They're keepers of the grunge

Sonic YOUTH roared to the front of the underground music scene in 1988 with "Daydream Nation," a double-LP still regarded as their masterpiece. Oozing with detuned guitars, hoarse spoken/sung/shouted vocals, near-abstract lyrics and crescendos of noise, there was nothing to compare it to. They sounded like they'd come from the future -- or the hippest, grittiest block in New York City at the very least -- on a mission to change rock 'n' roll. Rolling Stone presciently described the album as "the sound of the New Rock Nation rising." David Browne's biography of Sonic Youth, "Goodbye 20th Century," is as much a chronicle of the combustion of music and popular culture they helped ignite as it is an earnest portrait of the band and examination of their work.

"Daydream Nation" garnered ecstatic reviews and sold well for an independent release. Sensing the Next Big Thing, Browne recounts, the major labels swarmed the band. After a lot of wooing from executives, Sonic Youth went with Los Angeles-based Geffen Records, in part because Geffen would allow them complete creative control. As one friend of the band noted, "They wanted it on their own terms, and their own terms are completely askew from what pop music is." When Kim Gordon, the band's bassist, sometime singer and full-time arbiter of cool, called the label to let it know the papers had been signed, she also offered a piece of advice: The next band they should sign should be a group called Nirvana.

It was Nirvana, of course, who turned out to be the real Next Big Thing. In 1990, Sonic Youth released their major label debut, "Goo," with the single "Kool Thing" to encouraging sales of more than 200,000. A year later, Nirvana's fist-pumping anthem "Smells Like Teen Spirit" fully roused Generation X from its slacker slumber. The album it was on, "Nevermind," sold millions and loosed a torrent of rough-hewn bands on mainstream America, igniting the grunge craze that reinvigorated commercial radio and the flannel industry. Almost overnight "alternative" was the most powerful marketing buzzword in the country.

Grunge pioneers

Sonic Youth were not a grunge band, but they had played a decisive role in breaking open the underground music scene. Throughout the '90s, they rode the wave as revered pioneers of alternative rock, headlining the massive Lollapalooza tours, getting the full major label push for their grungiest album, 1992's "Dirty" (get it?), touring with proto-grunge icon Neil Young and even appearing on "The Simpsons." But by the end of the decade, much of the steam was out of alternative rock, and Geffen and the band adjusted to the reality that Sonic Youth's chance at the really big big-time had passed.