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Girl in a Band: A Memoir Paperback – December 1, 2015
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
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, written with the lyricism and haunting beauty of Patti Smith's Just Kids.
Often described as aloof, Kim Gordon opens up as never before in Girl in a Band. Telling 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, Girl in a Band is a rich and beautifully written memoir.
Gordon 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.
Evocative and edgy, filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a transformative life, Girl in a Band is the fascinating chronicle of a remarkable journey and an extraordinary artist.
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDey Street Books
- Publication dateDecember 1, 2015
- Dimensions5.31 x 0.65 x 8 inches
- ISBN-109780062295903
- ISBN-13978-0062295903
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Kim Gordon writes the way she plays. Fiercely, honestly, and with the creative abandon of a singular artist.” — AMY POEHLER, actor, producer, writer
“I’ve always admired Kim Gordon. She is cool, smart, and dignified. Girl in a Band is a fascinating and honest memoir full of raw emotion and insight.” — SOFIA COPPOLA, filmmaker
“The best thing one of your heroes can do is make you feel heroic yourself. Kim Gordon has done just that in her memoir; it is full of beauty and power, inspiration, kindness, boldness and hope.” — CARRIE BROWNSTEIN, writer, actor, musician CARRIE BROWNSTEIN, writer, actor, musician
“Written with the same cool passion she brings to her lyrics, Gordon delivers a generous look at life inside the punk whirlwind.” — Kirkus Reviews
Everybody loves Kim Gordon. So it’s pretty much my bet that everybody will be hanging on the words of anyone who’s read her forthcoming memoir (which is reportedly phenomenal). [Ed. note: It’s even better than you’re probably expecting.] — Flavorwire
“From beginning to end, the icon chronicles the evolution of music, art, and herself, set in and out of an ever-changing New York.” — Interview
Gordon’s career as a musician, artist, critic, performer, producer, and designer spanned the last truly hip era of downtown New York. The names and the nostalgia-for those who remember or who wish they did-are well worth the price of admission. — Booklist
An intriguing memoir. . . [Gordon’s] unique sensibility never fades. — Publishers Weekly
“heartbreaking, raw, articulate, and inspiring.” — Bust Magazine
From the Back Cover
“Unconventional. . . . Not a garden-variety rock memoir . . . [but] a strange and lovely book about a woman finding and losing herself onstage and off and crafting a complicated creative life when none of the molds quite fit.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Engaging and surprisingly intimate.”—Vanity Fair
“More than a memoir, though one of the most riveting music biographies ever penned.”—Examiner.com
For many, Kim Gordon, vocalist, bassist, and founding member of Sonic Youth—one of the most influential and successful bands to emerge from the post-punk New York scene—has always represented the epitome of cool. And almost as celebrated as the band’s defiantly dissonant sound was the marriage between Gordon and her then husband, Thurston Moore. When it was announced that the couple was splitting after twenty-seven years of marriage, fans were devastated.
In Girl in a Band, this famously reserved superstar speaks candidly about her past and the future. From her childhood in the sunbaked suburbs of Southern California, growing up with a mentally ill sibling, to New York’s downtown art and music scene in the eighties and nineties and the birth of a band that would pave the way for acts like Nirvana, as well as help inspire the Riot Grrl generation, here is an edgy and evocative portrait of a life in art.
Exploring the artists, musicians, and writers who influenced her, and the relationship that defined her life for so long, Girl in a Band is filled with the sights and sounds of a pre-Internet world and is a deeply personal portrait of a woman who has become an icon.
About the Author
Kim Gordon is an artist, musician, producer, fashion designer, writer, and actress. She is a founding member of the experimental post-punk band Sonic Youth. Following the breakup of Sonic Youth, Gordon formed the group Body/Head. A collection of her early critical art writing entitled Is It My Body? was released by Sternberg Press in January 2014. Recent art exhibitions include a show of paintings through the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles and the show The City Is a Garden at 303 Gallery in New York. She lives in New York and Los Angeles.
Product details
- ASIN : 006229590X
- Publisher : Dey Street Books; Reprint edition (December 1, 2015)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780062295903
- ISBN-13 : 978-0062295903
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.65 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #52,707 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #129 in Rock Music (Books)
- #139 in Rock Band Biographies
- #1,926 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Kim Althea Gordon (born April 28, 1953) is an American musician, songwriter, and visual artist. Born in Rochester, New York, Gordon was raised in Los Angeles, California, and studied art at the Otis Art Institute. She later rose to prominence as the bassist, guitarist, and vocalist of the New York City-based alternative rock band Sonic Youth, which she formed with ex-husband Thurston Moore in 1981.
Gordon also formed the musical project Free Kitten with Julia Cafritz (of Pussy Galore) in the 1990s, and debuted as a producer on Hole's debut album Pretty on the Inside (1991). Gordon also worked on a fashion line called X-Girl in 1993, and continued to write and release material with Sonic Youth throughout the 1990s and on into the late 2000s.
Gordon has collaborated with Ikue Mori, DJ Olive, William Winant, Lydia Lunch, Yoko Ono, Raymond Pettibon, Courtney Love, and Chris Corsano. In 2012, after the breakup of Sonic Youth, Gordon formed Body/Head with friend Bill Nace, releasing their debut album Coming Apart in September 2013. Gordon's memoir, Girl in a Band, was published in February 2015, by HarperCollins imprint Dey Street Books.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by 9999x user (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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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.
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.)
Top reviews from other countries
No profundiza demasiado en la particularidad de ser mujer en un mundo principalmente de hombres y por ese lado creo que queda floja la historia. Tal vez el título es el que lleva a engaño.
En cualquier caso, la recomiendo. Después de leer varios bios llenas de drogas hasta las orejas, viene bien un poco de desintoxicación 😂😂