Kim Gordon: Coming next year

Kim Gordon's Girl In A Band Memoir. Taking preorders; publishing February next year.

Embed and Letterman: Sonic Youth

1992 was something of a great year for Dave. Here he is, young looking and introducing Sonic Youth:



(There's a less wobbly, but unshareable version over on YouTube)

A couple of years later, they were back to do Bull In The Heather:



[Part of Embed and Letterman]

Kim Gordon's advice for dealing with a break-up

As shared with Elle:

"We never got to the point where we could just get rid of her so I could decide what I wanted to do," Gordon says. "Thurston was carrying on this whole double life with her. He was really like a lost soul." Moore moved out. Gordon stayed home and listened to a lot of hip-hop. "Rap music is really good when you’re traumatized," she says.

Sonic Youth on ice

No, that doesn't mean there's going to be a festive edition of Sonic Youth; just that Lee Renaldo has confirmed that the band are on hold:

"It's not as sudden for me as it's been in terms of the press," Ranaldo told Rolling Stone magazine.
[...]
"I'm feeling optimistic about the future no matter what happens at this point," Ranaldo said. "It was a pretty good tour overall. I mean, there was a little bit of tiptoeing around and some different situations with the travelling – you know, [Kin and Thurston are] not sharing a room any more or anything like that … It remains to be seen at this point what happens. I think they are certainly the last shows for a while and I guess I'd just leave it at that."

Renaldo is going to do some solo work for now. He doesn't have any idea how long this self-employment will last.

Moore and Gordon split

Never nice to hear of the end of a marriage, especially one that's lasted 27 years, but Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore have announced their separation. Besides the personal sadness, there's also a bit of a cloud over the long-term future of Sonic Youth between the lines of the statement from Matador:

"Musicians Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, married in 1984, are announcing they have separated. Sonic Youth, with both Kim and Thurston involved, will proceed with its South American tour dates in November. Plans beyond that tour are uncertain. The couple has requested respect for their personal privacy and does not wish to issue further comment."

I suspect those South American dates will give an indication of if this is a 'still friends, still working together' split, or 'contractually obligations can't stop us throwing guitars at each others' heads' one.

Thurston Moore against the Griffin

As if it wasn't bad enough that the BBC put poor Nick Griffin in a room full of people who disagreed with him, and somehow contrived to make him look like a nasty, racist, self-serving idiot by pointing a camera at him and letting him speak, now even Sonic Youth are having a pop from the stage of the Kentish Town Forum:

"Thanks for standing up to the BNF goons," [Thurston Moore] told the crowd, eliciting loud cheers. "Fucking clowns..."

The NME helpfully suggests that maybe Moore was deftly conflating the BNP and the NF, rather than confusing the two.

Sonic Youth swing by Gossip Girl

So, it turns out this isn't some idea which turned out to be a joke. Sonic Youth really are doing Gossip Girl:



Coming next week: Mudhoney play The Dollhouse, while Tad knock out an impromptu set in the background of Mad Men.

[Thanks to Chris S]

Kevin Shields invites you to a Christmas party

This year's Nightmare Before Christmas is in the control of Kevin Shields, who has wasted no time in booking some acts, including Sonic Youth and, somewhat more puzzlingly, De La Soul.

Although given their 'splitting the audience into bits and getting them to sing against each other' schtick, perhaps a holiday camp is just the right stage for La Soul.

The Horrors, too, are rewarded for having attempted to pass themselves off as the Telescopes by getting a slot, too, which means they're going to have to keep it up until December.

Youth in the mud: SY for Glastonbury

Thurston Moore has dropped a fairly massive hint that Sonic Youth would be available for Glastonbury, should they be asked.

Not entirely sure Michael Eavis will be pleased by his reasons, though:

"I wanna play Glastonbury because it's such a disaster camp and I really enjoy that. The general consensus amongst musicians I know is that it's like walking into the pit of hell, and in some way it really feels like that."

"The only times I've ever been there it's been so incredibly messed up."

"You're lucky to get through any perceptible, decent set at all and then there are these huge roving cameras on stage that are spinning around documenting the disaster. There's something about that I find really charming."

Yes, yes, man, but what about the sponsored phone-charging points and the carefully documented entry scheme?

Sonic Youth: Hope late spring's Eternal

There's an update on studio progress from Sonic Youth - the new album, which might be called The Eternal, should be ready at the start of June.

Thurston Moore apparently said this:

"Our focus right now is a record replete with juicy supersonic songs!"

- which does have the unfortunate effect of making him sound like someone in an office who calls everyone "sire" or "good madam" for comic effect. Let's hope it's just all the good stuff has gone into the record.

Kim Gordon on the outside

There's nothing more dispiriting than 'rock star launches clothing line', but if it has to be done, you could do a lot worse than leave the rags-and-guitars crossover to Kim Gordon, who at least has a sense of self-awareness about what she's doing with her Mirror/Dash label:

“I know, every designer says they’re inspired by Françoise Hardy,” Ms. Gordon said. “But I’ve been listening to her records for 15 years.”

Gordon is aiming at the Cool Mums market - although it's not clear how many mothers would decide they're looking for something from the uncool mums part of the fashion world.

And if you had to choose between dressing like Kim Gordon or Victoria Beckham - well, it's pretty much a done choice, right?

1988 Festive Fifty Weekend: The twenties

As we clamber down the chart, a couple of morsels from the 1988 festive fifty:

25. Billy Bragg - Waiting For The Great Leap Forward
Live on the Henry Rollins Show in 2007



Buy: Must I Paint You A Picture?

