Sonic Youth - Teen Age Riot (live) (SWU Festival, 2011, Brazil)

Sonic Youth's final concert, held in Paulínia, São Paulo, Brazil, on November 14, 2011.
Here's the video from their final song ever performed, "Teen Age Riot".
Kim later wrote about the show on her book, "Girl in a Band: A Memoir":
"When we came out onstage for our last show, the night was all about the boys. Thurston double-slapped our bass guitarist Mark Ibold on the shoulder and loped across the stage, followed by Lee Ranaldo, our guitarist, and then Steve Shelley, our drummer. I found that gesture so phony, so childish, such a fantasy. Thurston has many acquaintances, but with the few male friends he had he never spoke of anything personal, and he’s never been the shoulder-slapping type. It was a gesture that called out, I’m back. I’m free. I’m solo.
I was the last one to come on, making sure to mark off some distance between Thurston and me. I was exhausted and watchful. Steve took his place behind his drum set like a dad behind a desk. The rest of us armed ourselves with our instruments like a battalion, an army that just wanted the bombardment to end. It was pouring, slanting sheets of rain.
After thirty years, tonight was Sonic Youth’s final concert. The SWU Music and Arts Festival was taking place in Itu, just outside São Paulo, Brazil, five thousand miles from our home in New England. It was a three-day-long event, broadcast on Latin American television and streamed online, too, with big corporate sponsors like Coca-Cola and Heineken. It was a strange place for things to come to an end.
Thurston and I had exchanged maybe fifteen words all week. After twenty-seven years of marriage, things had fallen apart between us. In August I’d had to ask him to move out of our house in Massachusetts, and he had. He was renting an apartment a mile away and commuting back and forth to New York.
The couple everyone believed was golden and normal and eternally intact, who gave younger musicians hope they could outlast a crazy rock-and-roll world, was now just another cliché of middle-aged relationship failure - a male midlife crisis, another woman, a double life.
They say when a marriage ends that little things you never noticed before practically make your brain split open. All week that had been true for me whenever Thurston was around. Maybe he felt the same, or maybe his head was somewhere else. I didn’t really want to know, to be honest. Offstage he was constantly texting and pacing around the rest of us like a manic, guilty kid.
The bad weather had followed us through South America, from Lima to Uruguay to Chile and now to São Paulo - a corny movie-mirror of the strangeness between Thurston and me. The festival stages were like musical versions of awkward domestic tableaux - a living room, or a kitchen, or a dining room, where the husband and the wife pass each other in the morning and make themselves separate cups of coffee with neither one acknowledging the other, or any kind of shared history, in the room."

[@michaelpierce6385]

ive seen them perform live more than any other act. saw them at the cooler, the knitting factory, bowery ballroom even avery hall of all places, doing their musique concrete thing. reading kims book now. What i really like about this teenage riot, their final one, is the ever so slight nod to the tradional rock trappings that they were always so insistent to avoid. Of course they earned career long success for holding high that ideal in which they viewed themselves as ARTISTS, and belonging only to the downtown scene. Now that scene is too expensive for anyone to even dream about and its been receding ever more fast into the stuff of legend. But in the end, a drum kit, a bass guitar, and 2 electric guitars have their way with us all...the fans, the euphoric crowd and most importantly the 4 artists on stage who always stood proud in their defiance, their protest and their acceptance of a title which can only be awarded to them: The Last Rock Band That Mattered. The trails left behind, their scraps will be picked apart, analyzed, copied and never equalled.

[@samsquanch1996]

This is depressing, you can tell they really didn't want to be there.

[@katarataz]

i know the context, but the steve face and that final noise jam don´t tell me that.

[@user-ps4vq4wh3n]

@@katarataz only Kim and sometimes Lee look sad

[@alloybust3842]

@@user-ps4vq4wh3n even steve sometimes

[@nathanielmcdonald1910]

This sounds normal. Looks the same.

[@13traaa]

They really seem unhappy but in my opinions that is just because was theirs last performance , and the broke up of thurston and kim ,they didnt wanna finish that way ,however thurston screawd up everything

[@andresalarcon89]

Mucha gente en verdad no entiende la realidad de este específico monento! fue la despedida verdadera de una de las mejores banda de la vida!, hasta puedo sentir los llantos al terminar las caniones! Quién siente lo mismo?

[@christophermoon64]

Sonic-Youth changed my world for the better. Sister, Confusion is Sex, Dirty, etc. The world is brighter for having Kim, Lee, Steve, and maybe Thurston at his best. I love SY.

[@gusfernanddes]

I'm not crying, you are!

