Girl in a Band: A Memoir

i don't have enough time to give the book the review it deserves, but feel it necessary to make my vote count considering I loved this book. It's laying next to me right now. What I appreciate most about this book is Kim Gordon's willingness to her (highly) personal stories. She never seemed pretentious to me from what I've seen in person at shows, or on record, or on stage - but always seemed to me at least, like an angel. I put her on a pedestal you could say because her and her bands' music has always been such an important part of my life. I was happy and glad to read that she's a normal person, that happens to have amazing and juicy details to tell, but even more happy that she has all the same fears, doubts, and self-conscious issues I have. I'm 33 now, but when I was seventeen all the way until my 13-year relationship ended a few years ago - my ex revealed one of her fears was that I would eventually leave her for Kim Gordon. Maybe that was just a dream she had. I'm just extremely grateful that Km was comfortable enough to let us in, and share her stories with us. I'm an open book, I'll answer any question no matter how personal, even to a fault...to a stranger. I'm extremely picky about what music and entertainment turns me on, so there's not a whole lot of "juice" out there for me. I just think it's wonderful that someone I actually like has no reservations about telling me all sorts of stuff. Usually people that I'm interested in are much more guarded, and thus seem to leave an impression that they're trying to remain in control in crafting their rock star, or indie-cred persona. Nothing could be more appealing to me then someone telling their story with none of that BS. Obviously at 33, I should know that "we're all human", we all go to the bathroom. But Gordon's honesty and humility surprised me - not that I didn't think she would or could be - but because getting this personal with anyone outside of the comedians I enjoy just doesn't happen as often as I'd like, and it just made me like her more. My review sucks. This book is good, and such a fun read. My only disappointment is that I've finished it. I'd love for it to be longer, but to be honest, I'm much more fascinated (and humbled) by what Kim is comfortable to share about her personal life then any history lesson of any music scene. Finally, I loved to read that Wasning Machine was one of her favorite records. That's my favorite album. I don't go on the Sonic Youth message boards, but the few times I tried over the years, all their fanatics dismissed this album, as well as my other favorite from around the same time period. Take that jerks.

It was almost five years ago when I found out about the breakup of Sonic Youth. I wasn’t surprised or saddened or upset about it. I felt like it was time, really. The band had been around for three decades and have put out truly wonderful music. There are a lot of Sonic Youth material out there to last a long time. Frankly I thought they’d be finished after the nineties; a small number of years after the birth of Kim and Thurston’s daughter. I thought that would’ve been it. I wondered how they would be able to carry on in their career’s while raising a child. It appears that they knew a lot of friendly people who wanted to help out. After the millennium they ended up releasing five studio albums, not to mention five more albums in their SY series. It was obvious that the breakup had all to do with the divorce of Kim and Thurston, and I honestly didn’t wanna know. In the age of the Internet where everything is displayed, I felt it was none of my business. For a long time, I felt that way. Even when they decided to publicly address it, I didn’t want to know. It’s clichéd but it really is all about the music. I could care less otherwise. That was how I felt for four years. Then on one afternoon I finally saw Kim Gordon’s book Girl in A Band on a shelf in Barnes & Noble. I knew earlier that she was releasing a memoir but I didn’t know when. I wasn’t invested in discovering something so personal. I had some time to go over the book. What I wanted to know if anything was her perspective on the studio recordings; just a detailed standpoint of how they work as musicians. That’s what I was curious to find out about. She does cover ground on that especially the second half of the book. She pretty much goes through their career but I noticed she leaves out NYC Ghosts & Flowers – very underrated but one of their best. I don’t know why she never mentioned that album. The book starts off very depressing as she recounts the final stage performance of Sonic Youth in Sao Paulo, Brazil from 2011. It was three months after Kim and Thurston were no longer a couple, so after the show ended they all went their separate ways. It really was the end for them. Kim being amiable about the whole thing while on that tour points out some pretty devastating things such as, “…relationship failure – a male midlife crisis, another woman, a double life.” and “What was going on was the silent, unwelcome guest in the room.” Initially I wasn’t sure of continuing reading due to such private content so I felt I had to back off…for a while at least. A week ago I finished the book. It basically took me two weeks to read. It is an easy read but I like to go slow and reread certain parts so it’s easier to fully absorb what I’m reading. Speedreading is something I choose not to do. My mind doesn’t work that way. Afterwards I respect her now than ever before. She goes on a little too much about art both conceptual and visual but overall it is intriguing. She seems to have a professional aura that I admire. It is more than a rock and roll memoir to me. I was enthralled by her history growing up in Los Angeles and moving with her family to Hawaii and then later to Hong Kong, and then back to L.A. I liked when she described how her parents and their friends enjoyed spending the summers in the late sixties at Klamath River. Much later on in the book in Chapter 50, as she discusses the disintegration of her marriage she came across a reference to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. The line of dialogue goes, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” In my life I was never that way. I always favored comfort, security and stability. I think about how overwhelming it is for their marriage to end after 27 years and all the work they’ve done together. That’s a long time sharing a life with someone.

