Kim Gordon - GIRL IN A BAND

Yes, in this band's case, absolutely. Well, not "rather", I'd like to read both.

As there is a finite amount of books you can read in a lifetime I will swerve this shite. Can only imagine it will be self absorbed tedious cack with the word "artist" featured about seven million fucking times.

Don't underestimate how much Tyler likes to talk about guitar tunings

it probably would have been easy enough to swerve on the internet thread about the book you don't want to read while you were at it!

as a muso nerd I would really appreciate a breakdown for bands like Sonic Youth (and Stereolab, and Pavement, and a bunch of other non-90s indie bands) of their tunings and guitar nerdery. unlike w Joni Mitchell or various 60s dinosaurs, reliable info about this kind of stuff is hard to come by.

xp

Well, unfortunately for you, she felt like writing about her life rather than guitar tunings. It's just interesting that it seems like that's a standard "dude" complaint.

i love reading about guitar tunings but i feel like it makes more sense for a book about a human being to focus on the life of the human being (xp!)

haven't read this book yet. i don't normally do rock bios but i might get around to this eventually

i haven't seen any chatter about this in my fb feed. guess that's a generational thing.

lol Stevie D posted about it a few weeks ago when an excerpt ran on some website!

for what it's worth it probably does have the word artist about seven million times and there's a lot of stuff about visual and conceptual artists - that's kind of her equivalent of "guitar tunings" type talk

teenage riot tab for open dude tuning:

D ---2------------chopstick between bridge ----
U -----3-- trem------------------------------
D ---1--------------------------------------
E ---------pick scrape ------------------------
        miss me, don't dismiss me

Philip otm

Well, unfortunately for you, she felt like writing about her life rather than guitar tunings. It's just interesting that it seems like that's a standard "dude" complaint.

oh don't get me wrong a whole book about this would be totally boring, it's just something that bugs me from time to time when I'm trying to figure out how things were done.

I have no complaints about her memoir, I haven't even read it yet but am v much looking forward to it. excerpts I've read have been great,

the sonic youth tuning tutorial is pretty thorough anyway, there's a lot of info here: http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/tab/tuning.html

has anyone read the viv albertine memoir? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/books/a-memoir-by-viv-albertine-punk-rocker.html?_r=0

I'd be up for a whole book about their guitar tunings and techniques but probably not one that was written by the (primarily) bassist of the band.

haha, i didn't really mean to complain about the personal parts of the book -- as i said i liked the book, and pretty much all of it was interesting. don't want to be a "standard dude".

wait, what is the standard dude thing? to complain about a memoir including personal stuff and to instead wish it had more stuff about guitar tuning?

i just wish the book had been in standard duding

I never remotely defined the band by their relationship. If I'm bummed by the arrival of this book it's because sonic youth has always been an interesting, somewhat mysterious, original band, but this narrative seems if not totally hinged then hung on the ultra cliche of the post divorce tell all.

Perhaps it is in drop-D duding?

xps

yes, the Viv Albertine book is very very recommended by me at least, I loved it

It's weird that people perceive Sonic Youth as mysterious because they have been very open and publicity-friendly throughout their career. My introduction to them was an article about being a girl in a band on tour that Kim wrote for Sassy Magazine.

By mysterious I mean I have no idea how they write songs.

it's bookended by the breakup - but it's really too bad if it gets painted as a divorce memoir

it's also about her growing up in California with a schizophrenic brother, a bunch of art school stuff, a ton of NYC early eighties art/rock stuff, then the sonic youth story, some choice courtney disses, 1 pretty harsh billy corgan dis, a bunch of kurt cobain stuff, some rock n roll parent stuff, and also some stuff about how they write songs and guitar tunings.

(sorry, i literally finished reading it last night)

sounds great

yeah the california section is really nicely done - in memoirs like this i'm usually eager to get that "growing up" part of the book out of the way, but i didn't feel that way here.

the last viv albtertine album is great!

woah kim being from cali is crazy 2 me

It's weird that people perceive Sonic Youth as mysterious because they have been very open and publicity-friendly throughout their career.

I think most critics mean their music.

Will read if only for corgan harshing.

great fucking title

Will read if only for corgan harshing.

unfortunately the crybaby blurb is the only time billco is mentioned in the book

What? Snubbed again by the powers-that-be.

haha corgy has a blurb for this?

oh n/m misread that.

It's weird that people perceive Sonic Youth as mysterious because they have been very open and publicity-friendly throughout their career. My introduction to them was an article about being a girl in a band on tour that Kim wrote for Sassy Magazine.

― Mistah FAAB (sarahell), Thursday, February 26, 2015 3:24 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

love this.

(Possibly laughable post ahead, thoughts possibly not coherent, etc.)

