Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground - Michael Azerrad (2001)

Published in the waning years of nu-metal and the TRL teen pop revolution, and shortly before the NYC rock renaissance, Our Band Could Be Your Life charts the progression of 13 legendary, lesser-known bands in the US in the 80's. It's one of my favorite books and I hadn't read it since the mid-2000's. A lot of it was memorable, a couple minor paragraphs revealed themselves anew, and overall it cemented itself into its rightful position on the Best Books list. [Ed.-Or maybe not?]

It is pretty much impossible to write a thorough review of this book without skirting over a few of the bands, so it will be the subject of one of our first (and hopefully not only) podcast episodes. For now, it will suffice to mention a few quotable paragraphs and briefly run through the subjects.

Black Flag

Greg Ginn founded Black Flag in the late 70's and they cycled through a few different singers until Henry Rollins emerged and recorded their landmark debut LP Damaged. Damaged is definitely in the top 100 albums of all time and is frequently cited as the essential hardcore document...I'll just excerpt it:

"Released in January '82, Damaged is a key hardcore document, perhaps the key hardcore document.  It boiled over with rage on several fronts: police harassment, materialism, alcohol abuse, the stultifying effects of consumer culture, and, on just about every track on the album, a particularly virulent strain of self-lacerating angst--all against a savage, brutal backdrop that welded apoplectic punk rock to the anomie of dark Seventies metal like Black Sabbath." (33)

Ginn and Rollins are polarizing figures but time has been more kind to Rollins. Ginn has reformed Black Flag and released an execrable comeback. Even though What the....is terrible, it's still worth hearing. Ginn is a guitar virtuoso, probably the 2nd most iconic featured in the book after J. Mascis.  His best work is in the past, but there are still moments on the new album where he unloads that same vicious squall. 

Ginn also founded SST records which is probably the only entity that pops up in every single chapter. Apparently, he is kind of an asshole. Regrettably, Henry Rollins cannot bring himself to sing with them again, because it would undoubtedly be one of the best reunion shows out there. Rollins is loaded and has become an almost saintly figure. Everybody loves him now but he was definitely an asshole too at one point, as this chapter conveys. Ginn probably comes off more sympathetically back in 2000.

The Minutemen

The Minutemen are the 2nd weirdest band profiled in terms of sound. They're not a punk band, but they are. They're a jazz band with really short songs. They are pretty out there. Their philosophy is righteous, however, and they cut inspiring historical figures. D. Boon unfortunately left us all far too long ago in an accident that appears to have been unnecessary and preventable, but what a mark he left on this world. Mike Watt continues on with their legend and retains cache as one of the leading elder statesmen (dinosaurs?) of the scene. Of course he later played with the Stooges and Iggy is the ultimate dinosaur (after the Rolling Stones front duo). 

Double Nickels on the Dime is another SST classic album. It's not as tight as Damaged though. The Minutemen probably have some of the best lyrics of any of these bands but they also have the most threadbare sound. That may be intentional. They're not one of my favorites but they're worth a listen. "This Ain't No Picnic" is amazing, as are at least a dozen others. It's also very amusing to hear their first couple albums when they do like 10 songs in 7 minutes (Paranoid Time or The Punch Line, see "Fanatics" off the latter).

Mission of Burma

Founded in the late 1970s by the same trio that would never shift (their "fourth member" Martin Swope would eventually get replaced by Bob Weston), this band came out of Boston and was never "big." They're noteworthy in that when their story ends in this book, basically no one still knows who they are--a final tour stop in Chicago yields an audience of six. 

And yet they were one of the very first to reform, almost immediately after the publication of this book (some 17 years after their demise due to Roger Miller's hearing loss). They are Next Level, but I think their post-2000's albums are weaker than their first two (Signals, Calls and Marches and Vs. are pretty much impossible to top, in their defense). They're not the most interesting personalities. Roger Miller had tinnitus and Clint Conley had a slight drinking problem and Peter Prescott just seemed rambunctious.  Azerrad refers to Prescott screaming like a "traumatized drill sergeant." (106) This is not the only time he compares a punk vocalist to a drill sergeant, but there's a different adjective the second time.  Conley's comments on how he doesn't like talking about his own lyrics are most interesting.  But overall this is just kind of an encyclopedia entry about a band that more people should hear and know.

Minor Threat

Re-reading this book led me to revisit a lot of this music, and Minor Threat's first two 7''s (15 songs) are, I think, perfect. Damian Abraham recently commented that the Bad Brains were "uncoverable" (because no band could do a better version of their songs) and maybe that's the case for Minor Threat, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to start my own tribute band, Mid-Age Threat. 

Ian Mackaye reappears in the Fugazi chapter, but that is probably the least necessary in this book because the whole story is here. Fugazi is about doing things their own way. Minor Threat is about DC hardcore and straight edge. Also, "Straight Edge" is awesome.

Husker Du

When I first read this book, Husker Du were one of the bands that I hadn't heard, that I got turned onto, and that I loved instantly. Zen Arcade is another classic SST album (actually released on the exact same day as Double Nickels). They were heavily referenced in Try, which I had read in Fall 2003, and I came to them with some expectation of their grandeur. 

They're 1/2 of the Minneapolis scene detailed here (I would say 1/3 but Prince is only mentioned in an aside or two). They're the less accessible, more serious and visionary band of the two. I liked them a lot more before but I kind of got worn out after a while. Also Michael Azerrad wrote Bob Mould's memoir with him so this chapter sort of eventually became it's own book.  

