"Nobody was looking at anything pre-1977... The first time I noticed somebody doing that was when we first went up to Seattle and saw Green River. I realized that there were people up there making reference to music that pre-dated punk, which was such a radical thing to do at the time" - Thurston Moore, talking to Punk Planet.
So Green River - Pacific North West proto-grungesters who contained future members of Mudhoney and Pearl Jam - get the nod from Sonic Youth's mainman for being ahead-of-their-time in being behind-of-their-time. The first ones to dare to go back before the cut-off point of 1977.
"Such a radical thing to do at that time"
Now, obviously, someone like Moore is not going to big up a group like The Cult, who were harking back to Led Zeppelin and hairy hoary pre-punk heaviness on 1985's Love, possibly earlier with Dreamtime, which I've not heard.
Still, I'm not sure if this is completely true even in the parochial way Moore meant "nobody" - ie. nobody within the post-hardcore noisy-gtr world of bands who might get reviewed in Forced Exposure.
After all, Meat Puppets had already been reactivating aspects of Grateful Dead and Neil Young on II and Up On the Sun... Black Flag had started to get Sabbath-dirgy and stoner-burnout vibe with My War. Husker Du verge on Mahavishnu zones of foaming abstraction on "Reoccurring Dreams" on 1984's Zen Arcade. I think there are a few other examples too.
Well, there's also Sonic Youth's own "Death Valley 69", released late 1984, although that is more a case of late Sixties iconography than a musical influence.
Nonetheless, 1985 - the year of "Swallow My Pride", off Come On Down E.P. - does seem right in terms of being the pivotal year in terms of when it all goes in reverse. When indie-rock / alt-rock comes to mean non-contemporary. When post-punk principles cease to apply (albeit having a half-life in areas like industrial and EBM).
"Such a radical thing to do at that time"
Of course, what Moore really means is not just pre-1977 - more precisely, he's talking about pre-1977 but also post-1967. Green River, he is asserting, were the first to go into the off-limits late Sixties and first-half Seventies.
Because of course prior to '85 there'd been all manner of indie groups ripping off The Byrds, The Velvets, Love.... there'd been the garage punk revival.... lots of Sixties-pasticherie from Hitchcock to the Paisley Underground.
No, it's the punk-decreed 1968-1975 Wasteland that Green River are inching into.
"Such a radical thing to do at that time"
And certainly 1985 was when I personally really started to assimilate that kind of double-think into my own evaluative mechanism, the "old is now new" switch.... within a few years I'd be praising, say, Walking Seeds for sounding like Blue Cheer and Iron Butterfly, or Saint Vitus for cloning Sabbath brilliantly. Making deities of Butthole Surfers, rather than prosecuting them for being rock parodists (an equally tenable viewpoint).
And from 1985 roughly onwards, you might say that this is nearly all that Forced Exposure is about.... praising new underground groups for their resemblances to or reactivation of things prior to the 1977 cut-off.
That, and Albini style liberal-baiting.
"Such a radical thing to do at that time"
"Such a radical thing to do at that time"
"Such a radical thing to do at that time"
"Such a radical thing to do at that time"
"Such a radical thing to do at that time"
"Such a radical thing to do at that time"
"Such a radical thing to do at that time"
"Such a radical thing to do at that time"
"Such a radical thing to do at that time"
"Such a radical thing to do at that time"
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