Thurston Moore – författare

The Sonic Youth frontman takes us from a 1960s childhood rock 'n' roll epiphany, through the subversive world of 1970s punk blasting forth from New York City, to traversing the globe with a band who changed the sound of modern alternative rock music and opened the minds of a generation of artists.

A Sunday Times, Times, Irish Times and Mojo Book of the YearRough Trade #1 Book of the YearResident Music #1 Book of the Year'Were you there? Well this is as close as it gets! Thurston Moore's compelling and spirited account of the streets, the songs, the clothes, the clubs and the contenders! A sensitive and authentic testimony to Moore's life lived through art and music. Beats with the heart of a true artist and mutineer.' Viv Albertine'Downtown scientists rejoice! For Thurston Moore has unearthed the missing links, the sacred texts, the forgotten stories, and the secret maps of the lost golden age. This is history-scuffed, slightly bent, plenty noisy, and indispensable.' Colson WhiteheadA music-obsessed retrospective, beginning with his childhood epiphany of rock 'n' roll in the early 1960s into an infatuation with the subversive world of 1970s punk and no wave blasting forth from New York City - where he eventually runs off to join a band in 1978. By 1981 Moore would form the legendary and notorious experimental rock group Sonic Youth, who proceeded to record and tour relentlessly for almost 30 years, always progressing, always exploring.Along the way we meet a constellation of artists and musicians who colluded and collided with Sonic Youth including Velvet Underground, Stooges, Patti Smith, Television, Sex Pistols, Clash, Nirvana, Hole, Beastie Boys, Neil Young and a cavalcade of other musical visionaries, as well as figures from the art world - Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Gerhard Richter.Simply put, Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth changed the sound of modern alternative rock music and opened the minds of a generation of artists to new possibilities within the form. This is essential reading.'I thoroughly enjoyed Thurston Moore's trip down the gauntlet of memory lane, dodging beer bottles and pools of blood as he balances the demands of art and survival. Plus I'm a sucker for anyone who name-checks Saccharine Trust. A raw, rollicking document.' Nell Zink

From the founding member of Sonic Youth, a passionate memoir tracing the author's life and art—from his teen years as a music obsessive in small-town Connecticut, to the formation of his legendary rock group, to thirty years of creation, experimentation, and wonder"Downtown scientists rejoice! For Thurston Moore has unearthed the missing links, the sacred texts, the forgotten stories, and the secret maps of the lost golden age. This is history—scuffed, slightly bent, plenty noisy, and indispensable." —Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Underground Railroad and Harlem Shuffle Thurston Moore moved to Manhattan’s East Village in 1978 with a yearning for music.  He wanted to be immersed in downtown New York’s sights and sounds—the feral energy of its nightclubs, the angular roar of its bands, the magnetic personalities within its orbit.  But more than anything, he wanted to make music—to create indelible sounds that would move, provoke, and inspire.His dream came to life in 1981 with the formation of Sonic Youth, a band Moore cofounded with Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo.  Sonic Youth became a fixture in New York’s burgeoning No Wave scene—an avant-garde collision of art and sound, poetry and punk.  The band would evolve from critical darlings to commercial heavyweights, headlining festivals around the globe while helping introduce listeners to such artists as Nirvana, Hole, and Pavement, and playing alongside such icons as Neil Young and Iggy Pop.  Through it all, Moore maintained an unwavering love of music: the new, the unheralded, the challenging, the irresistible.In the spirit of Just Kids, Sonic Life offers a window into the trajectory of a celebrated artist and a tribute to an era of explosive creativity.  It presents a firsthand account of New York in a defining cultural moment, a history of alternative rock as it was birthed and came to dominate airwaves, and a love letter to music, whatever the form.  This is a story for anyone who has ever felt touched by sound—who knows the way the right song at the right moment can change the course of a life.

One of rock music s most enigmatic and confounding artists is here revealed as never before through the murky prism of his most extreme and polarising work: Metal Machine Music, a double album of vocal-free, unrelentingly shocking noise. Initially dismissed on its release in 1975 as an avant-garde prank or an act of career suicide (or both), the album has acquired a growing number of admirers over the subsequent half-century, along the way to becoming a kind of secret handshake of hipness. Through his work both in The Velvet Underground and as a solo artist, Reed is one of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of the rock era, yet he remains a defiantly inscrutable figure. Drawing on extensive research and exclusive interviews with more than sixty friends, collaborators, and admirers, David Holzer reveals him anew as a spiritual seeker with a deep interest in the esoteric practices of Alice Bailey and others, and a man with a profound belief in the power of one s inner spirit. In so doing, he positions Metal Machine Music as a deeply serious, talismanic work that is unique in rock n roll. Lou Reed: Metal Machine Mystic is the first book to focus on the album as the key to understanding the methods, motivations, and mind of its creator. Constructed, like the original album, in four (almost) equal parts, it unearths the secrets of the record s creation, its true purpose, its immediate aftermath, and its subsequent astonishing rehabilitation.

LAS MEMORIAS DE THURSTON MOORE DE SONIC YOUTHMEJOR LIBRO DE MÚSICA DEL AÑO SEGÚN ROUGH TRADE, RESIDENT Y VANITY FAIRThurston Moore se fue a vivir al East Village de Manhattan en 1978 con ansias de imbuirse de música y de discos. Quería sumergirse en las vistas y los sonidos del centro de Nueva York: la energía salvaje de sus clubes nocturnos, el rugido angular de sus bandas y las personalidades magnéticas que pululaban por sus calles. Pero, sobre todo, quería hacer música, crear sonidos indelebles que conmovieran, provocaran e inspiraran.Su sueño se hizo realidad en 1981 con Sonic Youth, banda que Moore montó con Kim Gordon —de quien esta editorial publicó sus memorias: "La chica del grupo"— y Lee Ranaldo. El grupo pronto se convirtió en un elemento fundamental de la floreciente escena «no wave» de Nueva York: una colisión vanguardista de arte y sonido, poesía y punk, o las enseñanzas de Glenn Branca filtradas por el prisma de los Ramones. Pasaron de ser los favoritos de la crítica musical a convertirse en un peso pesado del rock internacional, encabezando festivales en todo el mundo, contribuyendo a difundir artistas como Nirvana, Hole y Pavement, y tocando junto a iconos como Neil Young e Iggy Pop. A pesar de todo, Moore siempre mantuvo un amor inquebrantable por la música: lo nuevo, lo desconocido, lo desafiante, lo irresistible…Sonic Life es el testimonio de uno de los mejores guitarristas de todos los tiempos y un homenaje a una época de creatividad explosiva a partir de un relato de primera mano de Nueva York en un momento cultural decisivo; una historia del rock alternativo tal y como nació y llegó a dominar el mundo, y una carta de amor a la música, sea cual sea su forma.

A music-obsessed retrospective, beginning with his childhood epiphany of rock 'n' roll in the early 1960s into an infatuation with the subversive world of 1970s punk and no wave blasting forth from New York City - where he eventually runs off to join a band in 1978. By 1981 Moore would form the legendary and notorious experimental rock group Sonic Youth, who proceeded to record and tour relentlessly for almost 30 years, always progressing, always exploring.Along the way we meet a constellation of artists and musicians who colluded and collided with Sonic Youth including Velvet Underground, Stooges, Patti Smith, Television, Sex Pistols, Clash, Nirvana, Hole, Beastie Boys, Neil Young and a cavalcade of other musical visionaries, as well as figures from the art world - Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Gerhard Richter.Simply put, Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth changed the sound of modern alternative rock music and opened the minds of a generation of artists to new possibilities within the form. This is essential reading.