Waitresses and Sonic Youth

Here's a pair of bands you rarely see compared. Why?

Both bands were formed in the early 80s when quasi-stars of the post-prog-rock/pre-no-wave New York art-music scene found a skinny chick who couldn't exactly sing but could talk really cool. Both bands had alternative hits in 1992 with brilliantly quirky pop songs. Both bands have influenced far more musicians than their mainstream fame would imply.

Plus, both bands are somehow magical. Maybe not the same kind of magic--one is the everyday magic that's responsible for you coming up with the perfect sarcastic response without even thinking about it, while the other is more the kind of magic that you have to say "klaatu verata nikto" before picking up if you don't want to wake the deadites. But still.

OK, that's really about as far as the similarities go, so now for the "contrast" part of my "compare-and-contrast" assignment.

The Waitresses made brilliantly quirky pop music from day one. Starting with "I Know What Boys Like," and ending five years later with "I Know What Boys Like." It was a good time to do quirky pop, what with new sub-KROQ-clones springing up across the country (the spawn of a former KROQ program director who'd sold his soul to Satan).

The strange thing was, they had at least 5 good songs on the album, plus one brilliant non-album track. (Remember "It's my car, and I'm gonna do the drivin', drivin'"? Didn't think so... but you should.) And of course the theme song to the most quintessentially 80s period piece, "Square Pegs." And yet, all you ever heard was "I Know What Boys Like." Or, as the band called it, in their politer moments, "That Fucking Song."

The Waitresses were, to most people, a one-hit wonder, but they did have a mini-legion of devoted fans, mostly boys who imagined having an ambiguous relationship with Patty O'Donoghue. You know, the kind that mostly consists of sneering at the world together and staggering around under the influence of something, although it might have involved some drunken sex a few times but neither of you can remember.

All Waitresses fans are now playing keyboard in post-britpop bands.

Sonic Youth started off making the most off-putting music they could make. Discordant guitars, played with screwdrivers, feeding back on each other fed through distortion, with a gravelly-voiced cry for help. Technically brilliant, but the only people who'd had enough music education to figure that out either couldn't sit through an album or were in the band.

If you've never heard it, that description isn't going to give you an idea. So, have you ever had one of those days where you can't score your fix of smack so you try a couple hits of LSD hoping you won't notice the withdrawal symptoms and then realize what a bad idea that was? The sound you heard 20 degrees off to the right of Hell: early Sonic Youth is like that. But louder.

So most of their fans had to get into them as an acquired taste. It started off as a sort of macho test, like a punk rock version of a habanero burger, but after a while it grew on you, and you found yourself trying to convince your parents that there were real melodies in there and your friends that there was raw anger in there and secretly dreading that one of them might actually get it.

All Sonic Youth fans are now playing guitar in post-grunge bands. Except the ones who are dead or in psych hospitals.

So, what the hell happened in 1992?

Well, Nirvana got famous (much to their dismay). Suddenly the alternative stations were #1, except that when they ran out of grunge bands they pretty much changed "alternative" to mean "bad wannabe-70s crap" so they could stay #1. The few real grunge bands who found themselves caught in the frenzy spent every minute telling the press how cool Sonic Youth was.

Sonic Youth responded by suddenly making quirky pop music. Sure, "Goo" made a little less sense than "I Know What Boys Like," but you have to factor in the extra decade of learning to distinguish between different varieties of feedback noise while under the influence of heavy drugs. Anyway, a few years later, you'd still hear "Goo" every once in a while (usually when some hardcore Sonic Youth fan made a request for "Schizophrenia").

Meanwhile, now that they were #1 in every major radio market, the alternative stations had to come up with morning DJs and special features like seasonal countdowns. And you can only play the Ramones' one Christmas song so many times in a row. So the music directors started looking through the requests, and they noticed one called "Christmas (W)rapping" by the Waitresses, and suddenly they were in regular rotation again. And not "That Fucking Song," either. From November to December every year, this song is all over the airwaves. On the 26th, some DJ who's glad Christmas is finally over will play "I Know What Boys Like" one time before the record goes back in the closet, but that's about it.

So, in 1992, Sonic Youth and the Waitresses both found themselves as lasting alternative quirky pop one-hit-wonders.

A few years ago, there was suddenly a major reunion circuit for 80s pop acts. Some bands are back with their original lineups--which is sometimes not such a good idea. Others are the one or two core members filled out with younger guys who used to be huge fans in the 80s and really like the idea of second choice on the 35-year-old groupies. But neither of these bands are there.

Patty O. died a few years back, and the Waitresses guys have enough class that they haven't tried to fob off a replacement singer. Sonic Youth--well, they didn't actually have a pop hit until too late to cash in, and I don't think they'd sell out if it meant having to tour with all those bands they used to hate.

Anyway, I won't ask you to listen to Sonic Youth's "Confusion Is Sex." If you're going to like it, the name probably already called up nostalgia and/or flashbacks, and you're listening to it right now.

But go buy (or at least pirate) one of the Waitresses' multiple best-of albums (pretty impressive for a two-hit-wonder with a decade between hits even though they were on the same album...).

And if you can find the Barcelona song "Haunted by the Ghost of Patty," bonus points.