Minutemen bassist Mike Watt was still reeling after D. Boon's death; it took Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon's Sonic Youth parody side-project Ciccone Youth to pull him out of depression and get him on his musical feet again. It would take the skewering of some Madonna songs (the Watt-sung Burnin' Up and Into the Groovey) as well as a Robert Palmer cover (an "as tongue-in-cheek as possible" rendition of his mega-hit Addicted to Love, recorded in a karaoke booth). It's a tragic reminder of how truly awful some of the music from the 80's was.
Where Sonic Youth was a serious creative outlet for Moore (here on The Whitey Album he dubs himself The Royal Tuff Titty), Gordon (Fly Fly Away), Lee Ranaldo (The Sigh) and Steve Shelley (SS Beat Control); Ciccone Youth shows them exploring "new" territory- pseudonyms, hip-hop beats (samplers & beat-boxes), parody, spoken-word, comedy and electronica. I picked this record up a few years ago when they re-issued it on the Goofin' label- and legend has it that Madonna was totally okay with them doing this (she remembered da Yoof from her NYC days, ain't that a trip?)
If your personality veers more to the serious side and you're a fan of SY's "noise is my beautiful self-discovery" vibe, leave this alone. If you wanna laugh along with the joke (because we're all in on it if we survived the 80s), by all means check this out this now.