For those that picked up this book to read about Sonic Youth, and the inspiration for particular songs or albums, maybe 30 - 40 percent of the book is that. Though, even the chapters focused on particular albums are more about what was going on in Kim's life at the time, not everyone in the band. It was probably because I know that her career had a happy ending, that I enjoyed reading about her struggles as someone trying to make it in the art world in Los Angeles, and especially the art world New York City. I think I always wonder how people manage to make it to fame, and she does a good job of showing how it's a combination of talent, luck, getting to know the right people (not just for networking but also as a way to find those that inspire your development as an artist), and pushing yourself to continuously create new things, and experiment. She does also give us the hot gossip people look for in a book where other famous people are bound to come into her life. Though I cared less about that; for me the two chapters on Thurston's affair were much more detailed than I expected, but I have been cheated on before so these chapters became very relatable and emotional for me to read. Overall, the book is a solid "B+" in writing, but I'll give it an "A" because I really like their music, her tangents about pop music and artists, and because it taught me about feminism in rock music.

While Kim Gordon's memoir does have plenty of interesting nuggets, it was ultimately a disappointment for me. As a Sonic Youth fan, I looked forward to two things: details about the band's many records and tours, and Kim's side of the story regarding the dissolution of her marriage to Thurston Moore. There's plenty of the latter, but painfully little of the former. A majority of the book is devoted to two things: Kim's growing up in LA, along with details about her family; and her relationship with Thurston, which she now looks back on with a skeptical eye (quite understandably, of course). While the formation and early years of Sonic Youth are given a fair amount of text, as does the band's end, critical periods like the Daydream Nation era, get just a few pages devoted to them. Maybe it's a matter of expectations. Having read a couple of Sonic Youth biographies, I had hoped to read the story I was fairly familiar with already, but with an insider's perspective for the first time. Instead, the book is the opposite of thorough, with very brief chapters following a mostly chronological timeline. When the book does break chronology, and jump either back into the past or way into the future, it's jarring. I don't mind a story that is told in a non-linear fashion, but the net effect here is having a whole-day conversation with Kim, as she bounces from topic to topic, sometimes going on some tangents, then regrouping. Maybe some will be happy with that, but I wanted more. In short, I hoped for a clear narrative or message to emerge from these vignettes (seriously, one chapter is just the lyrics to "Cotton Crown"), but the only thing I got out of it is that Kim has never really had anything figured out, and she still doesn't. It's not all bad, and I'd still recommend fans reading it. If you've got a free weekend, it can be consumed in a day or two, tops. So there's not much to lose, and you'll certainly gain some insight into Kim's early life, her family, and what Thurston did to cause her to say the marriage was over. But if you're looking for Sonic Youth details in between, you might be better served by one of the existing biographies. (It probably didn't help that much of the book's best passages were published as previews on various websites.)

I had a good time with this. It made for some engaging, before bedtime reading—really fascinating in the settings it moves through without requiring too much mental bandwidth to parse. Gordon writes in a very plainspoken manner and presents her view directly, even if her view on a matter is simple ambivalence. I had almost zero context for Kim Gordon as a public person or the band Sonic Youth but I always like delving into a person's own telling about who they are and the ingredients that might have come together to create achievement. A big portion of the book is structured around events with the band but where there are a few references that were lost on me, things are still largely shot through the prism of her own feelings and insights. Some autobiographers feel they have a lot to protect and it shows on the page but I never got the sense that that was Gordon's aim. She does seem to value privacy but does acknowledge relevant, emotionally challenging circumstances for clarity and comments how they affected her. She doesn't choose to reflect with too much detail around some of that stuff but that choice was more a reveal on her character for me than an obstacle to a satisfying read. The focus here was her early memories, some rumination on what drives her, her portrait of a specific and departed era of New York City, insight into her artistic aims, and the key decisions that moved her through the professional path she's covered. Some readers noted that the book could use more editing. I agree there's room for it here and there but there isn't anything so bad or so constant that it distracts from the message. And some sections were really kind of lyrical and lovely. What drew me through the story was the sense that Gordon was trying to express authentically from exactly where she is. It's really fascinating to hear people out when they're coming from that place.

