Lot of time in the trailer lately. Where’s Cliff? Shooting his damn movie. Where’s Benny? Like I said, in my trailer—I’m sick of hanging out with the grips. Okay… so where’s Rick Dalton? Leonardo DiCaprio (not a friend) has been “dragging his feet” and Netflix are pissed. “Netflix is reportedly offering DiCaprio $3M for the Dalton cameo—just for one day of shooting—but apparently, back in April, that amount was considered too low for the actor. Normally, DiCaprio commands $20M per film, but given that this is merely a cameo, $3M is a very generous offer for the limited work involved. Not to him, apparently.” Apparently. Should I lend a helping hand and provide some coin? Uh, no. Less screen time for me.
So I’ve been reading, everything from Bruce Wagner, Zosia Mamet, Eric Roberts, and Thomas Pynchon. Some of those are finished now, others waiting to be cracked, and they’ll have to wait a few more days, because my beak is deep in Thurston Moore’s memoir Sonic Life, which apparently came out two years ago. Who knew? Not me. I hope he’s doing okay with his heart condition, which kept him from doing a North American book tour. It’s been a while for me and Thurston. I only have his old address in Northampton, and the place on Lafayette in Manhattan, but him and Kim were out of there a long time ago. Now that I think of it, the last time I saw Thurst was around 2006; it wasn’t the last Sonic Youth album, but the last good one, Rather Ripped, and I made my way down to the 9:30 Club in DC to see them. It was cool: everyone from eight to 80, and some kids threw one of their band shirts up onto the stage; Thurst took it and hung it on his amp.
The man has always prized musical progress over his own music. Remember, he championed, and in some cases introduced, acts as numerous as Dinosaur Jr., Boredoms, Beck, Mudhoney, Wolf Eyes, and of course, Nirvana. He was the counterculture’s cool dad, and when he split from counterculture mom Kim Gordon in 2011, everyone was pissed at him. Still are. We were his children, and his leaves his freaking wife and kid? Whatever his reasons remain mysterious: his memoir isn’t any kind of exposé or epic self-reflection. Asked by The New York Times what he thought of his ex-wife’s 2015 memoir Girl in a Band, which was far shorter and more salacious, Moore said, “I didn’t take any umbrage with it. But it’s something I didn’t want this book to have at all. If I got too much into that, that would be a critical focus, as it is with any memoir. I purposely decided I have no real reason to share those feelings.”
Amen. Sonic Life isn’t a personal memoir as much as it is a book of music history, specifically punk, alternative, and all forms of underground rock, noise, avant-garde jazz, and even Beat poetry. This man saw the New York debut of The Fall, Fugazi, Minor Threat, Nirvana, Public Image Ltd., and the only solo show by Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. He toured with Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and became fast friends with Kurt Cobain. More recently, he could be spotted as underground venues (such as Floristree in Baltimore) playing experimental guitar sets with fellow sonic explorers like Bill Nace. The last time I saw Thurst solo was around 2010, but I didn’t want to say hi, I was on WAY too much salvia (it was still in back then).
I don’t usually read reviews of books that I’m reading—what’s the point?—but, for whatever reason, I looked up Pitchfork’s review of Sonic Life. What’s this guy’s freaking problem? Samuel Hyland writes, “Interspersed with Moore’s tale is punk rock’s own, as seen through his eyes; oftentimes, it seems like he’s more comfortable characterizing himself through music history than purely reflecting. It isn’t an issue for those seeking trivia, but the book is quite dense, and much of that space is taken up by retellings of shows he either attended or performed. Sometimes this approach works; other times, it feels like he’s taking spray paint to East Village buildings that used to be punk hotspots, and scrawling Thurston Moore was here. Which we already know.” Um, I didn’t! I was enthralled reading about Thurst and Harold Paris seeing Suicide at Max’s Kansas City in 1976; I was just as engaged when he detailed figures such as Madonna, Michael Gira, Michael Stipe, and Robert Christgau. Who better to write a history of underground music from the mid-1970s to the early-2010s than the frontman from Sonic Youth?
Pitchfork wanted more “authenticity,” whatever that means. Remember that Thurst is a human being, and so are his wife and child, and I can’t imagine he’d want to make their lives any more difficult than he already has. I can’t imagine this review being published today; it reads like a relic of the “don’t believe your lying eyes” era of Joe Biden. You know, if Thurst wrote the saucy tell-all, and Kim wrote the epic history, the reviews would’ve been brutal on him and polite on her. Thurst is concerned with “data” and documentation—it’s not “I was there,” but “There they were.” Much of Sonic Life reads like similar books by music journalists Michael Azerrad, Marc Spitz, and Rob Sheffield, but the difference is that Thurst was actually in one of these hugely important bands, and he was always an avid collector and amateur historian. I’ve only leafed through Sonic Life, but I can tell you I’ve already lost hours of sleep with my beak deep in this book, and if that’s not a rave review, I don’t know what is.
So here’s to you, Thurst. Hope we can have that smoke ‘round Murray Street sometime again soon. Maybe I’ll have to trek up to Carnaby Street. Fine by me—I’ve got the coin.
—Follow Bennington Quibbits on Twitter: @RoosterQuibbits