Girl in a Band
Ratings23
Average rating3.8
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.
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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.