Just finished it. And dug it. Since I'm not very familiar with Sonic Youth's music and history, and was totally unfamiliar with Kim Gordon's life, I didn't have much there to base any expectations on. But the book shouldn't have been titled "Girl In A Band"! There is so much more covered here than her time in Sonic Youth, although for sure she does spend a good chunk of prose on the band, and I enjoyed the album-by-album recaps. She identifies at least as much as a visual artist as a musician. There's a ton of material about her childhood, family, youth, friendships, literary and film interests, art and music projects, marriage, motherhood, and of course the fallout from her husband's affair with another woman. It's Kim Gordon's autobiography, not a book on Sonic Youth, and it became more and more of a page-turner (screen-tapper?) the farther I got into the book.

Sonic youth has always been one of those abstract bands, where you feel you can touch the meanings behind the songs, but they are always just out of reach. This book helps reveal a lot of the meanings, ideas, and inspirations behind the songs. A lot of understated exchanges happen in the book, which had a big impact. In the 80's family members say, "You're going to be a millionaire" and Kim Gordon demurs and says there is pressure from the labels to have the guys grow their hair long and wear glitter pants. In contrast, Kim describes how her mother would hand make her clothes, which begun her addiction to thrift stores. So while glam rock emerged, Sonic Youth paved the road to experimental grunge, 10 years before its time. The styles that Kurt Cobain wore in the 90's, thank Sonic Youth. What would Sonic Youth have sounded like if they did sell out their style to ride the mainstream glam wave in the 80's? Another interesting item is how Kim Gordon's mother never talked about her family history. She found out from her aunt decades later that her grandparents owned a pepper farm and huge swaths of land in LA, and that's Swall Drive is named after her family. So next time you listen to "Sweet Shine" from Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star and Kim belts out, "I'm coming home to Swall Drive."...now you know what she is talking about, but she didn't even know that was her home, she doesn't even know what that home looked like. She has no history, no lineage that her mother spoke of, which explains a lot of the temporal themes in Sonic Youth's music. Things come and go, indifferent to who you are. I could go on and on. The book is very thought provoking for anyone who was/is into Sonic Youth. As a teenager, I always wanted to read a close up biography of the band to help decipher their music and this dream came true.

I finished Kim's memoir last night, and tonight watched most of the last concert in Brazil, on Youtube. (The feedback finale was great.) I grew up with 70s/80s/90s alternative/punk; saw Sonic Youth in the late 80s in a very early concert, and later in the 90s twice in Arizona in their more 'polished' years (including the Lollapalooza tour with Hole she mentions in the book). Sister and Daydream Nation are my favorites, and because of those albums, the band was my soundtrack for many years. I've seen "The Year Punk Broke (1991)" many times, and Kim and Kurt did seem to have a good bond. I was fascinated by Kim's memories of growing up, esp. on the west coast; her writing is excellent. I was especially happy to read about the origins of the song lyrics, guitar tunings, influences, meetings with other artists, etc. Her descriptions of 70s NYC and the no wave, punk, and art scenes were great. Very sorry about the marriage problems with Thurston; and the apparent end of Sonic Youth... but they had a great run, threading between all the more melodic and mainstream versions of rock, and influenced uncountable bands. Thanks for giving us this work Kim, and good luck with all the future fun and art.

Incredible writing! I loved it in every way! Honest, liberating and bold. Express way to your skull in every way. Congratulations!

👌🏼

Product came to me as expected, completely new pbook. Also very fast mailing. Didnt get the chance to read it yet, but am ansious. Thanks!

Bastante decepción y eso que la portada mola. Mucho libro dedicado a las causas de su divorcio que no se hasta qué punto puede interesar a un fan de sonic youth. Otro poco dedicado a la vida de su familia y luego ya como la mitad del libro hablando de sonic youth pero tampoco muy en profundidad. Fotos en blanco y negro al comienzo de cada capítulo y poco más. Podría haberse esmerado en hablar más de música y menos de móviles y mensajes, pero bueno.. Leido una vez y no creo que vuelva a leerlo más

perfect!