Thurston Moore: Oh man, we had to listen to all that music we did so long ago. Hours and hours, days and days of listening to these tapes. It was just too weird. It was such a different time period for us. But it was an interesting, exciting time. We found all these formative songs that were quite different in regards to what they developed into.

PB: Have you started work on the Goo and Daydream Nation reissues yet?

TM: We're just starting on Goo. Hopefully, we'll have live stuff on there, because Dirty has no live material. You have to be really careful with live stuff anyway, because if it's not super-choice, nobody wants to hear that shit. [Laughs] One thing with Goo is that we were on the Neil Young tour for three months, so there might be some interesting documents from that.

PB: Like the audience abusing you?

TM: You'll hear huge, arena-sized Pepsi containers hitting the stage while we're playing. [Laughs] You can almost hear those middle fingers in the air.

PB: There were plenty of puzzled looks amongst the baby boomers when you hit the stage on that tour.

TM: Well, nobody comes to hear an opening band on a tour like that anyway, let alone a band of de-tuned guitars, playing songs with completely unorthodox structures. So it was definitely an interesting tour in that respect. Going on at 7:00 to a one-third filled arena of people who don't have any interest in seeing you anyway -- it has its limitations.

PB: Are you wary about doing something like that again?

TM: Yes. Although we did a few days on an R.E.M. tour, which was a bit more compatible, and then, years later with Pearl Jam, which was even more compatible. But still, a lot of people who come to a Pearl Jam concert are not into the fringes of underground rock culture. So, some people are intrigued and some people are just like, "Eddddie!" [Laughs] They don't want it. That's just the way it is. We're not out there to convert people. We're just out there to offer something that's us.

PB: When Dirty came out, Nevermind had just blown up. Did you think you guys might sell some records?

TM: At the time I remember being like, "OK, this one's gonna fall right in there with the success of Nevermind and this other band, Pearl Jam." It didn't really happen that way. We were still too offbeat. I mean, Nirvana was a straight-ahead rock band with three chords and a great singer. Pearl Jam was a traditional rock band. We were anything but traditional. Even though that record was produced by the same team that produced Nevermind, and it had this really good, heavy rock sound, the music we were coming out of was really just experimental art-rock. It had nothing to do with Deep Purple. [Laughs]

PB: You navigated the music business pretty well, though, in terms of remaining true to your artistic ideals but still feeding yourselves.

TM: Well, I don't think we really had the ability to sell out, because we don't know how to play our instruments. [Laughs] I still don't know how to play guitar. That really doesn't go a long way with a lot of music listeners. They want to hear chops. Our example is one of freedom and avant-garde tendencies, teaching yourself by creating your own rules. Being sort of recognized in the mainstream -- just because of our association with the culture -- is an interesting place to be, but it doesn't generate enough coin for me.

PB: Are you bitter when you see bands Sonic Youth influenced making truckloads of money?