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After 21 years and 15 albums, New York’s perennial
uptown hipsters have laid down tracks for a 16th: Murray
Street. What follows, gentle reader, is a fictitious
account of a real interview with Kim Gordon.
Since conversations often reveal more detail and insight
than even the best editorial pieces, we though we’d
give y’all a treat. Enjoy!
Estragon: “So how did it go?”
Vladimir: “Well, you know how people say that Sonic
Youth are too arty or abrasive sounding and it’s all
contrived...”
Estragon: “Like people who say they could paint like
Jackson Pollack.”
 Vladimir:
“Yeah, well, I got to ask Kim about whether or not the
band considered themselves part of the traditional avant-garde
movement’s progression from dadaism and the situationalists
and the Fluxus movement and so on. Cuz, like, I’d been
reading all this stuff about Jim O’Rourke, who sort
of silently joined the band over the last year or two,
and how he went to DePaul to study composition, and
how he’s played with and produced all these heavy improv
guys from, like, Europe and Japan. And then I’d read
some other stuff where Thurston was talking about a
post-serialist inspired composition on Goodbye 20th
Century, or something, and so I asked Kim what the hell
post-serialism is. You know, thinking, of course, she’d
know. And she says, ‘Do you mean post-surrealism?’ And
it was funny because she didn’t laugh, really. She just
sat there waiting for the next question. I mean, I guess
we chuckled a little bit. But I was surprised, because
I’ve always looked at Sonic Youth as, like, your friend’s
cool, older brother who goes off to some freaky college
like Marlboro or the New School and comes back a Buddhist,
smoking clove cigarettes and listening to The Replacements
or Can, or something. So I expected her to know.
Of course, then I felt like an idiot for asking. I did
try a bit of pre-emptory subterfuge by pointing out
that there are a ton of graduate-level papers out there
dissecting Sonic Youth for one reason or another,
so I wouldn’t look stupid; and she did agree that if
she were ever a student, she would probably try to write
her papers about weird stuff she liked. You know, trying
to take something totally unrelated to the topic and
tie it to whatever the assignment is (like every college
student everywhere).”
Estragon: “So what else d’ya ask her?”
Vladimir: “In the press pack they sent out, there’s
all this dense bullshit about how the record is the
result of ‘individuals striving in a collectivist environment,
for goals that are only understood once they are achieved.’
What kind of crap is that, right? Except, I didn’t say
that. I said something more along the lines of, ‘so
what does blah, blah, blah mean?’ And she was, like,
‘Oh, that’s our friend Byron Coley. He lives up in Northampton,
Mass., by us. He writes all that stuff, it’s all just
made-up.’ So that was kind of funny too.”
Estragon: “Where’d you meet her?”
Vladimir: “I met her at their studio on Murray Street,
which incidentally is the title of their new album -
it’s fucking awesome. I’ve been listening to it, like,
twice a day since I got it. It’s kind of post-rocky,
but it also has some moments where it sounds like the
Meat Puppets and then Sonic Youth covering Pavement
covering Sonic Youth. A little Tortoise,
too. The Lee Ranaldo number sounds like mid-80s
Sonic Youth. And the two Kim songs sound like,
well, Kim songs. Though she did say that, actually,
the songs are all written collectively.
 Apparently,
Thurston wrote four or five of them on an acoustic guitar
at home and then brought them to the studio for everybody
to flesh out. “Now that she and Thurston live up in
Massachusetts, she said, they only tour in the summer,
when Coco is done with school. Admittedly, it’s not
ideal for the band and selling records, but she said
it was cool with everybody else. “It was funny. When
I asked her about Jim O’Rourke joining the band, you
know, she just said, ‘Well, he wouldn’t leave.’ And
I sort of teased her a little bit. I asked her if, considering
Jim’s substantial resume´, if he wasn’t slumming a bit,
joining Sonic Youth. This time she actually smirked;
and then I felt like I just insulted the Queen, or something.
So, like an idiot, I said, ‘You know I was just joking.’
And she said, ‘You’ll have to ask Jim about that.’ (Next
question!)”
Estragon: “So what was the studio like?”
Vladimir: “Ah, it was cool. It’s near where the World
Trade Center used to be. It’s a couple of doors
down from an Irish bar called the Blarney on
one side and this strip club called NY Dolls
on the other. So I get there and, Yuko, the make-up
artist for the photo shoot that day, was waiting in
the lobby. After a couple of minutes of ringing the
buzzer, they sent the lift down and we rode up on this
tiny elevator to the fourth floor, which opens up on
the band’s studio and all these people buzzing around.
So right fucking there, in front of me are, like, 10
of their guitars. And they’re all cool old, beat-up
guitars, with, like, pieces of tape with markings that
say, like, “CF#G CF#G,” and stuff.
