Tag Archive: Thurston Moore


CLOTHES, BOYS AND EXTREME NOISE

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May 16, 2015

GIRL IN A BAND – A MEMOIR by Kim Gordon (Day Street Books, 2015)

The somewhat reductive title is surely intended to be ironic since Kim Gordon’s autobiography is most certainly far than that of just another  ‘girl in a band’.

This is evidenced by the fact that the postscript defines her as an “artist, musician, producer, fashion designer, writer and actress”. Not only that but she is even a little dismissive of her musical prowess : “I’ve never thought of myself as a singer with a good voice or even as a musician”, she reveals.

Most of the time her desire to be a name in contemporary art world seems more important than being a rock star.

Despite this, Gordon is best known as founder member of post No Wave , pre-Grunge and super cool experimental rockers, Sonic Youth. This is a band who, she writes,“could only have come out of New York’s bohemian downtown art scene and the people in it”.

But anyone seeking a straight bio of the band will be disappointed by her non linear recollections. What dominates the plot is her relationship and marriage to Thurston Moore, the rise and fall of which parallels that of the band they founded together. The first chapter is entitled ‘The End’ and refers both to Sonic Youth’s final concert and the messy marital breakdown. Continue reading →

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THE WORST ALBUM EVER MADE?

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September 26, 2010

What is the worst album you have ever bought? I am not talking about records that were mildly irritating or slightly disappointing. What I mean is purchases that are so monstrous they make you feel physically sick or mentally tortured.

Before everyone rushes to cry COLDPLAY at this point, I would like to share my own horror story with you.

The exhibit A in question is Zero Tolerance For Silence by Pat Metheney (Geffin Records, 1994). I came across this turkey resting innocuously in the bargain bin of a reputable record store.

The cover has a single white strip on a grey/black background and looks like one Rothko’s cool minimalist works. This cruelly appealed to an innocent hipster like me and I felt pretty pleased to unearth this rarity.

Metheny I vaguely knew of  as a big-haired American jazz guitarist with a daunting discography.

I liked his playing on Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint and on a beautiful record he made in 1980 with Lyle Mays called As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls. His vast, more pure jazz albums, were largely uncharted territory although I have since heard, and enjoyed, many of these.

From such a well established and highly regarded musician, an album of guitar solos had to be at least interesting, right?

Wrong!

Pat Metheny

Pat Metheny – pissing about at the listener’s expense.

None of the five tracks are titled, wisely opting to remain anonymous. Part 1 is the longest at 18 minutes 18 seconds and if you can sit through this you might just manage to endure parts 2 – 5. I have never managed such a feat myself. The music can best be described as improvised noise, a genre that I don’t usually fear. I regard Keijo Haino as a genius and even tolerate the ‘fuck the career’ offerings of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and Neil Young’s Arc.

Improvised guitar, like that of Derek Bailey, can , I know, be something of an acquired taste but it is something I am usually happy to listen too. This album by Metheny is not in this same category. It just sounds like someone tuning up, playing a few random chords and generally pissing about at the listener’s expense.

I don’t ask for structure but some feeling would be nice – if you can find any redeeming qualities in this turgid barrage of distorted sound you are as better human being than me.

Methany continues to claim that this was not made for a bet or to get out of a record contract. and someone even makes the unlikely claim that he spent 3 years writing it. Thurston Moore says it’s “a new milestone in electric guitar” Did he mean to say ‘tombstone’?

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KILL YOUR IDOLS

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December 11, 2008

Kill Your Idols is a film made by Scott Crary in 2004.  It took the prize for Best Documentary at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival and gained a distribution deal with Palm Pictures.
Under the tag line “the New York No Wave scene and those who followed” it features appropriately grainy footage of gigs from the Hardcore heyday of the late 70s/early 80s . There are clips of  the likes of DNA (a wonderfully geeky Arto Lindsay), Teenage Jesus & The Jerks (one of the best band names ever) and The Swans (Michael Gira in primal mode).

What struck me was the raw physicality of these performances.  More than one interviewee states that the music was secondary – attitude was more important than technique. The driving force was giving vent to the sense of rage and resentment (society is to blame!).  This is probably why so few of the records from that era really stand the test of time. As with the most obvious counterpart of  British Punk in 1976/7  this was something to experience in the flesh. It was  the antithesis of commodified culture.  Eno’s ‘No New York’ of 1978 is the most cited album of this scene but the fact that it only includes 4 bands (Contortions, Teenage Jesus, DNA and Mars) make it an inadequate document. Not including anything of  Glenn Branca’s ‘Theoretical Girls’  is the most  glaring ommission.
In ‘Rip It Up And Start Again’, Simon Reynolds describes No Wave accurately as “a cultural spasm, an extremist gesture, that could only exhaust itself“.