Sadly, Grant Hart died last year, so there cannot be an actual reunion, but it seemed like there was plenty of time to do one, and who knows why they didn't. Maybe Bob Mould was like, "just see us solo, we'll play a few old hits." His new stuff is very good in its own way too, and his band can execute the old ones well too, but it's just not the same.  I hadn't heard "Eight Miles High" or "Sorry Somehow" until after I read Mould's book and my life is more complete because of them.

The Replacements 

The other Minneapolis 1/2 is probably the most accessible band in the book (or "most mainstream-sounding"). Not the case for their early work, but Azerrad notably gets off the train when they go major.  I'm reading Trouble Boys right now so I'll have more to say about the Replacements later. Suffice to say this is a good quick primer on them. An argument can be made that all of their work, save perhaps their last two albums, is almost perfect (in a very imperfect way). Let it Be is classic, but for me, "Kids Don't Follow" is their best song. 

Sonic Youth

Here we get to one of my favorite bands of all time. Admittedly, I haven't listened to them very much since their demise, and I had plenty of material to explore in the post on Kim Gordon's memoir, Girl in a Band. Who would know what the future had in store for SY back in 2000?

No one! They hit a low point with NYC Ghosts and Flowers and only went up from there, eventually imploding in divorce and sad vibes. THEY COULD STILL GET BACK TOGETHER, but I don't think anyone would find that necessary. I saw them more than any other of the bands featured here, and they played enough shows over their 30-year history to satisfy most of the listening public.

This is actually one of the most boring chapters because none of them have drug problems and though they are avant-garde and outre and experimental and no-wave and "pigfuck," this does not always translate into a compelling story. I think an argument can be made that they're "boring" musically also. Anybody who has seen them live knows that seeing them drone on a feedback jam for 10 or 30 minutes is essentially witnessing experimental free jazz-induced aural torture. Yet their power cannot be denied and they will always be one of my favorite bands, as well as one of the greatest of all time.

Butthole Surfers

Not really sure what to say about this group.  I got Locust Abortion Technician on something of a whim a long time ago, and it's okay.  They're more of a performance art experiment than a rock band.  Musicianship sounds rudimentary, and seems to take a backseat to the lyrics and overall message of the sensory experience conveyed by the songs.  They really do seem more like a traveling circus or freak-show than an indie band, and this chapter is consequently an outlier.  It is undoubtedly the most outrageous part of the book, and occasionally compelling.  

It seems like drugs are a pretty essential accoutrement to consumption of the Butthole Surfers music.  Moreover, like many of the bands in this book, their full majesty may only be adequately understood by those that saw them live.  Without getting too deeply into their personal mythologies, Gibby Haynes is their front man and his professional situation imbues their narrative with a sharp philosophical bent:

"'I can't believe we lived through that,' Leary [co-founder] continues.  'Man, I'll tell you what, I'm glad to be alive--it kind of seemed like we were in a constant state of suicide the whole time.  It wasn't like, "Gee, we're going to become successful and make a lot of money."  It was more like, "Man, we're going to have a lot of fun before the end comes and we all hit the can." I didn't think there was any way out.'
They were eventually reduced to scavenging for cans and bottles so they could turn them in for the nickel deposit.  It was quite a comedown for Haynes, who was all set to be a successful accountant just a couple of years before.  One day some prankster ran up and kicked all the bottles out of Haynes's bag.  'Gibby and the rest of us were on our knees, scurrying to collect the bottles again,' says Coffey [drummer].  'And I looked in Gibby's eyes, and he was about to cry.  It was just so pitiful--this big, strong guy like Gibby being reduced to tears because here he was on the streets of New York, groveling for bottles.  But good god, we needed those bottles.'" (287)

They do go on to command a pretty sizable fee for their concerts, and it is amazing they are one of the bands whose latter history is not covered because they got signed to a major label.  They're a curiosity for sure, and we all probably need a good dose of them given how "safe" so much artistic expression has become in recent years.

Big Black

Along with the Butthole Surfers, Big Black explored dark lyrical territory with an added dose of meanness.  Musically, however, they are much more listenable.  Big Black is basically Steve Albini, who is an island unto himself.  It is also Santiago Durango, who played in Naked Raygun and later went to law school and now works as an appellate defender in Ottawa, IL (once I used his name as a pseudonym for a legal writing assignment).  Jeff Pezzati and Dave Riley each did stints on bass. "Roland" (the drum machine) supplied the beat.  Notably this is the only Chicago band in the book.  

Most people know Albini without knowing they know Albini by virtue of the albums he's produced for other bands over the past 30 years.  The rest of us know him for his way with words and the sound he can wring out of his guitar.  I never got into Big Black until I had a friend play me his vinyl copy of Atomizer.  Atomizer is probably universally-recognized as their high watermark, but it's far from accessible.  Their first EP, Lungs, is weaker, but if you listen to Pigpile, their posthumous live album, the songs are given a new life.  Pigpile is probably their most accessible release and serves as a kind of greatest hits collection.  Its versions of "Passing Complexion" and "Cables" are highlights.

I saw Big Black play four songs back in September 2006, I think, at the Touch and Go block party.  They played last, and then segued straight into a Shellac set.  I don't remember much about it.  I go through periods of rediscovering old bands I used to like.  This happened with me for Shellac in 2014 when they came out with Dude Incredible.  I think a lot of the characters from this book have changed over the years, not just from the early 80's to 2000, but also from 2000 to 2018.  Albini is just as intimidating as ever, but he seems to have toned it down.  He still clearly does not care if you like him or not, but appears less outwardly confrontational.  He and his wife do amazing work for the homeless.  If I had to point to examples of lives well-lived, his would be up there. 

