Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon

Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth, fashion icon, and role model for a generation of women, now tells her story -- a memoir of life as an artist, of music, marriage, motherhood, independence, and as one of the first women of rock and roll. Gordon tells the story of her family, growing up in California in the '60s and '70s, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music, and her band. She takes us back to the lost New York of the 1980s and '90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, and the Alternative revolution in popular music. The band helped build a vocabulary of music -- paving the way for Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins and many other acts. But at its core, Girl in a Band examines the route from girl to woman in uncharted territory, music, art career, what partnership means -- and what happens when that identity dissolves.

One sentence synopsis... Gordon records her life as an artist and bassist of Sonic Youth in a collage style memoir that borders on a series of Forest Gump style celebrity cameos. .

Read it if you like... ‘Sonic Youth', the No Wave movement, the arts scene and its commercialization in 80s New York. Super quick read, chapters are 3-4 pages long and it's sprinkled with tons of cool photos. .

Further reading... for a slightly better girl-in-band memoir check out Carrie Brownstein's book ‘Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl'. A little less name droppy and more reflective.

Had high hopes this would finally make a Sonic Youth fan out of me but I'm honestly shocked how boring I found it. Kim Gordon has a pretty abstract, detached way of writing that makes all the events described feel very distant and almost like they were happening to someone else. Maybe it's just that I'm not very interested in middle class art gallery culture, or that I also read Michelle Zauner and Carrie Brownstein's memoirs recently and both were much more engaging.

I will continue to not have any real feelings about Sonic Youth I guess. Truly zero opinions on this band I spent 300 pages learning about.

reminds me a little of patti smith's Just kids: New York + male creative partner + art bands + art scenes.

Kim Gordon has produced a fairly entertaining, but in this reader's opinion, standard rock and roll autobio. I know that it is difficult for families to contend with a member having mental illness and Kim writes of that, but many families have such issues. And divorce is now ubiquitous, so hardly a subject. I suppose that when a fairly well known couple split acrimoniously, the public at large have an interest. Our generally mundane lives lit large?

The vast majority of Kim's book does cover her music with Sonic Youth and her art. That I liked the best as how music and art are made is always interesting to me. But the non-art side has to be very interesting to me, and Kim's domestic life away from her art is standard fare.

My mea culpa is that I have never purchased a Sonic Youth recording. When they first came to my attention in the early 80s I was very interested in Sonic Youth, the dissonance of their style was an attraction. But when others around me were playing them, so my then rather stupid music snobbery took over, and I let everyone else buy the records. I spent my money on the more obscure and way Kooler Dunedin Sound bands.

Which brings me to that youthful desire to be Kool that Kim wrote about occasionally where she said she is fairly shy and also wrote a few other self-depreciating thoughts as to herself. All well and good, but it takes a lot to be in a rock and roll band and seek some form of fame if you are scared of not being Kool and claim to be a bit lacking in confidence. I suppose that some would say that this attempt at fame is also an attempt at overcoming that shyness, especially for girls attracted to the arts. Be that as it may, in my opinion it takes a need to get up and perform, so shyness should not have come into the discussion. Kim was not scared to get on and do her art and damn the critics and the consequences, good on her for that.

On Page 153 of my copy, Kim tells an interesting though not unique tale of the cover art for the Sonic Youth album, Sister. The cover originally included a Richard Avedon picture. He threatened to sue, so the image was blacked out. Basically the band's art world was about appropriation, so that was normally not an issue. I had to look up who Richard Avedon was. I must say he is a fantastic photographer. With that even if he was not a fan of the music, an image of his on the album cover would have been a...............................Kool Thing.

Recommended to Sonic Youth admirers and those that thought Richard Avedon made a mistake.