know, a stop at the Pitchfork Music Festival).
And we did chat about that-- a whole lot-- and we can't wait to let you know everything Thurston said. But you're just going to have to wait until Monday, because in the middle of our interview, Thurston dropped a bomb...

Pitchfork: Is Sonic Youth working on any new material right now?

Thurston Moore: No, no. We kind of need to record a song for this Starbucks record that's coming out.

Pitchfork: For, uh, Starbucks?!

Thurston Moore: Yeah. We sort of devised this idea of a Sonic Youth record where we asked all these different people to choose their favorite song, people like artists and actors and other musicians and what have you. So all these people, from Jeff Tweedy to Beck to Marc Jacobs to Portia de Rossi to Michelle Williams [laughs], they all chose their favorite songs and wrote a little thing about it. So it's a compilation record of artists choosing songs of Sonic Youth. There's going to be one exclusive song of ours that we'll record, so that's something we have to record.

Pitchfork: So it's going to be one of those things up at the counter along with the biscotti and the disc of Elton John's favorite Christmas songs?

Thurston Moore: [laughs] Yeah, something like that. I wish Starbucks would ask me to compile a mixtape record.

Pitchfork: That would be ... interesting.

Thurston Moore: I love doing that stuff. But you know, it's so funny, because Starbucks is the new record store, right? [laughs]

Pitchfork: Yeah. I guess if you're in there buying a four dollar cup of coffee, the idea of throwing down a few more for the CD seems like no big deal.

Thurston Moore: Exactly, or getting the Paul McCartney gift card, you know. It's attractive, in a way [laughs]. I like these underground bands that only make records and stuff that they sell only at gigs, and it's only available if you go to the gig to their merch table and they advertise it on their site and at different blogs and they'll list all these things like "edition of 50, only available on this little tour we're doing." So if you're a fan you kind of got to go to get the merch.

Well, there you have it. A Sonic Youth album... for Starbucks.

We'll give you the weekend to think that over. Stay tuned for much, much more from Thurston on Monday, when we'll run the full interview.

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It sounds like it could be an interesting compilation, but I hate the whole Starbucks thing no matter who the artist is. I mean, I go in for the latte and come out with Thurston Moore? It just seems cheap to me somehow.

A lot of the albums sold at Starbucks seem to be bland, Pitchfork approved type shit anyway, so I'm not sure why the interviewer is being a dick about it.

weird

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no no never say maybe to smack bunny baby again.

strange- but ill more than likely chekc it out anyway

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my heart isn't black, it's just dirty from the floors

The interviewer was a total asshole about it. I don't know. I guess my only problem with the whole Starbucks thing is just how many of them there are. The idea of music being sold at coffeeshops is cool...but not when those coffeeshops have a monopoly over entire cities. But then again, how different is it to make a compilation for Virgin megastore or Borders? Nothing is sacred anymore.

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"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation," she told the crowd.

I live in Toronto and there are three Starbucks within two blocks of my work. I live about a 25-minute walk away and when I walk home I can potentially pass another 3 or 4. And they're always all busy!

A $4 beverage is a treat for me, not something I have every day.

Yeah, $4 is way too much to spend every day. Thankfully, I just love their coffee - not into lattes etc - so that's just under $2 a cup. I also buy their beans and grind and brew at home, which saves some $$.

Funny that there are so many in Toronto, but not in Mississauga. There aren't enough of them here (at least not close to my work). Tim Horton's coffee seems to be going downhill - the only time I like it is when I brew it myself at home. Most of the actual stores seem to be really watering it down lately.

this is so random, it rocks!

This made me mad for some reason.

I'm gonna have to call shenanigans on this. It's sell out bullshit, is what it is. 5 dollar coffee made with beans picked by African serfs for half-pennies on the dollar, and a bunch of celebricunts pick their favorite Sonic Youth songs, and Thurston Moore is all like, "LOL, we have to record a new song for our new corporate overlords, but it will be artsy and have artistic integrity and whatnot, LOL. Anything to get our fans in the door to suck down some overpriced brown anus water."

I can just imagine some dumb yuppie fucker unironically and obliviously reading the latest Adbusters, thinking they're all anti-estab and avant-garde, drinking a slave-labor latte, and wondering what Michelle Williams' favorite Sonic Youth song is.

I'm all for musicians making a living and shit, but THIS? It's tacky. Not quite KISS tacky, but certainly more tacky than The Who.

I have lost respect.

not only is this TACKY it's fucking stupid. why do celebrities or record producers think anyone should give a shit what washed up B-list celebs like Portia DeRossi like to listen to?

i know i couldnt give less of a shit.
and if they like any Sonic Youth, it's because it came on some free hip cd i bet.

this is so gay.
starbucks makes me hate everything about american society.

Sonic Youth don't need our respect. They have money.

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disgusting, why...

^^



BAD IDEA.

haha.


ok who buys cds at starbucks? I read Thurston Moore going on about how people don't shop at record stores anymore, but they shop at Starbucks.
WTF early onset of senior dementia sounds more like it.

i didnt even know starbucks sold cds.. do they in the uk?

Words can't express my emotion towards this.

FUCK Starbucks. And fuck you Thurston Moore.
I feel really cheated.
xx

the starbucks by my house is selling Icky Thump- they sell all kinds of CDs there

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my heart isn't black, it's just dirty from the floors

threads like this show the difference between casual listeners who have just a couple of albums and jump to a "oh fuck i hate you" conclusion to those who actually understand good business decisions with a corporation who actually pay their workers a living wage and buy the highest free trade coffee by volume then any other major outlet

it is funny, the actual thread at the sy board is 9 pages long, the steve albini board is up to 23 pages on theirs, people need to lighten the fuck up about it

they better get good pension money out of this

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When I awoke, the Dire Wolf
Six hundred pounds of sin
Was grinning at my window
All I said was "Come on in".
Grateful Dead