Goo Demos

Sonic Youth signed with a major label, Geffen Records, in 1989. In November that year they went to the Waterworks studios in New York to record the 8-track demos for what would become Goo– then tentatively called “Blow Job?”, as a test of the new label’s humour.

Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis and producer Don Fleming were invited by Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore to take part in the sessions (though reportedly Steve Shelley and Lee Ranaldo were not that happy with the idea).

Some people seem to think the *Goo Demos** were intended as the actual record, but were rejected by Geffen, but that is not true: they were meant to be demos. Some songs are clearly in an unfinished state, with still improvised lyrics and segments missing. Others are closer to their final released version. Some titles were also changed.

The only song from the demo sessions that wouldn’t appear in Goo is “Lee #2”, on the other hand, the noisy experimental piece “Scooter + Jinx” was in the records but wasn’t demo'ed. “Dirty Boots” was offered in two versions: one edited, and one with the full outro.

The band decided to self-release the Goo Demos via Sonic Death in 1991, after bootlegs of it it started popping up from various sources. These bootlegs feature different artwork and some songs are titled differently: “My Friend Goo” sometimes become “My Pal Goo”; “Animal” becomes “Animal Song”; “DV2” becomes “Du ii”; “Lee #2” becomes “Notorious Rocking Lee”.

Moore did the artwork for the “official” version of the Goo Demos, using photos of their label’s owner, David Geffen, back when he was dating Cher. A nice joke about the band’s “selling out”.

Write up in Sonic Death #1:

THE GOO demos on CD – the goo demos were recorded at waterworks studio, NYC in Nov ‘89. (working title was 'Blowjob?’ based on the pettibon t-shirt and imminent signing to the geffen/DGC label). Jim Waters was the engineer and Don Fleming & J Mascis assisted as producers. Recorded on 8-tracks, the sessions have appeared on several inferior bootlegs Butt here they are from the original master tapes in beautitous stereo cd – Sound!

In 2005, for the 15th Anniversary of Goo’s release, a deluxe edition was released, with all the demos included plus an instrumental version of “Lee #2”. Sonic Youth and Jim O'Rourke remixed them from the master 8-track tapes. In many cases, the difference is significant.