Hear Kim Gordon Recall Childhood in ‘Girl in a Band’ Memoir Excerpt
With Kim Gordon‘s memoir, Girl in a Band, due out this week, snippets of the audio edition of the book have begun surfacing online. Rough Trade has posted a nine-minute stretch of the singer-songwriter talking about her formative years from the first chapter, and the retail chain has promised to post a new section each day this week at 5 p.m. GMT on its website (via Louder Than War).
The clip opens with Gordon’s recollection of her hometown of Rochester, New York, interpolated with memories of her older brother, Keller, and sharing childhood memories of being scared of a discombobulated hand she saw in The Beast With Five Fingers with Peter Lorre. She also recalls her family’s move to Los Angeles, the makeup and secrets of her extended family and her opinion that there is a negative magnetic affect of California on people.
Another excerpt is also available on Billboard’s Alt in Our Stars podcast, in which Gordon reads the first five minutes of the book’s first chapter and describes the turmoil of Sonic Youth‘s last concert in Brazil in 2011. (It begins at the 4:06 mark below.) In the excerpt, she discussed how she felt her ex-husband, Thurston Moore, behaved at the show, and how she kept a safe distance from the vocalist-guitarist. The clip also includes a new Gordon song, “Close Your Eyes,” at the 18:29 mark in the SoundCloud below.
In anticipation of the book’s release, Gordon is embarking on a book tour, from February 23rd to March 7th, that will find her sitting for Q&A sessions with different guests at each stop, including Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster, singer-songwriter Aimee Mann and Sub Pop cofounder Bruce Pavitt.