At risk of being boring..

Extract fronm Wiki entry:

"Sonic Youth began using a variety of tunings more radical than nearly anything in rock music history.

Azerrad writes that early in their career,

[Sonic Youth] could only afford cheap guitars, and cheap guitars sounded like cheap guitars.
But with weird tunings or something jammed under a particular fret,
those humble instruments could sound rather amazing
– bang a drum stick on a cheap Japanese Stratocaster copy in the right tuning,
crank the amplifier to within an inch of its life,
and it will sound like church bells.
—Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life, pg. 243

The tunings were painstakingly developed by Moore and Ranaldo during the band's rehearsals;
Moore once reported that the odd tunings were an attempt to introduce new sounds:
"When you're playing in standard tuning all the time ... things sound pretty standard."[44]
Rather than re-tune for every song, Sonic Youth generally use a particular guitar for one or two songs,
and can take dozens of instruments on tour.
This can be the source of much trouble for the band,
as some songs rely on specific guitars that have been uniquely prepared."


Obviously bit extremely impractical for local pub band gigs, but there you go...