Binghamton University likes to play up its prowess in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, and it is not without good reason — we got the guy who invented the lithium-ion battery teaching here and he won a Nobel Prize for that accomplishment.

Yet, there has always been an artistic side to BU — which may not be what we are known for — that has been dealing with the avant-garde and inspiring students for generations. Out of this milieu came Lee Ranaldo, ’78, founding member of Sonic Youth.

Ranaldo was drawn to BU, or “SUNY B” as they called it back in his day, for the same reasons kids still come here — a great price and a reputation as the best SUNY school. He initially was a math and science guy, but wasn’t feeling engaged by his studies. Ranaldo changed his major to studio art sophomore year, a decision that would come to have a lasting impact on the rest of his life.

“At that time, the only people that I knew at school that were having fun and seemed to be happy — there were people doing creative stuff, people doing arts and a lot of my friends from first-year were cinema majors,” Ranaldo said. “I transformed everything in my fourth semester. I switched gears. I loaded my schedule up with art classes to try and catch up. I had done a lot of that stuff in high school as well. I always played music, I had done a lot of art and creative writing in high school, but because I was really good at maths and sciences, that was the direction that my counselors steered me in.”

Ranaldo threw himself into his art studies, but wasn’t inspired to make music yet. He was turned off by the “big and bloated” sound of arena rock bands which were popular at the time. Then new wave music started to come out of New York City and this gave Ranaldo and his friends the spark. They started a band, calling themselves The Fluks, which initially just did covers. At this point, they started traveling to the city to hear new wave bands in person.

Ranaldo recalled two incidents that greatly shaped the direction he would take his music. He and some friends got their hands on Television’s debut album, “Marquee Moon,” and decided to listen to the whole album in Lecture Hall 6, which was and still is the cinema department’s hall. One of his buddies was a cinema teaching assistant, so he had the keys and was able to let in the three-person listening party.

“So we just sat in the lecture hall kind of darkened and played that record at full volume — both sides of that record — and that was really a transformative experience being there in the lecture hall,” Ranaldo said. “It was quite an amazing thing for us.”

Another important moment for Ranaldo was seeing the Talking Heads play at The Other Place, also known as The OP. This pub was very popular among BU students and was located right off campus where Denny’s is now. Ranaldo’s band was just starting out but had already played The OP. This was also very early in the career of the Talking Heads.

“We had played at that place and suddenly seeing [the Talking Heads] there and being professional and on a U.S. tour — even if they were just in a station wagon at the point, doing it on a shoestring — it brought a lot of stuff into focus for us,” Ranaldo said.

After seeing the Talking Heads, Ranaldo and The Fluks made some personnel changes and realized if they were going to be serious musicians, they had to focus on original material.

After seeing the Talking Heads in concert, Ranaldo and The Fluks decided they were going to be serious musicians and focused on creating original material.

“We started writing more of our own songs and that’s when the band really got very serious,” Ranaldo said.

Ranaldo ended up staying in Binghamton for an extra year after he graduated to work on the band and continue his studies with some professors. He had his first artist studio in an abandoned school in Endicott, which was shared by fellow students and professors. Then in the summer of 1979, he and the band, after changing the spelling of their name to The Flucts, moved to New York City.

In the summer of 1979, The Fluks changed the spelling of their name to The Flucts, moved to New York City and got gigs at legendary clubs like CBGB and Max’s Kansas City.

The band got gigs at some legendary clubs like CBGB and Max’s Kansas City. During this time, Ranaldo met future Sonic Youth bandmate Thurston Moore, who was playing in a band called The Coachmen, and the two bands got to be friendly with each other. However, in 1980, The Flucts came to an end.

During this time, the no wave scene was alive and well in New York City. This genre was very aggressive and noisy, but influenced by academic ideas the band members were exposed to in college.

“Some of them could barely play but they had that energy and the rhythmic thing going — even if they were only playing one or two cords or something like that,” Ranaldo said. “It felt like it revitalized the whole idea of rock music back then. So that stuff was really inspirational.”

In 1981, Moore organized a music festival called Noise Fest at White Columns in New York City. The festival went on for over a week, but Ranaldo and former Flucts bandmate David Linton, ’78, were almost going to miss the whole thing due to a European tour they were slated to go on with a group called Plus Instruments. At the last minute, they pulled out of the tour and found some friends to replace them so they could attend the festival. Ranaldo and Linton did a performance under the name Avoidance Behavior. Ranaldo also played with Glenn Branca, an avant-grade composer known for his guitar pieces, and an early version of Sonic Youth played, which included Moore and Kim Gordon. This was the event that lead to Sonic Youth as we know it.

“During one of the nights, kind of hanging out in front of the gallery, Kim and I were talking and she was like ‘I think you and Thurston should play together, you guys would probably play really well together,’” Ranaldo said. “The night after this festival ended, the three of us got together in the gallery — because we were friendly with the gallerist — and we started rehearsing, the three of us together. I pretty much rode right from this noise festival into the very first rehearsals we did as Sonic Youth.”

Sonic Youth went on to achieve a moderate level of popularity in their three decades together, but proved to be very influential to alternative bands who came after them. Ranaldo remembers when Nirvana was opening for them, and said they always wished that one day they would be as big as Sonic Youth. History shows Nirvana achieved that and then some. But Ranaldo and the rest of Sonic Youth knew that fate wasn’t in the cards for them.

“We knew we were never going to have a big hit record that was going to make us millions of dollars, and we weren’t really aspiring to that to begin with,” Ranaldo said.

Ranaldo still writes and makes music and art. Having accomplished a lot in these fields, he said his time at BU was what led his life down this path.

“[BU] contributed a lot to where I ended up for sure,” Ranaldo said. “Everything I’ve done since I left was related to stuff that happened in my [BU] period. I know that not everybody is lucky enough to have a college experience that they really feel shaped the rest of their life, but I definitely feel that about that period. I look back at my time at [BU] as one of the most memorable periods of my life. There were a lot of good people around, a lot of good ideas. Once I switched to being an art major, I was super engaged in what I was doing.”