Synopsis

At a Sonic Youth concert, a young woman in a Nirvana T-shirt notices a flannel-wearing boy in the crowd. As the band tears through the song, the pair move closer, dance together, and fall into a spontaneous romance amid the sweat and chaos of the mosh pit. Their attraction culminates with both climbing onto the stage to kiss while Sonic Youth continue playing. Security eventually removes them, but their ecstatic stage dive turns the concert into the beginning of a shared adventure.

Factoids & Trivia

• Drummer Steve Shelley said that Thurston Moore wrote the screenplay for the video, giving its simple concert romance a deliberately scripted structure.

• The club scenes were filmed at Beowulf, a now-defunct New York City venue that was part of the downtown music circuit.

• The young woman was played by Lisa Stansbury, while Matthew Horn portrayed the boy. Sonic Youth reportedly noticed both performers at a Dinosaur Jr. show at Maxwell's in Hoboken.

• The girl's Nirvana shirt is a telling period detail. The video predates Nirvana's mainstream breakthrough with "Nevermind," making the shirt an accidental snapshot of the pre-grunge-boom underground.

• "Dirty Boots" was the third and final single from 1990's "Goo." Sonic Youth created video pieces for every song on the album, with this and "Kool Thing" receiving the most polished, conventional treatments.

• The video was later included on "Corporate Ghost: The Videos: 1990-2002," the band's comprehensive music-video collection.