For what it's worth, of the book Albini said, "It was written by a guy who wasn't there when any of it happened.  I naturally think Azerrad's perspective is skewed by hype, publicity, and reputation, and he swallows some pretty burnished bullshit regarding motives for various embarrassing episodes.  A lot of what he says sounds like mistaken critical perspective to me, but that's inevitable given the sentences I typed right there.  It's never taken well when somebody tries to school a monkey about bananas."    

Dinosaur Jr

This is one of the few bands I knew pretty well going into the first reading.  They are just J. Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph (Lou Barlow gets fired after Bug and Azerrad skirts over pretty much everything after Green Mind).  Lou Barlow started Sebadoh pretty early on, and they had their own impressive run of albums, but they were not exactly primed for arena rock in the same way as Dinosaur.  I saw Sebadoh in 2004 at Maxwell's and interviewed Lou Barlow for an imaginary zine that I would never put out and I asked him about reforming Dinosaur and he said they had a friend that was trying to make it happen.  SO I KNEW.  It didn't happen for another year or so, but I would get to see them at Lollapalooza in 2005 and several other times over the next ten years.  

I thought this was a kind of boring chapter on previous readings, but this time it struck me for the inter-band tension.  In view of their reformation, the anecdotes seem almost quaint.  Dinosaur stand out musically in this book because of J. Mascis and his guitar pedals: 

"And after Dinosaur's tour, a whole wave of English groups, dubbed 'shoegazer bands,' sprang up in their wake, playing folk chords through phalanxes of effects pedals to make swirling, deafening music; they uniformly adopted a nonchalant demeanor and paid lip service to Neil Young and Dinosaur Jr." (366)

I think My Bloody Valentine had been formed around the same time as Dinosaur, but their sound did evolve, and it is not unlikely that Dinosaur were an influence.  Mascis is the #1 guitarist featured in the book (and there are many great guitarists in this book).  You're Living All Over Me is classic, and Bug is pretty good, but Mascis admitted that it was the album he was least happy with.  Now, everybody says their later albums are good (Pitchfork has gone 8.4 on Beyond, 8.5 on Farm, 7.9 on I Bet on Sky, and 7.5 on Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not) and while I agree they are good, I don't think they're quite as good as those two.  I think they are better than their debut, but they're not better than Where You Been.  I think they're on par with Green Mind and Without a Sound and Hand It Over.  Then again, Barlow's presence as a songwriter elevates them into higher territory.

It's also worth noting that they are featured in The Year Punk Broke, but post-Barlow.  Their two songs were always the highlight for me.

Fugazi  

Somehow I hadn't realized that Guy Picciotto had another band besides Fugazi and Rites of Spring.  This reading turned me onto the pleasant curiosity that was Happy Go Licky.  Apart from that, it was much of the same, and not much of a revelation for a person who owned the Instrument DVD.  Fugazi certainly belong in this category, yet this chapter seems about half as long as most of the others, probably because we already know all about Ian Mackaye.  It seems to end rather abruptly.  Most of the chapters end when the band signs a major label deal or break up.  Fugazi released their last album in 2001, and there may or may not have been intimations of that experienced by Azerrad during his interviews (it feels like there were not).  This is the way the chapter ends:

"Despite the alternative gold rush, Fugazi didn't release a follow-up to Steady Diet of Nothing until June '93, when they released In on the Kill Taker, which actually made the lower rungs of the Billboard Top 200 album chart.  
Although Fugazi's legend grew even larger in the Nineties, Brendan Canty feels the band's early days tell its truest story.  'People might look at us and think we're this icon,' he says, 'but at the time there was just a couple hundred people coming to the shows and it wasn't huge and nothing had potential.  It was just important to do it.  And the fact that we all wanted to go on the road and work as hard as possible, and that we were able to, is in itself its own success story.  It doesn't necessarily have to be about getting anywhere, but about getting through the process of fulfilling your own possibilities.'" (409-410)

Way to skirt over Red Medicine, End Hits, and the current state of the band (The Argument) as of 2000.  Okay, this is definitely one of the best books, but that doesn't mean I don't have criticisms, or think maybe the writing's a little clunky at times and it's purely in the Best Books category just because it's a bunch of great anecdotes.  It reads like it should be an oral history.  Azerrad's exposition is often stark and humorous.  Sometimes he sounds like an imitation Lester Bangs when describing the particular feeling a certain song can make.  At times, these are perfectly on point.  Take this description of the guitar sound in Black Flag's "Depression":

"The songs took fleeting but intense feelings and impulses and exploded them into entire all-consuming realities.  So when Ginn wrote a chorus like 'Depression's got a hold of me / Depression's gonna kill me,' it sounded like the whole world was going to end.  'That was Black Flag: when you lose your shit,' says Rollins.  The music was the same way--blitzkrieg assaults so completely overwhelming, so consuming and intense that for the duration of the song, it's hard to imagine ever listening to anything else."  (33)

Other times, they sound obtuse, such as this description of Flip Your Wig:

"Except for the two instrumentals tacked on to the end, every song sounds like a hit in some alternate world where the rivers run with an equal mixture of battery acid and honey." (189)

What?  I digress.  Anyways, late era Fugazi is great.  Still this gives the feeling that they're a boring band that didn't really change because they're pretty much all stable, upstanding, principled and sober individuals.  

