People pay to see others believe in themselves.
Many people don't know whether they can
experience the eroctic or whether it exists
only in commercials; but onstage, in the midst
of rock 'n' roll, many things happen and anything
can happen, whether people come as voyeurs or
come to submit to the moment... Performers
appear to be submitting to the audience, but in
the process they gain control of the audience's
emotions. They begin to dominate the situation
through the awe inspired by their total submission
to it.

"I'm Really Scared When I Kill in My Dreams"
Artforum, January 1983

That's where Gordon's howling dive into "I Wanna
Be Your Dog" begins - in your awe at her total submission,
or her awe-struck anticipation of yours. The performance
is absolutely unstable, three minutes of panic, and it
still bubbles like a witches' cauldron; it'll dissolve
anything. This was a kind of fire nobody else was playing
with in 1982 and 1983 - not that I heard, anyway.

Following the five-song 12" "Sonic Youth" from 1982, the 1983
"Confusion is Sex" was Sonic Youth's first full-length album.
Both came out on the tiny New York label Neutral, but the
noise traveled quickly enough. The music was moody, shapely,
meandering from songs that resembled nothing much as the sort
of chants little kids come up with when they've been sent to
their rooms without supper ("Protect Me You," sung by Gordon;
"Confusion Is Next," sung by guitarist Thurston Moore) to
trances that seemed neither to begin nor end. The shapeliness
of the music was internal. Without exact borders, the songs
rose up, staked a claim on your attention, fears, or desires,
and then turned into air.

That still left "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and the following
number, "Shaking Hell," as ambushes, doors slammed in
your face as you drifted in the other music. "Shaking
Hell" - Gordon seemingly singing to the mirror - starts
out as another mood piece. It chases its title, catches
it, then slowly, deliberately erases the lines between
submission and domination, fantasy and rape, performance
and violence, crimes and punishment.

"I'll take of your dress/I'll shake off your flesh" - Gordon
and Moore, guitarist Lee Ranaldo, and drummer Jim Sclavunos,
soon replaces by Bob Bert, made the lines thrilling, like any
great music, but not exactly fun. No fun, in fact. It's even
less fun than the live version included on "Kill Yr. Idols,"
the five song 1983 12" the band put out as a follow-up to
"Confusion is Sex." Here a rumble builds all through the
performance; by the end the rumble almost has a body, a face,
a recognizably human voice - but not quite. People don't
really sound like that - want like that, hate like that -
do they?

In 1983, Sonic Youth was going to extremes most other bands
didn't know existed; in a certain way, they were issuing a
challenge to the rest of pop music. As things turned out,
they pretty much has to answer it themselves.