Goo In Your Hand!

This just in! Ben Rayner went to the My Bloody Valentine ATP in December and made a zine out of what he saw. He also partied with an obscure Canadian group called Fucked Up. Things turned funny during the taping of a new episode of the hit VICE TV show Soft Focus when guests Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon disparagingly branded Fucked Up as “dude-core” to host Ian Svenonius. Coincidentally, earlier that day, Ben Cook and Jonah Falco of Fucked Up had written and recorded a song with Ben Rayner about Sonic Youth in a recording studio on the ATP site! Here’s a conversation with Rayner about it all. Vice: Tell us the story of how those mythical recordings came about.
Ben Rayner: We thought it was a good idea to go into the recording studio in Butlins. Usually the studio is for dudes who go in and sing karaoke in front of a green screen, but they happened to have a shitty Strat copy, so we went in there and recorded five songs in an hour. They should be getting released in the coming months. In turn, one of the song titles inspired the zine title. What is the zine’s title?
Cranking to Sonic Youth. OK. What does “cranking” mean?
It’s when somebody is crying and wanking at the same time. And what are the lyrics to the song “Cranking to Sonic Youth”?
“Cranking to Sonic Youth/ Goo in your hand/ Goo in your hand”. OK. And is there a verse?
That’s the verse. The chorus is: “You love Thurston and you love Kim/ You love art and you are thin”. Got it.
We actually recorded a whole EP. Big news. What are the other songs about?
We have one called “Slovakian Pete” about a Slovakian dude I met on the first night at ATP. He had moved to Minehead to work at Burger King. What are the lyrics to that?
“Slovakian Pete/ Slovakian Pete/ Flippin’ the meat/ Flippin’ the meat”. We’ve got a song called “Nerds at ATP” too. How does that go?
The chorus is “Fuck off!/ Nerds at ATP!”. Right.
The verse is: “Hey tweed blazer walking on the grass/ You look like you’ve got a stick up your arse”. Are there any other songs?
They are the hits. They are all you need to know about. Isn’t there another song about a band that played at ATP but which, for whatever reason, you’re not allowed to tell me about?
Nah, definitely not. But that’s the funniest one.
Jonah and Ben are stressed about it. I honestly can’t say or they’ll kill me. Please can we say the lyrics to it here?
Sorry, no. You can find these very special recordings on the VICE Music Player Maybe by the time you read this the secret song about the band we can’t tell you about will be up there too.
Watch out for the next episodes of Soft Focus, which feature interviews with Sonic Youth, Sonic Boom and J. Mascis. They will be out in the spring on VICE TV. The zine is available from benrayner.tumblr.com.