It's more complicated, I think, than a dude perspective or what have you. For me, maybe for some others, reading a memoir by Keith Richards or someone from Van Halen feels like ancient history - stories from a distant heyday about rock stars I never had much emotional attachment to. Advance excerpts of a memoir are NOT that memoir, obviously, but they're capable of shaping perception in various ways (thanks, media). Maybe the problem is that for some of this book's potential audience is that we're too attached to some of the subjects treated here to absorb some of this on a rational level - kinda like when "Bleeding Edge" came out and it rubbed me the wrong way because relative to other Pynchon it was TOO DAMN NOW.

The Thurston stuff doesn't bother me a whit. The other early excerpted disses from Girl In A Band rankled somewhat, but we're entirely WRONG, mind. The Lana Del Rey one went beyond the pale, though given what I know of KG her perspective was probably more academic/semantic than cuttingly personal. It felt icky, to me, in the same way that some of the excerpts from xgau's memoir made me blink and say "really? do I seriously want to subsidize this?"

BUT. This is probably me being oversensitive, and these are books by people I grew up and respect and still follow, and ultimately, these are books I will read.

this band has felt far from mysterious to me. i never once got the impression that they didn't loooooooooooove attention and being in the center of it all

"but this narrative seems if not totally hinged then hung on the ultra cliche of the post divorce tell all."

she kinda says in the nyt thing that that's one of the reasons someone asked her to write a book? the newsworthy thing? and that she wanted to think about what she could do next and the book was a way toward whatever is next. or at least i think that's how it went.

Well I actually read the whole book and it's great but I have to admit, I did want to hear more about the music. Since Sonic Youth is one of the best bands I've ever seen, I would have loved to learn how they got to be so good and so unique. Gordon even says at one point that she's never considered herself a musician, which though it may be true is disappointing and unhelpful for a fan to read.

is that really a surprise? i feel like she's long not bothered to claim the role of a musician - not that she wasn't often essential, and making music, it's just… she was there, doing that thing.

I'm fine w musicians saying they don't consider themselves a musician. Why is that 'unhelpful'?

The thing is, I've stood four feet away from her when her band was playing and I know that she and her bandmates were playing their asses off and constructing a moment like no other in my experience.. a head trip I'd call it.. so I'd be kind of curious about what went into that. Thoughts, emotions, whatever. She played in that band for 30 years, she must have some perspective on what it was all about. She wasn't just standing around that whole time. The book is great in that she does talk about other artists a lot, which goes against the grain of your typical solipsistic celebrity memoir, so it's definitely recommended A+++

Unhelpful in the sense that one would like some kind of insight into what they do, how they do it, why they do it.. NOT an explanation of the music, but a glimpse of the thinking behind it

you should definitely read her 1987 tour diary reprinted in the Rock She Wrote anthology, there's a bit about that. I can't transcribe it all, but a relevant sentence is "I like being in a weak position and making it strong"

claiming one is not a musician after having played music professionally for a living for decades is not that great of a look

it's that old art-world ambivalence innit

yup and it hasn't aged well

I mean she doesn't pat bros on the back in rock solidarity but she plays a hell of a songtune.

claiming one is not a musician after having played music professionally for a living for decades is not that great of a look

humblebrag?

What's the Danny elfman connection?

She and Elfman were a couple.

Gordon boingo'd oingo?????

(Sorry, I knew this trivia, but had that construction in my head and had to get it out. It was either this or saying it out loud in a coffee shop.)

They played the C4lv1n in Northampton and then Flywheel the next night

hate doing this to you but according to the same website they played in Providence, RI the night after they played in Northampton:

http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/cc/2002.html

Huh...well, it must've been the night before, then. I remember us Flywheelers being told to keep it a secret, but the day of the show, like 20 people around town asked me about this "secret" show. And I have no poker face. Fortunately, the tiny space wasn't overwhelmed.

See, I liked this book, and was okay with it being heavier on Kim pre SY than on SY - probably because I didn't know much about Kim before reading it. It may have worked better for may if it cut back on the SY.

D'oh, ok, found it...the show I'm confused about happened in 2001:

http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/cc/111701.html

"Oh, you didn't like our riff on Godard? Well, we were just joking. Oh, you liked that song? We wrote that in a minute, when we were just messing around. It's a win-win for KG, who comes off cooler than you either way, and not always in a good way."

sounds like you also have insecurity re coolness. Honestly, that is how songs sometimes come about, and just because it started out as a joke or a quick take doesn't mean someone is an idiot for liking it or investing it with meaning.

