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True to her stage persona Kim Gordon has the effortless cool detached rock thing happening, what you see is what you get. Kim is a hard nut to crack, you can see that she truly struggles to open up but when she does it’s worth the wait.

She can be scathing, hard edged and cynical. Sometimes a little too harsh. Something that bugged me...I didn’t always like the dissing of some of the better known alternative bands that made it into the mainstream. Like they were lesser bands because of it. Good music is good music regardless of the number of records sold. You could argue signing up to a successful record company IS selling out but I think I’ve made my point. The whole argument of what is considered “punk rock�� or “alternative�� is also a touchy subject for Kim and she has her strong opinions of what constitutes that. I’m not sure it’s that clearly defined, genres blend, merge and evolve over time.

Coming from an academic middle class background made Kim feel like she didn’t quite fit in especially when first moving from L.A to N.Y.C she felt displaced like an outsider amongst the outsiders, gravitating more towards the New York art crowd. From the beginning she never really felt like a part of the rock star “scene��.

The book follows the early beginnings of her relationship with life partner and musical collaborator Thurston Moore, soon after meeting the creation of Sonic Youth was born. The deep connection they found defining the music and turning it into something special, they really took the dissonant no wave sound to a whole new level.

In this book Kim explains the difficulties of combining motherhood and touring, the hardship of moving away from the city she no longer recognises and the unglamorous side of the rock business. It’s not all sex, drugs and rock n roll after all!

Sadly you can still feel the raw pain when she is describing the crumbling of a 27 year marriage due to her husbands infidelity also coinciding with the eventual demise of the band. Both Kim and Thurston go off in separate directions pursuing other projects. Kim eventually going back to her art roots and going on to finding other musical collaborations.