I wrote a paper in college for a Writing about Popular Music class about Ian Mackaye and Calvin Johnson and read it out loud to the class.  They all seemed to like it (it drew from material in Our Band Could Be Your Life and other things in its bibliography).  However, one or two of them suggested that Ian Mackaye was no longer straight edge, that he had allowed himself to drink alcohol.  It's pretty amazing that we still don't really know.  Ian Mackaye and Guy Picciotto today are mysterious figures that have laid low, though I believe the Evens are still active and Guy has been spotted at a Washington Wizards game.  Everyone wants them to play together again (even if it was just like what the Replacements did), and it feels almost a little bit cruel, like they don't want to capitalize, or they think it's boring and regressive to play old songs.  Maybe there's another reason.  In any case, they are notable in that they stopped pretty much when the book was published and haven't done anything since.  Almost every other band had some sort of life after 2001.  The Fugazi Live series of bootlegs perhaps counts.       

Mudhoney

Mudhoney might as well be considered a chapter on Sub-Pop.  This chapter is as much (or more) about Sub-Pop as it is the band.  Mudhoney is Mark Arm and Steve Turner, and others.  The chapter starts off being about Green River.  A lot of people talk about Green River because Jeff Ament was in it and later in Pearl Jam.  Mudhoney is framed as the precursor to Nirvana.  

The chapter is as much about Mark Arm and Steven Turner as it is Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman.  Actually the most dramatic moments involve the label and not the band.  They are treated as the sort of flagship Sub Pop band.  There is high drama in their relationship:

"'I remember seeing Steve the next day and trying to talk to him and being so at the end of my rope that I broke down and started crying,' says Pavitt.  'What hurt me more than anything was that he felt like I didn't respect him.  I didn't care if they went to a major--whatever.  But the fact that he would misread what I was trying to communicate...I was simply trying to be honest.  It was such a low point for me, just standing there crying in front of this guy.  I just said, "I'm sorry"'" (450)

At the end, Mark Arm remarks that Mudhoney may be regarded as a footnote in history.  They're probably the only band in the book that has remained active all this time.  The Lucky Ones is one of the earliest posts on this blog.   So perhaps that estimation has changed as their longevity has shown, yet they are still probably best known for "Touch Me I'm Sick."  In an interview a couple years ago, when asked how it felt to have inspired a generation of up-and-coming bands, Arm replied, "I think it would be presumptuous of me to claim that we inspired anyone."

Beat Happening

The last band in the book is one of the strangest and most influential.  Beat Happening is Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis and Bret Lunsford.  This chapter is mostly about Johnson and K Records.  They have a lot in common with Dischord, but their bands tend to have more of a twee sound.  None of them really knew how to play their instruments very well and they rarely rehearsed.  

I used to listen to Beat Happening a lot and I don't as much anymore.  Johnson's style is confrontational and magnetic.  I was luckily able to see him once solo in a showcase of K bands.  I think I bought a copy of a Halo Benders album from Phil Elverum.

Because Beat Happening prove that you just need passion to start a band, not talent, they are one of the most inspiring bands featured.  Several of their songs are sung acapella, and Johnson once recorded an album of a bunch of random people around Olympia, WA singing.  Their musical skills were rudimentary, yet they managed to record several classic albums that became increasingly complex.  By the end of their run at You Turn Me On in 1992, they hit a musical peak and sound almost like masters of their style.

So that's it.  I really love this book.  However, I just finished reading Trouble Boys.  That is going on the Best Books list.  This took Azerrad three years of nonstop work.  Trouble Boys took Bob Mehr eight years, though he must have been doing other things too.  This is more of an overview than a deep dive, and it will be as educational to most readers as it will be entertaining.

  

Girl in a Band - Kim Gordon (2015)

At my 30th birthday party, now nearly two years ago, a friend gave me a gift card to Barnes & Noble for $20.  I visited the store a few different times recently, but there was nothing I really wanted.  Of course there were books I wanted to read, but I could usually stand to wait for them to be held on reserve for me at the library.  I don't like buying books at sticker price, especially hardcovers.  But when I tried to reserve Kim Gordon's new memoir, and realized I would need to wait a couple months, I found my occasion to redeem the gift.

It didn't work at first.  I went to the location on Jackson Blvd. in the Loop on the day it was released - February 24, 2015 - and looked in the music section.  Nothing.  I went to the information desk and asked if they could look up a book on their system.  The girl at the desk asked which book, prepared to type, and I said it was Kim Gor----"We've been getting a lot of calls for that - it's all sold out, but we can order you a copy."  I gave them my number, and one week later, on March 1st, I got my copy.  It was just over $30, so I had to pay $10 extra.  I put down The Corrections (which I fully expect to review in the next two weeks), and started.  I finished it on Saturday, March 7th.  Now, I must delve into reviewing it, which I feel more equipped to handle than nearly any other post in the history of Flying Houses.