I understand that. I know how music/art is made, and Kim Gordon's bad attitude has no bearing on my emotions or appreciation of her music. But it is a book, and I am a reader, and multiple times in the book, iirc, she's describing a project someone didn't like or that got a poor reception or maybe undo criticism, whether short films or videos or fashion or Free Kitten, and rather than defend it she pulls the "oh, it was all a joke, we thought it was hilarious that anyone would take it seriously" move. Which obviously does not affect one's reaction to it, but it is kind of a dick authorial stance, especially when that sort of defensive in-joke brush off never comes tied to projects people love. "Oh, Daydream Nation, that was some piece of shit we crapped out overnight after a few beers."

i think you're reading defensiveness into it.

i read this and the marie kondo book at the same time and they sync up pretty well as bios of people who found outlets for their childhood anxieties

a little more than halfway through this (I'm up to their tour w Neil Young) and complaints about this seem a bit overstated imo. It's not hyper-detailed or deeply engrossing or anything but as a series of strung together reminiscences that constitute her life story it works fine, and there's flashes of her poetic/artistic aesthetic littered throughout that give a good sense of her art and her approach to it. I haven't come across any of the stuff JinC describes, or at least I didn't notice it (yet).

I probably overstated it myself. The book is fine, though I stand by my assessment that it feels rushed and a tad slapdash.

the funniest thing about this book to me is the constant undertone of "man, this city was so much better when it was totally dangerous and falling apart and filthy and filled with drug dealers and junkies and criminals", like, the active non-ironic pining for a city with garbage strikes, dilapidated infrastructure, and a soaring crime rate. those were the days!

i can almost respect that sentiment when the person acknowledges the privilege behind it and shows some self-awareness (which she may well do, i haven't read the book yet - my wife's on a long waiting list at the library) but it's a pretty ironic from someone who moved to a college town in mass for the kids 20+ years ago to wish that the city stayed awful for everyone who couldn't get out

though actually i might be wrong on the date - an interview implies they didn't move until coco was five, and i thought they'd left in like 1996. maybe they wouldn't have left if the place had stayed more cracky.

she definitely shows self-awareness and acknowledges the irony

I'm most of the way through the book (we're at 2005 now). I'm really enjoying it. For some reason I'm just not bothered by all the stuff people are talking about itt. Her writing is simple and effective and frequently strikes some very deep chords with me.

(Well ok if I must pick a nit, the Lana del Rey bit seems beneath her.)

which she may well do

she's self-aware and cops to the irony of it - privelege, not so much

she does say that she didn't want to raise Coco in the city because of its inconveniences and vices

xp

new york nostalgia stuff was odd, but not surprising. i also found her relationship to northampton and the pioneer valley to be odd. i couldn’t tell if she was miserable or not. the smith college radio station was pretty good tho. when i lived in amherst, i always listened to that station.

cool re: self-awareness - i didn't mean to assume. i am sympathetic to the sentiment just in terms of nostalgia. celebs just sound kind of batty when they ignore the non-bohemian elements of the time. the weirdest i ever heard was patti lupone saying she misses when broadway was scarier - like, when was the last decade she had to leave a theater without a driver?

stayed up way too late reading this book last night -- aside from the occasional zzz when she goes on about the art scene in NY and how commercial it is, it's really fun to read and the stuff about CA and her brother is interesting too. enjoying it!!

did i ever post itt? Read it last night over like 4 days (that's really fast for me) and concur totally. Her writing is very unostentatious but often (esp when she is writing about olden CA times) she just really nails a certain feeling/vibe in the least showy way.

i went to the danny elfman film music concert at lincoln center friday night and I was thinking about young him and young kim messing with each others' hearts, so weird.

four days in one night IS fast!

Lol

"last night" = "last month"

An excellent read, beautiful prose and an unusual nonlinear narrative structure, really captivating, and she bears all about Thurston and his hijinks to boot. Really enjoyed her descriptions of life in Southern California and of the complex relationship she has with her troubled brother. One of, if not the, best written rock bios I've read, and without the help of a co-author!

was hoping for more details about the mid-late 90s sonic youth albums, which she barely touched on. first half of the book is well-engrossing, though

I love Kim Gordon. I view her as a role model. she doesn't seem to get hung up on things, good or bad.
she always seems to be in the moment. she does things because they are fun to do.

I think those first seven SY albums will be my friends for life.

I feel bad that she has to answer so many stupid questions on the book tour.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/kim-gordon-leaves-town-a-road-diary/2015/09/04/1d505042-44f2-11e5-846d-02792f854297_story.html

told to Washington Post writer diary of her move now back to Cali with photos along the way

http://www.salon.com/2016/11/05/kim-gordon-on-bodyhead-and-the-election-i-cannot-wait-for-it-to-be-over-but-im-afraid-of-what-will-going-to-happen/

i think i'm at least a year behind in the "worst music writing ever thread" so I dunno if someone has helpfully posted it there as well.