Mercifully Crary’s film doesn’t set out to market the nostalgia factor but to examine the legacy.  One of the main purposes of the film is to comment on the fact that such harsh, dissonant acts inspired and spawned a number of bands working today.  As a result, equal weight is given to the art rock bands like Liars, Black Dice and Yeah Yeah Yeahs  that drew inspiration from these  post punk acts .  Not surprising these are mostly regarded with disdain by the uncompromising Lydia Lunch.

A  particularly tenuous link is that of Gogol Bordello. Their brand of Ucranian Gypsy Punk seems to me to have more in common with bands like The Pogues and Les Negresse Vertes than with Hardcore underground rock. The inclusion is forgiveable because Eugene Hütz  is such a lively speaker.

I hadn’t previously heard of A.R.E Weapons and won’t be rushing out to buy/download their music on what I saw here. Lead vocalist Brain F. McPeck  is a real poseur who bares his well toned torso and his equally ostentatious  ego,  coming across like  the missing link between Jim Morrsion and Spinal Tap.

What is most evident is the massive debt owed to Sonic Youth in the way they took  the energy of No Wave and mixed it with a Velvet Underground dynamic to create a crossover sound without selling out to mainstream taste.  It’s no coincidence that it is they who coined the Kill Your Idols phrase of the title and that Thurston Moore is one the most articulate voices we hear in this film.

At the end of the film, however,  even Moore, in common with other contributers, is lost for words when asked what the next big thing could be to match the cultural impact of the No Wavers.
However, I think it is significant that he and Michael Gira are now both heads of influential record labels (Ecstatic Peace and Young Gods respectively) that promote neo-folk and psych-noise of the New Weird America. This is  to my ears at least one of the truest legacies of  the diy spirit of Punk.  It may be  less overtly threatening and use more than three chords, but this is music which is its equal in terms of authenticity and sincerity.

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MATT VALENTINE

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June 24, 2008


matt.jpgMatt Valentine (MV) is a maverick figure of the ‘alternative’, ‘underground’ folk scene. Through his organization of the Brattleboro festival in 2003 he is credited with inventing the term ‘Free Folk’ and, indirectly, prompted the first use of the label New Weird America to describe the loose collective he is part of.

At the last count I have about 16 of his albums mostly with his partner and soul mate Erika Elder (EE) . Two recent ones were on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label but most on limited issue vinyl or cdr so have to be grabbed fast or scored on p2p sites.

Even after listening to all this music I still find it difficult to get a real handle on the man and place him or can name a key track or album that can be counted as representative. His work is uneven, self indulgent but curiously addictive.

MV began as a founder member of influential The Tower Recordings collective based in New York, contributing to their singular brand of ‘futuristic-folk’ and ‘cosmic drones’. The online ‘zine Stylus described their sound well as ” a dense stewy, sensual mass of pseudo-synchronized sensitive ugliness broadcast from several different artistic galaxies all at once“.

Other reviewers in trying to get a handle on this kind of material grope around for suitable reference points. They line up the usual suspects like the ramshackle acid folk of The Incredible String Band or the strange atmospherics of the cult Pagan horror movie The Wicker Man.

When these fail to cover all the bases, an air of desperation sets in and the comparisons become more delirious and random, ranging from Fairport Convention to The Velvet Underground or from The Butthole Surfers to Sun Ra. All this doesn’t help much in defining their sound but communicates the fact that the music is as mystifying as it is mystical, and is more rewarding to experience than classify.

One recurring theme is the reference to the way the music sounds as if it were beamed in from another planet. This is not surprising since, on one album, the band dub themselves a ‘fraternity of moonwalkers’ and many of their track titles have references to space travel or make interstellar associations .e.g Taste of Moon, Spaceball, Lunar Discotheque . ‘ Intergalactic Housing Don’t Bother Me’

MV does little to bring these extraterrestrial musings down to earth. He admits a fascination for the skewed sci-fi visions of Phillip K. Dick , and frequently refers to his music as a species of ‘lunar blues’. A self presentation on his My Space site reads:

“still orbiting the earth in Vermont is matt ‘mv’ valentine, the brawn of the tower recordings, and erika ‘ee’ elder the CEO of Heroine Celestial Agriculture together with their dog zuma they run the child of microtones terran library of exploratory music and sing songs with american avatars ‘the bummer road’ “

As with his solo stuff it’s hard to find a unifying thread or any consistent pattern to the Tower Recordings’ releases . A good overview of MV/EE releases can be found in an article by Byron Coley for Arthur magazine.

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