Sonic Youth and Mike Watt used to have a thing about Madonna. SY, for the most part, are responsible for a goofy album under the name Ciccone Youth. That album, The Whitey Album, is not a very serious affair with lots of experimental and noise recordings, a few Madonna covers, a weird track with J Mascis on lead guitar, and Kim Gordon singing Addicted To Love in a karaoke booth. Pretty inessential but nonetheless entertaining. The high points are definitely the track with J Mascis (Two Cool Rock Chicks Listening To Neu), the cover of Madonna's Into The Groove and Mike Watt's solo demo of Burnin' Up. Before the album was released though, Ciccone Youth produced a much better single.
The self-titled Ciccone Youth single featured the same version of Into The Groove from The Whitey Album, retitled Into The Groovy here, along with Thurston's Tuff Titty Rap intro to the song, both on the b0side and featuring assistance from Martin Bisi on engineering and drum programming. The real find though is the a-side, Watt's finished version of Burnin' Up. Watt handles guitars, bass and vocals while Ethan James engineers and programmed the drum machine and Greg Ginn provides a fucked-up guitar solo. It's so ridiculously eighties and it will have you dancing like an idiot in a heartbeat. Why Watt's demo ended up on the album as opposed to this version is a question I'd love to see answered, but Sonic Youth clearly held the reigns regarding this project and we all know how stereotypically indie they can be, so in the end it's not that hard to imagine them pulling a stunt like this for no particular reason. After all, they ended up making an album out of this and that album is more noise than Madonna tribute.
This single is a ton of fun and totally worth your time to download. Into The Groovy is truly groovy with occasional Madonna samples creeping in over Thurston's voice and Burnin' Up is truly excellent. It's so much fun when you get to see artists as talented as Watt and the folks from SY having truly inspired fun doing things like this. Hope you enjoy!
Ciccone Youth - Ciccone Youth 7"
01 Burnin' Up
02 Tuff Titty Rap
03 Into The Groovy
PS - In case you want to inflict further pain upon yourself, The Whitey Album is available for purchase digitally on iTunes and Amazon.