For those that don't know me personally, it is worth explaining that Sonic Youth is one of my favorite bands of all time.  I was first exposed to them in the Fall of 2001, by the same friend that I have probably written about more than once here, but most prominently regarding Cap'n Jazz.  He lent me Sister and Daydream Nation.  I didn't really get them at the time, but I remember liking Sister slightly more, probably because it was shorter and more digestible.  At the time though, I experienced what most people probably do upon first listening to them: confusion.  Yes, it was rock music, but it seemed like they were purposefully trying to be a difficult listen.  A year later I went to NYU and a friend showed me The Year Punk Broke, and my interest was renewed.  By the time Murray Street came out in 2002, I had burnt CDs of several of their albums and picked it up on or around its release date.  At the time, I thought they were old, and were losing their edge.  I hadn't even really listened to A Thousand Leaves yet, so I guess Washing Machine was my most recent point of reference.  Except for "Plastic Sun," it seemed kind of mellow and boring to me.  I got into basically all of their other albums after that, and when Sonic Nurse came out in 2004, I proclaimed to everyone that it was their best since Washing Machine.  I would say the same thing after Rather Ripped in 2006 and The Eternal in 2009.  I also saw them play live about five different times, the last of which was performing Daydream Nation at the Pitchfork Festival in 2007, a really fond memory of mine.  

Then there was also the time I met Kim and Thurston.  It was at the Tonic lounge in the Fall of 2002. Thurston was playing a weird, free jazz noise concert with the drummer Chris Corsano and another guy I forget, and I approached Kim.  I totally forgot what I said to her, but I think I asked her if she could give a zine I had just printed to Thurston.  I said, "Kim," and she turned around and said something to me in German, I think.  Later I would talk to Thurston after the show and get his autograph in my journal and find out from him that the band would next be playing at Irving Plaza, a show that wasn't announced yet.  I think I saw them both at one other show, about a year later--Godspeed You! Black Emperor at Warsaw in Brooklyn.  

Girl in a Band got a lot of advance press, primarily from the salacious excerpts that were unveiled in a couple different reviews about the breakdown of their marriage.  There were also extremely pointed comments on Courtney Love, Billy Corgan and Lana Del Rey.  I read them in awe, and could not wait to read the book.  It seemed like Kim was about to absolutely destroy all the posers and bust out with pure, unadulterated truth.  While this book is extremely powerful, and made me super nostalgic and happy, reigniting my desire to make art and challenge expectations, I must report that those looking for similar cutting remarks will not find many more.  They will probably be most enthralled by the last thirty pages or so--but nobody should be disappointed by this book.  I only don't name it one of the best books reviewed on Flying Houses because it sometimes feel clipped--many of the first chapters are only a few pages long, giving the appearance that they were each written as one day's work--and some details or impressions are repeated, as if the reader will not remember the first mention.  Regardless, I loved it.

It begins with an account of Sonic Youth's final show in Brazil, and after finishing the book last Saturday, I watched it on YouTube.  The sound leaves something to be desired, and it takes them a while to gain momentum, but it is a fitting end to their epic career.  It's a good place to start the book, because it sucks the reader into what unfortunately must be the main gossipy reason for its allure: telling the story of how the marriage failed.  After watching the show I had to conclude that Kim was either really good at faking the appearance of having a good time, or genuinely savoring the catharsis.

From there, the book goes into a narrative of her family history and early life.  It is tempered with just the right amount of detail--not an exhaustive genealogical report, but a collection of highlights one might tell a close friend.  This one reads like an extrapolation of the meaning behind the song "Brave Men Run," which is later referenced around the middle of the book:

"In my family, history showed up in casual remarks.  I was in my senior year of high school when my aunt told me that my mother's family, the Swalls, was one of California's original families.  Pioneers.  Settlers.  The story went that along with some Japanese business partners, my great-great-grandparents ran a chili pepper farm in Garden Grove, in Orange County.  The Swalls even had a ranch in West Hollywood, at Doheny Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard, on land that's today all car washes and strip malls and bad stucco.  At some point the railroad laid down tracks, slicing the street into Big and Little Santa Monica Boulevards.  The ranches are all gone today, of course, but Swall Drive is still there, swishing north and south, a fossil of ancestral DNA.

I've always felt there's something genetically instilled and inbred in Californians--that California is a place of death, a place people are drawn to because they don't realize deep down they're actually afraid of what they want.  It's new, and they're escaping their histories while at the same time moving headlong toward their own extinctions.  Desire and death are all mixed up with the thrill of and the risk of of the unknown.  It's a variation of what Freud called the 'death instinct.'  In that respect the Swalls were probably no different from any other early California family, staking out a new place, lured there by the gold rush and hitting an ocean wall." (15-16)

She writes about her father, and how he conducted the first sociological study on categorical high school cliques, for UCLA while in Hong Kong.  She compares him to William S. Burroughs, whom she visited with Thurston, their daughter Coco, and Michael Stipe in 1994.  She writes about idyllic fishing trips with her parents and their friends in Northern California.  She writes about her mother, who was somewhat mysterious to her.  And she writes about her brother, who may have affected her personality more than anyone else:

"His ridiculing and button-pushing went beyond the typical sibling ragging.  At dinner, I'd let drop some trendy word or expression and Keller would jump on it, and on me, for my faddishness, my ordinariness, my lack of originality.  When a scene in a movie or a Disney special made me laugh or cry, he'd make fun of me for laughing and make fun of me for crying and make fun of me when I didn't say anything at all.  He always knew he could get a response from me, which provoked him to do it even more.
At some point I turned off entirely.  Knowing I'd get mocked or teased, I would do anything not to cry, or laugh, or show any emotion at all.  The biggest challenge as I saw it was to pretend I had some superhuman ability to withstand pain.  Add that to the pressure girls feel anyway to please other people, to be good, and well mannered, and orderly--and I backslid even more into a world where nothing could upset or hurt me." (40)