“It's weird, I know Manhattan is expensive, and I guess
I’m just naive about the band’s monetary situation,
but it wasn’t what I expected. Their rehearsal space
was kind of like every other band’s rehearsal space:
They each had little homemade sound-baffling partitions
made of plywood and stapled with egg-crate foam. And
they each had these little areas arrayed with a ton
of old pedals, strapped with duct tape and labelled
with hand-written pre-sets.
There was an old Fender amp, a Twin, I think. And a
Mesa-Boogie, too, maybe. There was an old, grey, Ringo
Starr-style Gretsch or Ludwig set over in the corner.
It was cool. There was an old Korg synth, too, with
colour-coded pieces of purple, orange and green tape
on its keys, indicating some arcane pattern for one
of their songs.”
Estragon: “That’s cool.”
Vladimir: “Yeah. When I asked Kim what she thought about
the new record, she said they all think it’s the best
thing they’ve ever done. She joked that, ‘all the other
stuff is shit.’
And when I mentioned that I thought the Lee song, “Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style,” sounded like some of their older, more straight-forward
noise pop, she told me that these guys, Don Dietrich
and Jim Sauer, from Borbetomagus, played saxophones
on the song. I never heard of them, but I checked them
out and they’re some New York noise outfit from the
80s. From what I could tell, they sound pretty cool.
If you like pounding waves of dissonance, that is. Apparently,
they have a guitar player too.”
Estragon: “I don’t know, the last few Sonic Youth albums
kind of wandered into some ponderously jammy territory.”
Vladimir: “I know. Kim said she thought some people
might think it’s because they’re getting older, but
she said it’s just what they’re into right now. I believe
her, though. They’re a freaking franchise at this point.
They can do whatever they want. Not that I think that
she looks at it that way, but she did say, and I’ve
even seen Lee quoted as saying the same thing, whatever
they’re doing at any given time, they’re just doing
what interests them.”
Estragon: “I guess. It’s just inaccessible at times.”
Vladimir: “Well, what’s the alternative? Creed?”
Allan Kemler for Crud Magazine© 2002
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| 04/02 1 Giant Leap - My Culture
04/02 Elfpower Interview - Andrew Rieger - Creatures
04/02 Frou Frou Interview - Guy Sigsworth/Imogen Heap
04/02 Gomez Interview - Ian Ball
04/02 Idlewild - Live - London Astoria
04/02 K's Choice Interview
04/02 Leaves - Live - Camden Dingwall
04/02 Longwave Interview - Exit
04/02 Lucy Mongrel Interview
04/02 Oasis - The Hindu Times
04/02 Phantom Planet - Interview
04/02 Unwritten Law - Interview
04/02 VUE - Coordinates Interview
05/02 BRMC - LIve - Kentish Town, London
05/02 Breeders - Title K
05/02 FC Kahuna - Machine Says Yes
05/02 Moco - Live - London Monarch
05/02 Need New Body - Interview
05/02 The Soundtrack of Our Lives - Live - Soundhause, Northampton
05/02 The Bellrays - Meet The Bellrays
06/02 Fleadh Festival - Finsbury Park
06/02 Frou Frou Coordinates Interview
06/02 Incubus - Interview - Mark Einziger
06/02 North Mississippi Allstars - Interview
06/02 Papa Roach - She Loves Me Not
06/02 Proud Mary - Live - Northampton, Soundhaus
06/02 Pulp - Live - Sherwood Pines, Edwinstowe
06/02 Reindeer section - You Are My Joy
06/02 Silverchair - Diorama
|  | 06/02 Something Corporate - Leaving Through The Window
06/02 Soinc Youth - Interview
06/02 The Burn - The Smiling Face
06/02 The Coral - Live - Roadmender, Northampton
06/02 The LIbertines - Live - The Social, Nottingham
06/02 The Vines, Sheffield Leadmill
06/02 Trik Turner - Interview
06/02 Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Live, Soundhaus, Northampton
07/02 12 Stones Interview
07/02 Arolo -Interview
07/02 Buy To Let Doncaster - Anti Social Behaviour
07/02 Cassius - Interview
07/02 Farrah - Interview
07/02 Glassjaw - Interview
07/02 Neil Michael Haggerty - Interview
07/02 Hoobastank - Running Away
07/02 Leaves - Interview
07/02 LL Cool Jay Interview
07/02 Oasis - Live - Finsbury Park, London
07/02 Polyphonic Spree - Live - Camden Monarch
07/02 Queens of the Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf
07/02 Super Furry Animals - Interview
07/02 The Beatings - Live - Metro Club London
07/02 The Bellrays + The D4 - Virgin Megastore, Oxford Street London
January 2001
July - August 2001
September - October 2001
November - December 2001
January - March 2002
April - July 2002
August - December 2002 | |
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