22. Morrissey - Late Night Maudlin Street
Live at the Summer Sonic 2002



Buy: Viva Hate

21. Robert Lloyd And The New Four Seasons - Something Nice
Not, perhaps, the official video



Buy: Me And My Mouth (although it is fifty quid)

19. Sonic Youth - Teenage Riot



Buy: Me And My Mouth

[Part of the 1988 Festive Fifty Weekend]

The Kid Jensens of indie rock

Thurston Moore has made clear that Sonic Youth won't change their name to refelect their entry into the time of life when you start to wonder what it feels like to ride a chairlift:

Moore says, "Some people say it's ridiculous - 'you should change your name.'

"(But) I think it's a good thing as far as a state of grace, state of mind. It's actually more fun playing the older we get."

We're a little at a loss as to why anyone would have thought they'd change anyway: surely 'Sonic Youth' is an ideal rather than a description; thinking it should change as the band age suggests its being interpreted as 'we are young people with guitars', but it's really like insisting that the Foo Fighters change their name as the USAF knows exactly what they are these days.

Sonic Youth promise new stuff... next year

It's good to know that there's more to come from Sonic Youth. Even if it's a bit disappointing we're going to have to wait until 2009. Thurston Moore tells NME:

‘We haven’t gotten together in about four months, we’ve been taking a nice sort of break, which is good. I’ve been actually able to escape into the basement. We’re going to Australia next week for about two weeks then we’ll come back and start writing.’

We're not sure what Thurston Moore has in his basement; perhaps wisely, NME didn't ask.

Thurston Moore - in the Book Tower

Currently showing on VBS.TV, Thurston Moore showing us - the interwebbed gawping public - round his collection of rare books.

Cool Thing would be a great special name for a Frappacino

Thurston Moore has - perhaps unsurprisingly - decided it's wrong to have a pop at Sonic Youth for tying up with Starbucks:

The Starbucks thing was our idea. It was born of frustration, trying to get our label to sell our records. When you're in a band like Sonic Youth that's not on the radio or on TV, you want to try to get your record out there. I saw Beck's record [in Starbucks] and other adult-contemporary CDs that aren't, like, No. 1 pop records, and I just thought there's a large part of our catalog that would be accessible to people. I thought, "Why don't we get some of the people in the media who name-check Sonic Youth to choose their favorite songs, and then put them on a CD?"

Sorry... did he just say "other adult-contemporary CDs"? Did we miss some sort of reclassification of Daydream Nation?

There's no difference between working with Starbucks and working with record labels like Universal and Geffen. It's a knee-jerk reaction from PC watchdogs. I mean, really, which long-distance company do you use for your cellphone? Are you on the grid? If you're off the grid, I'll listen to you.

But... if you're off the grid, you won't be able to contact him! Ha! He's beaten you.

While it's not that disappointing to see the Youth working with Starbucks, it's almost heartbreaking to see Thurston Moore throwing "PC watchdogs" around with a note of contempt, like he was Little Richardjohn.

After all, it's not exactly right to draw parallels between the majors and Starbucks; while the record labels tended to grow by buying out competitors, Starbucks' growth came at the expense of smaller operators, run out of town by the dual challenge of a company able to swamp cities with branches and the economies of scale just not available to small shops, and evil though most major labels are, they've not actively sort to screw the Ethiopian economy out of about ninety million dollars.

More Thurston Moore

It's been so long since Thurston Moore's last solo album, you might be forgiven for thinking it never happened. But it did, in 1995. He's finally got round now to doing another: Trees Outside The Academy is due out on Ecstatic Peace this September; there's a tour but you'll have to be American in the US to go to it. Because that's where it is.

Thurston: Starbucks 'no worse' than Universal

Thurston Moore reckons he's surprised at the heat he's getting for placing the new Sonic Youth album through Starbucks:

"I never thought of it as being more radical than recording for Universal Music.

They're both corporations that have ties to things that people find sort of problematic. The compilation came out of the idea that I wanted Rather Ripped to be in Starbucks stores because that's where people were seeing CDs. They aren't going into record stores anymore."

Certainly, as music producers, Starbucks' record seems more positive than any of the big RIAA companies.

Cappuccino Is Next: Sonic Youth deal with Starbucks

Sonic Youth have cooked up a deal with Starbucks for a special compilation, Thurston Moore tells Pitchfork:

We sort of devised this idea of a Sonic Youth record where we asked all these different people to choose their favorite song, people like artists and actors and other musicians and what have you. So all these people, from Jeff Tweedy to Beck to Marc Jacobs to Portia de Rossi to Michelle Williams [laughs], they all chose their favorite songs and wrote a little thing about it. So it's a compilation record of artists choosing songs of Sonic Youth. There's going to be one exclusive song of ours that we'll record, so that's something we have to record.

We really wish when they did this they'd make the band invent a special limited edition coffee as well. We'd like a grande Sonic Youth, we really would.

Nuclear War set for July 2nd

Assuming, of course, Bush and Putin don't wipe us out before then in their 'who can piss the highest' contest, Future Pilot AKA is releasing the doubley a sided Tery Bina/ Nuclear War single on July 2nd.

The Sun-Ra Nuclear War cover features Alisdair Gray, Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Davy Henderson and Mike Watt. (That's Watt, as in Stooges, not Batt, as in Wombles.)