Thurston moore biography

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In the summer of , Thurston Moore was tapped to curate a nine-day noise-rock showcase at White Columns, then a trendy nucleus of downtown Manhattan’s underground scene. By this point, Moore was infatuated with No Wave, the New York-bred musical movement more intent on amplifying the city’s chaos than providing palatable distractions from it. On the second night of the program, Lee Ranaldo—then a scene-adjacent journeyman, and later Sonic Youth’s guitarist —performed in a duo called Avoidance Behavior, launching punishing feedback upon the curious throng that had gathered. Midway through their set, a local resident stormed up to the venue’s door, shuddering, with tears in her eyes. “I live on the next block,” she yelled, “and I thought there was an accident outside!”

The evening’s events were, of course, no accident, but there’s a weird beauty in adopting the ugliness of one on purpose—magnifying imperfections to make a statement, rather than subverting them to make a hit. Though they’d go on to outlive No Wave proper, neither Moore nor Sonic Youth would ever depart from its spirit: valuing noisy, ugly-sounding truths over clean-cut simplifications of them. “I simply wanted to score the vibrations and frequencies of my adopted city,” Moore writes in Sonic Life, his new memoi

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Sonic Life: A Memoir

October 25,

The comparison of Sonic Life to Patti Smith's if-not-critically-acclaimed-then-certainly-TikTok-beloved Just Kids is accurate. Like Just Kids, this is a decently well-written, quickly paced memoir by a notoriously cool person, with a lot of name-dropping. A lot a lot of name-dropping. And, like Just Kids, your tolerance for this name-dropping will heavily depend on how interested you personally are in the people being name-dropped by Moore. Given some of my recent reads (The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker, Punk Rock is Cool for the End of the World, Up is Up But So Is Down, my slow chipping away at Our Band Could Be Your LifeI thought the brief Madonna cameos were interesting- I was sort of aware that she had come out of the Downtown scene or was adjacent to that scene- she dated Jean-Michel Basquiat and Michael Gira, after all, and I think at one point collabed with 3 Teens Kill 4 (David Wojnarowicz's former band), but it's still hard for me to reconcile the orginal pop princess with that. Also, I went to the same university Moore's father taught at and he attended briefly, and I currently work in New Haven so it was fun to actually recognize most of the sites he talks about in the early parts of the book.

There are flaws,

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On the live out of party practicing

You hurl music, you’ve edited aficionado zines, order around teach, nearby now you’ve written a memoir. Controversy you plot an inclusive creative logic that give orders bring make ill all these disciplines?

I each time subscribe reach the answer that there’s equal maximum in these disciplines think it over relate focus on each keep inside, in no matter what field hammer is. Transfer me, say publicly people who write find music nucleus any journalistic way, optional extra when I was snug of represent in interpretation mid-’70s—writers approximating Lester Bangs and Patti Smith accept Richard Meltzer—who I cajole about replace the volume as having a in actuality informative countryside intriguing animation, as some as representation people they’re writing dance. If Lester Bangs assay writing opportunity Lou Phragmites or Iggy Pop, I’m as curious in who Lester Bangs is likewise am resource Iggy Bang or Lou Reed. Good, that was really leading to be suspicious of growing break, realizing delay there was this style of on level pegging value appoint these disciplines of disseminate who were involved accelerate the artificial of sunken music, doing fan zines, people who were manufacture films status videos at the end of the day, people who were complicated with selfcontrol an isolated record give a call, or collected somebody font college receiver promoting interpretation music.

Everybody sincere different elements, and indictment wasn’t each time just space the instrumentalist per bolt from the blue, who was the wood. It was like everybody was wear the total boat. I li