Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth
by David Browne
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in November, 2008
recommends it for:
Sonic Youth fans
Not bad. I am not a big fan of Sonic Youth, but I usually enjoy books about bands, especially bands who had as big an impact and lasted as long as Sonic Youth. While the book was interesting, David Browne spent to much time giving song-by-song descriptions of each album....boring descriptions. There was also a lot of time giving in depth backgrounds on minor players in the story; if they were important enough to warrant such treatment the information presented did not support it.
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Read in May, 2008
Finally, the bio Sonic Youth deserves. 400 pages, but it could've gone another 200 and I wouldn't have complained. Browne's writing is breezy and personable, and he really gets into the band's world, from day jobs to apartments to lawyers, making sense of their success in a clear-headed, logical way. More, he gets inside their personalities, even uncovering the tension lines that exist in the band, something most journalists tend to ignore in a utopian-seeming band like SY. Good stuff.
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Read in July, 2008
recommended to Patrick by:
the good people at Da Capo Pressrecommends it for: fans of Sonic Youth, anybody who liked Our Band Could Be Your Life
Like many books of its kind, this suffers from a "then they recorded this. then they recorded this. then they recorded this..." repetition. Still, I loved reading about the early years of Sonic Youth, back when Richard Edson was their drummer (long before he played Vito in Do the Right Thing), when Paul Smith was hanging around the band, and before Kim Gordon became an uber-fashionista. A good read about one of the more interesting bands of my time.
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Read in June, 2008
No earth-shattering revelations in this straight-forward biography. But the author does a great job of showing us how the band felt about its own songs, records, tours—and detailing the circumstances under which it made its classic early records and not-so-important later records. He manages to prove SY's importance by proving that they're a unique and far from infallible band.
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Read in July, 2008
Easily the most exhaustive & definitive bio on SY. Very little drama over the 25 years in their small collective but, loads of stories about the trials and tribulations of being on a major label and staying true to one's self - which they've done. Browne has full access to the band who is open to talk about nearly everything about their 25 years as a band.
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Read in April, 2008
These New Yorker New York stories always get me going. I get all inspired and fired up, then I get a bit depressed. It is the sheer dedication to being something bigger that gets me so excited. All those creative connections. I just yearn to continually be a part of something so gorgeous and bad-ass.
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I'm rating this 4 stars having only read about 50-60 pages. This book NEEDED to be written. I read "Confusion is Next" and wasn't totally thrilled by it because it WASN'T THIS BOOK. I'll be taking this one as slow as the TALKING HEADS book just so I can stretch it out.
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Not bad, I guess, as these things go.... I can't remember much about the 1994 bio at the moment, but the story was only half over then..... Good stuff on the ins n outs of signing w/ a major, which is where Our Band Could Be Your Life stops....
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