From there she goes on to talk about her high school days, and college at three different schools.  There are fascinating stories about her early brushes with art-punk and encounters with semi-obscure celebrities.  The book seems to hit its sweet spot when she writes of first moving to New York and ruminates on the artistic motivations of her colleagues and the burgeoning No-Wave scene.  Such nostalgia trips become all the more poignant when situated against the present:

"These days, when I'm in New York, I wonder, What's this place all about, really? The answer is consumption and moneymaking.  Wall Street drives the whole country, with the fashion industry as the icing.  Everything people call fabulous or amazing lasts for about ten minutes before the culture moves onto the next thing.  Creative ideas and personal ambition are no longer mutually exclusive.  A friend recently described the work of an artist we both know as 'corporate,' and it wasn't a compliment.  The Museum of Modern Art is like a giant midtown gift store." (85)

Passages like these make me glad that I am no longer there (though obviously my present abode has its own depressing defining qualities).  But they also make me miss, terribly, the years between 2001 and 2004.  Kim probably would say that things have not really changed that much since then, though.

The section of the book about Sonic Youth feels somewhat touch-and-go.  There are 53 chapters, and several "movements," but the majority of the material on the band comes in the context of specific songs she highlights (though again, these chapters also feel loose--the chapter on "Death Valley '69" is pretty much about Bad Moon Rising, etc.).  I particularly appreciate her discussions on women in the music and art worlds.  Of course there is the regrettable (and revised) comment on Lana Del Rey's version of feminism--which felt very badass at first and now feels watered-down, but was the right thing to do (I won't reprint it here, you can find it on plenty of other sites).  Feminism is a super-hot topic right now and younger voices should take heed: Kim is a perfect example of a pioneer that can equivocate calmly and speak with maturity and wisdom:

"I also felt limited as a singer.  When the band first started, I went for a vocal approach that was rhythmic and spoken, but sometimes unleashed, because of all the different guitar tunings we used.  When you listen to old R&B records, the women on them sang in a really fierce, kick-ass way.  In general, though, women aren't really allowed to be kick-ass.  It's like the famous distinction between art and craft: Art, and wildness, and pushing against the edges, is a male thing.  Craft, and control, and polish, is for women.  Culturally, we don't allow women to be as free as they would like, because that is frightening.  We either shun those women or deem them crazy.  Female singers who push too much, and too hard, don't tend to last very long.  They're jags, bolts, comets: Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday.  But being that woman who pushes the boundaries means you also bring in less desirable aspects of yourself.  At the end of the day, women are expected to hold up the world, not annihilate it.  That's why Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill is so great.  The term girl power was coined by the Riot Grrl movement that Kathleen Hanna spearheaded in the 1990s.  Girl power: a phrase that would later be co-opted by the Spice Girls, a group put together by men, each Spice Girl branded with a different personality, polished and stylized to be made marketable as a faux female type.  Coco was one of the few girls on the playground who had never heard of them, and that's its own form of girl power, saying no to female marketing!" (127)

As she approaches the end of the "songbook" section of the book, Kim describes the events of 9/11, which rendered the band's recording studio on Murray Street inoperable.  As a person that witnessed the events, from about ten blocks further north, I found the description spot-on:

"The next morning Daisy called me and told me to turn on the TV because a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center.  Daisy's husband, Rob, worked in a building across from the Towers but hadn't left for the office yet.  I called Jim [O'Rourke] and told him to leave the studio, and then I called Thurston.  Jim knew nothing but told me that dust was starting to gather through the open windows.  It was difficult for me--for everybody--to make any sense of what was happening.  I had no TV or radio, but the phone worked, at least first.  By the time the second plane hit, phone service was crackling away to nothing, and when I called Thurston a second time, I couldn't reach him, but I finally convinced Jim to come to our apartment.  As Jim was leaving Murray Street, the second tower was collapsing and people were jumping out of windows.  Lee, his wife Leah, and their kids, who lived downtown, showed up at our apartment, too.  Below us, literally right outside our door, Houston Street and Lafayette were barricaded, and police weren't letting anyone go south of Houston without ID and proof of residence.
It was a surreal, terrifying day.  People--stranded models, people who'd come to town for Fashion Week--were wandering around Nolita and Soho in a daze.  Jim arrived finally, completely traumatized.  We all slept there that night." (216)

The ending may be the strongest part of the book, just because throughout the entire story Kim has portrayed herself as an emotionally-distanced person, in line with the impressions of her personality in the popular culture (though this phrase sounds super-awkward because if you randomly asked 100 people on the street--outside of Greenwich Village, etc--if they know who Kim Gordon is, maybe 10 might say yes).  She finally drops her cool exterior and divulges nearly as heartbreaking an account of a relationship's end as I've ever read.  It is raw, and feels more like the work of a seasoned fiction writer than a primarily musical and secondarily visual artist.  Thurston does not come off very well, but it is especially touching when they attempt to work through their difficulties.  Kim does not write bitter, hateful prose--it is more along the lines of intense disappointment.

This is probably a really inappropriate place to mention the song "Kim Gordon's Panties" by Steve Albini's post Big-Black project Rapeman, but it's too bad Kim never mentions anything about that song.  The song feels like a pseudo-parody of "Teenage Riot" and "Schizophrenia," the opening guitar part and lyrics directly referential.  It feels particularly ironic in that it seems predictive of events that would take place 23 years later.  "I went up to Milwaukee to see an old friend of mine/then Thurston came over/he was out of his mind."  And later: "If I had that to come home to/I'd never leave again."  Gordon did write an essay that is excerpted here, and also in Our Band Could Be Your Life, where she drops the line, "How many boys want to get whipped by Steve Albini's guitar?" but there are no other references.  I've always been a bit confused by the weird rivalry between Albini and the band, and I am curious whether she found it offensive or amusing.  Some mysteries must remain....

