Comment of the Moment: Kim Gordon's Girl in a Band: A Memoir

Kim Gordon - Girl in a Band: A Memoir
(Click to "Look Inside & Listen")
It's been awhile since we've had a Comment of the Moment here on Thrasher's Wheat.

Not to over analyze things too much, but we see a number of factors coming together in a perfect storm to attribute to the recent drop in reader comments, which we'll get to below.

In the meantime, the Comment of the Moment is from the recent post on Kim Gordon's Girl in a Band: A Memoir by Mr Henry:

Thanks for highlighting this segment from Kim's book. I've been reading lots of excerpts over the past few weeks, and this is my favorite one. Some of the others have focused too much on old, sensationalized, time-to-move-on information (there were strippers at birthday parties during the Smell The Horse Tour?! I'm shocked, absolutely shocked!) and newer fuel-the-fire tidbits (e.g. more piling on poor Lana del Ray), which seems to have been encouraged by the publisher. I look forward to reading Girl In A Band sometime soon, especially the remembrances of old, dirty NYC days and early Sonic Youth.

The link below has the complete session from last week's visit to the JCC in San Fran, part of the book tour that just completed on Saturday. Kim is interviewed by Carrie Brownstein, and it's enlightening and entertaining in equal measures. As an aside, I saw Sleater Kinney's Boston show last month, and Carrie's guitar playing is even more phenomenal. Can't wait to read her book when it comes out in the Fall.

https://www.jccsf.org/arts-ideas/ondemand/2014-2015-season/kim-gordon/

An interesting note on music writing and pop culture: Kim's book came out the same day as Robert Christgau's new memoir Going Into The City. Not sure if that was just pure coincidence or part of some larger plan. As you might know, during the 80's Robert and Sonic Youth weren't too crazy about each other (see the original title of SY's Kill Yr Idols), but grew much more sympatico after that. I've also read some excerpts from Going Into The City, and there are great stories around the early, early days of seeing Television and The Ramones.

Finally, I just read the full Dylan interview from last month's AARP magazine. Every Dylan interview is an adventure, but this might be the best one I've ever read. To paraphrase an old saying, every decade gets the Dylan interview it deserves...thanks Bob!

“That city I know doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s more alive in my head than it is when I’m there.”
--Kim Gordon from Girl In A Band

"Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers, and no doubt this applies to certain of the recollections I have gathered here."
--Kazuo Ishiguro from A Pale View of Hills

"It made me the listener that I am today. It made me listen for little things: the slamming of the door, the jingling of car keys. The wind blowing through trees, the songs of birds, footsteps, a hammer hitting a nail. Just random sounds. Cows mooing. I could string all that together and make that a song. It made me listen to life in a different way."
--Bob Dylan from interview with Robert Love
AARP The Magazine Feb/March 2015

Thanks, as always Mr H! It's good to hear from you and it's been awhile.

As we mentioned above, there seem to be a number of factors coming together in a perfect storm to attribute the recent drop in reader comments. Over the years, we've seen the dreaded "Facebook Effect" at work where attention spans continue to dwindle and many find engagement levels of clicking a "thumbs up" to be a sufficient demonstration of their thoughts,attitudes and feelings. So comments with sentences and full paragraphs are becoming an increasingly nostalgic memory.

The second factor is the man and the music itself. For whatever variety of reasons, fans just are not as energized and passionate as they once were. Call it burn out or boredom, Neil Young's ability to fire up his community seems to have hit a speed bump over the past year or so. As personal as albums like A Letter Home and Storytone may be, they clearly have not resonated widely.

And last but not least, there is the whole Neil-Pegi-Darryl saga which even we have had trouble coming to terms with and reconciling. Undoubtedly, fans are moving along -- both with and without Neil's music.

Thus far, news in 2015 has been remarkably sparse. In fact -- since we began near daily blogging here at TW back in 2003/4 -- we can not remember such a quiet period extending so long. The last very quiet period actually occurred during the Crazy Horse reunion and the Psychedelic Pill recording sessions. So it is with this in mid that we remain hopeful for the ongoing Nelson Boys recording sessions.

Afterall... good things come to those who wait ... or at least that's been our experience.

---

---