Kim Gordon defies
I’m starting to think that Kim Gordon was the reason Sonic Youth kicked ass.
Not my subtitle, that’s the first comment on Kim Gordon’s new music:
What the hell it is awesome. You know when someone is in a band and achieves some fame and then they all have solo careers that largely suck? Kim Gordon is the inverse of that.
I have a Kim Gordon story.
I saw Sonic Youth live as many times as any other band I have seen in my life, I think four times, all in Toronto.
Many years before a Chinese friend of mine gifted me a Buddhist prayer machine:
like the one pictured, but that he had obtained for free at a famous Hong Kong temple where they hand them out. I thought the idea of a machine that prayed was ridiculous, and yet I have listened to this 17 second loop for more hours than any favorite album. It is delightfully analog, with the om-ma-pad-ne-hom chant getting slower and deeper as the batteries die.
Anyway I was set to attend a Sonic Youth show (not sure which tour anymore, maybe Washing Machine) and I felt they always had a spot for Buddhism, maybe they replaced The Blues with it. I brought my prayer machine to the show with a gold pen to match the ink in hopes of getting it autographed.
An hour before the show I was near the venue and there was Kim Gordon, I think with their kid, about 12, and I froze. This was what I had planned, hoped for. And I couldn’t say anything; I wanted her to help me make this artwork by signing it. They had a New York City indifference and I was dork waiting for the show. Never got that autograph, still listen to the prayer machine.
To my great surprise, she continues to rock the fuck out.
An algo accident of Youtube created this for me just now. It actually took me a while to figure out that another browser was chiming in and actually adding to Gordon’s tune.