I am not going to spoil the sequence of events at the end, but there is one detail that I found scathing, humorous, and incredibly sad:

"Thurston's solo record, Demolished Thoughts, was like a collection of sophomoric, self-obsessed, mostly acoustic mini suicide notes.  When I first encouraged him to record it, I hadn't given any thought to what the lyrics might be about, but hearing pieces of one or two songs, I realized I could never listen to it again.  'I think the lyrics are probably about both of you,' Julie said helpfully, but to me, the lyrics, and the songs, were, and always will be, about her." (256)
 
She also mentions performing "Aneurysm" with the surviving members of Nirvana at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  A friend tells her that it was the most punk thing that will ever be done at the show, and it is definitely worth a view.  In a similar way, this book is worth a read.  I've read a few memoirs by musicians, but none have been as punk (they've lacked the raw honesty exhibited here).  There is an artistic rendering of the word "DARKNESS" on the inside covers, and the implication is both ominous and profound.  It is up to us to make something beautiful or true in this window between two periods of nothingness.  Kim has done that in her life, as well as these pages, and we are all the more fortunate for it.   

The Portable Henry Rollins - Henry Rollins (1997)

My first exposure to Henry Rollins came in March of 2001, when I went to New Orleans with a couple friends and we saw that he was playing at the House of Blues there.  We considered going, but none of us were really fans.  About a year later, I was watching a rerun of SNL with a few friends in my NYU dorm room.  Rollins was the musical guest, and he gyrated in place like a maniac with his shirt off.  We all laughed at the performance.  He seemed like a show-off.

A year or two after that, I read Our Band Could Be Your Life for the first time, and a couple years after that, I started listening to Black Flag.  I guess it took me so long because I never really identified with the "message" of their music until I finished college and realized how much life sucks as an adult.  This may sound weird because they seem more like a band that appeals to teenagers - but I believe one can only fully appreciate Black Flag if they have experienced personal rejection so many times that they have abandoned hope for a better result.  Of course you can be a depressed teenager and listen to Black Flag, but eventually you may grow into a happy and successful person.  Only after going through a prolonged period of psychological pain may a person fully understand the gravity of their music.  Perhaps this makes the prospect of appreciating Black Flag an unpleasant idea.  Certainly, their recent iterations are a joke, and while I'm sure Greg Ginn still has his number of demons to exorcise, the band has never been the same without Henry.  He's not the type of person to be in it for the money (and he kind of reminds me of Morrissey in this regard) but if he ever did reunite with them and played small clubs (such as Reggie's Rock Club, where Black Flag recently played a show for children), no one would complain.  Keith Morris has shown that age should not be a factor in the type of music you play, but I have to believe that Rollins has stopped recording and performing music because he no longer enjoys it.  Or because he has seen and done everything.

There are a lot of problems with The Portable Henry Rollins, and the primary one may be the author's personality.  This book is a collection of excerpts from many others books that Rollins has published through his own literary press 2/13/61, and they often read like diary entries.  I am not sure of the exact length of the longest excerpt, but it is probably the first of the three "previously unreleased" short stories that conclude the book--and that is about three pages long.  The book is a compilation of fits and starts, and while a few of them get at the kind of truth found in the best literary fiction or poetry, it is much more often "miss" than "hit."  It is very repetitive and Rollins mostly comes off as a jerk who hates everyone (except Joe Cole and Ian Mackaye), including himself.  I hate a lot of people and have written my fair share of depressing prose, but I always try to end on something very vaguely life-affirming.  I highly doubt that reading this book will give you a more positive outlook on anything other than the idea of suicide.

It is ironic, then, that Rollins has most recently been in the news for his op-eds in the L.A. Weekly criticizing Robin Williams for ending his own life.  In the first essay blithely titled "Fuck Suicide," Rollins wrote that Williams had performed for troops overseas at some of the same events as himself, and that he considered him a talented and good man.  But he had just proved himself to be the biggest coward in the world because he had abandoned his family and failed to become a master over himself.  Many readers took issue and wrote angry letters to Rollins, and his second essay effectively recanted the first, admitting that he could not defend the views he expressed.

Personally, I agree with his statement that once you have children, you waive your right to take your own life, and that your utmost goal should be not to traumatize them.  After that statement, I can understand where he is coming from, excoriating the weak individuals that would rather die than deal with their problems--but it is a very fine distinction, and miles away from the tenor of the writings collected in this book.  Rollins writes about suicide a lot in these pages (and he does reference Robin Williams once in the late 1980's, oddly connecting him to the fashion choices of a yuppie college town coffee house crowd), and it almost always sounds preferable to the depressing chaos of existence.

This book is Controversial.  Rollins flirts with misogyny, then unabashedly adopts it.  2014 readers will find this aspect of the book troubling and unacceptable.  Perhaps the balance will be struck by his overt hatred of police officers.  But I don't think so.  Rollins wasn't writing this material to impress anyone, and the vast majority of readers will probably make it through the first 50 pages before putting it down.  Most of this was written when he was maybe somewhere between the ages of 17 and 25, and it shows: this is really personal, unedited stuff.  I am reminded of the Kurt Cobain coffee table book of diary entries that I never read.  Except this doesn't carry the mystique of the "voice from beyond the grave."  Rollins may have disavowed a lot of this writing, but I don't know for sure.  At the end of the day, it is completely honest, and it shows that the world inside his mind is a dark, dark place.  For this act of bravery--boldly admitting that he is a completely twisted motherfucker--he deserves praise.  But as a book that really adds nothing new to his oeuvre, and appears to serve as a mere "sampler" to casual fans considering a deeper dive, it comes off like a money grab--a greatest hits collection that lacks the immediacy and punch of an original release.