[@leothelion6075]

My God, Kim shoulda just decked him on stage as her final act onstage Feel awful for her, forcing herself to go through the motions. You can just see it, it's taking all she's got to keep it together. God bless her

[@hihowareyouthen]

Absofuckinlutely. She sounds on the verge of tears during the intro.

[@mountainsuperstudio167]

So fucking heartbreaking!

9:49 their last stare on stage :(

[@Scumpinator]

It really be like that sometimes but great final performance

[@WojtekXXl]

WTF, I'm crying ;---;

[@fernandoxavier6928]

Just a correction: that concert was not at Itu, but at Paulínia, another city in São Paulo. I was there (and anyone might check it out SWU 2011, anyway.)

[@joaoalves4927]

I was there! It was amazing. 🇧🇷

[@gerageralopes]

Tbm tomei essa chuva 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

[@jbliv831]

Sad. Last shows. Don’t cheat on the hottest girl on the planet!

[@Pyrofries]

Read "Girl in a Band" Then watch this, it's fucked.

[@eddieburrelli]

I don't think I will.

[@jenandjuice99]

That’s what brought me here. I’m reading Kim’s book

[@christopherbarney8424]

@@jenandjuice99 Same here, I just read the whole thing in 3 hours!

[@babysnail7265]

@@jenandjuice99 me too!

[@ernestotoccalino4683]

Ahhh, bueeeno. Historia pura. Kim Gordon detalla éste recital y sus sensaciones de una forma brillante y emotiva en su libro "La chica del grupo".

[@opcja9829]

Last song they ever performed is also the first song, that brings them fame

[@gevvy6]

Those final 30 seconds, absolute pain.

[@enriqueortiz6308]

Para mi , to me, the must import band, la banda más importante, en los 90

[@Amr_a82]

i was there, from SP BRASIL

[@13traaa]

Damm ,How i wish i was there man

[@NOWtheband]

It's so strange to me, to see them perform to so many people, ha ha! :-) And drummers-during-feedback is always amusing to me: They always seem lost! He he hee!

[@gustavoadolfooliveira3907]

Estava eu nesse derradeiro show da banda

[@alexfporto]

Eu também!!!

[@vicentebfl]

Estávamos

[@Amr_a82]

TB

[@gerageralopes]

Tomei essa chuva 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

[@d_walsh]

9:45 10:56 last site of kim walking off stage 11:18. Thurston sits alone

[@Aurellio1984]

Último show. Muito triste ☹️

[@fernandoxavier6928]

Eu tava lá!

[@xesfoureyes502]

Lee looks absolutely miserable

[@innerfixer]

Totally :(

[@alexisb3925]

They all do, probably cuz they were, especially Lee and Kim.

[@evangelineshadden]

@@alexisb3925 actually you are wrong i was there and lee smiled and waved at me and he said "hello ." so clearly you are wrong delete your comment

[@poiz2449]

@@evangelineshadden shut up

[@stickyfin5338]

after reading kim’s book, this just makes me really sad to watch

[@henrym8429]

1:33 is that mark ibold from pavement?

[@jmellon1004]

Yup! He was in the last version of the band.

[@robrob1723]

Mark was with SY from 2006-untill this last song here

[@dee66daniel72]

what is after 2011 - Live - SoNic s - stopt ...

[@flynnaugustbassist8523]

Yeh this is just a depressing watch. Reminds me of my mum and dad and their divorce. When I watch this I just see a family that’s fallen apart.

[@1conor]

Wonder did they know this was their last show together?

[@kaydgaming]

they definitely knew

[@ralfwk163]

Yeah it's in Kim's book, I just read a part of it and then looked this up cause she said the show is online but she does not want to ever see it (or something along those lines)

[@jesuszuniga7118]

F

[@nathanielmcdonald1910]

Underrated band of ever. Love these guys. Sucks to shit it's over. Kim's solo isn't that great.

[@charlie.something]

The 2 weirdest rhythm guitarists ever = bob weir / lee renaldo.

[@thescarletandgrey2505]

The drummer is great. The others….own instruments as well.

[@jacobm92]

lmao you clearly do not play guitar or know any music theory if you think that

[@tiekbane]

Having not watched all this, I can say this sucked the big one.

[@airsickgrove]

Wow comments here are proof that the internet has a become a sociopaths arcade... trolls in 3-2-1...

[@aaronmarrazzo5888]

Kim looks so choked. Such a terrible time for the band....sad.

[@deankaraniya7422]

They sound like they are on sedatives.

[@spaceengineer1452]

Great drumming. Bad vocals (both)...as for the end...plain embarressing.

[@kittycrafter1]

I couldn't be bothered to try my best at singing if I was performing my last show with my ex husband who cheated on me either

[@spaceengineer1452]

@@kittycrafter1 Yeah, it must have been just awful for her. What a sad ending all round.