Probably the most valuable portion is the excerpt from Get in the Van, which is a book of diary entries Rollins wrote while on tour with Black Flag in the early-to-mid 1980's.  I have wanted to read Get in the Van in the past, and have unsuccessfully searched for it in various public library systems.  My current office roommate gave me his copy to borrow, along with a number of spoken word albums by Rollins.  Get in the Van, the album, was one of them.  I do think this is the most succinct and entertaining portion of the collection, and I think the entire book would make a good read.  I have mixed feelings about the album, mainly the way Rollins reads so fast that you really can't be distracted while listening, and also the way it is only broken up into two long tracks (disc 1 and disc 2).  It's all about your preferred mode of consumption, as I don't believe the album encompasses the entirety of the text, but as a part of the collection, the parts from Get in the Van are probably the most essential.  I would also like to add that my office roommate is a police officer.  He would not be the type of "pig" that Rollins loves to hate, but then again Rollins seems to want to make the blanket statement that he hates all pigs.  It's a pretty immature viewpoint, though obviously at least partially a result of the many Black Flag shows that were shut down by the police, and I would be curious to know if Rollins took a less drastically hateful view once he got into his 30's:

"After the show I'm sitting in a place eating and a woman sits down and tells me that she likes what I do but the only thing she didn't like was what I said about pigs.  She's a pig herself, and she says that she's an individual.  I tell the pig cunt that when she puts a uniform on she loses all individuality.  I told her that I party down when I hear that a pig has gotten wasted.  I hope she goes out and gets shot in the knees by some low-rent motherfucker who laughs in her face.  She really thought that she was a human being.  I don't know how they brainwash these shitheads into being so self-righteous about being a bag of shit that should be taken out and shot in the face.  Fuck these people.  You never know when they are pigs in disguise.  Fuck you, you stupid pig bitch.  I hope you get Magic Johnson disease and die in some ward.  I wonder how long I have left with this shit."  (167)

Perhaps the vitriol was at its peak, as Rollins had just witnessed the murder of his best friend and roommate Joe Cole.  This entry comes from Now Watch Him Die and is dated June 30 in Columbia, MO.  One presumes it was June 30, 1992.  Maybe this female cop had a certain attitude that really rubbed him the wrong way, but from the way it's written, Rollins appears to be the more inhuman party.  And he would never deny that he is inhuman, which is a frustrating part of the book.  He doesn't make apologies or rationalize his thought process, and it can be a bit alienating for the reader.

The death of Joe Cole looms large throughout these pages, and I wish that Rollins had written a more formal essay about their friendship and maybe how he went on Unsolved Mysteries to try to find the shooter.  But his writings on the subject are more impressionistic:

"The detectives went through my house for hours
I was at the pig station
I didn't know until later
They went through the food in the kitchen
I got back to the house and all kinds of shit was turned over
My best friend's blood was all over the front walk
They're looking for something to bust us for
The pieces of shit even went through the attic
They were curious as to why I had so many tapes
He talks to me and makes me think he's my friend
I look at him and know he thinks I'm scum
If I give these pieces of shit the time of day then they win
You know
There's so many pieces of shit in the world
It's amazing anyone gets by
The pigs asked if me and Joe were faggots
They were so relieved when they found out we weren't
Fuck you pig
Like I have to prove myself to you
I can't think of a more fucked-up situation
I have to talk to these shitheads all the time now
They still ask other people about me
Like I might have been up to something
I'm some kind of suspect?
Nah, but you sure are some kind of pig." (148-149)

Ultimately, it may appear that I really didn't like this book.  And truthfully, on the whole, I'll take Lexicon Devil or The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club over it.  But as mentioned, occasionally Rollins will bust out with a few sentences of truth, and the power of such moments cannot be denied:

"Reality has become a fear trip.  Something to choke on.  One in every three women in America will be raped.  This is science friction.  I see it from all sides.  I see the direction of the infection.  The facts are stacked and packed into your head.  You need the two-hour vacation twelve times a day.  Spark the joint and park the car.  Look up at the stars.  Think about it, you're in the hot seat.  You're in a huge shark tank.  If you want to beat them, you have to join them somehow.  The bad guys kill the bad guys.  The bad guys kill the good guys.  If you want to survive the bad guys, you have to have some bad in you--a lot, actually.  You have to know what they know." (230)

And there is also the occasional bit of indie celebrity gossip that will titillate scenesters:

"November 1. Chicago, IL:...Steve Albini is at the show tonight hanging out with the opening band I guess.  I never met the guy before but once read an article he wrote that put me down.  I am considering breaking his face up for him, but when I move in on him I see that he's just a skinny punk.  It wouldn't have been a good kill, so I let it slide.  He'll never know how close he came to getting his face fucked up in front of his friends." (177)

I doubt Henry will ever read this, see me, or recognize me, but on the off chance that it happens, I hope he wants to have a constructive conversation about writing (and not want to introduce his fist to my face).  I like some of his work very much, but this collection is so random that it left me feeling cold.