Category: In Utero 1992-1993

Was delighted to see this review in the July issue of Record Collector magazine.

Michael Gira: “Jarboe’s version of ‘Your Property’ on Swans Are Dead and Soundtracks For The Blind is awesome: there’s no effects on her voice, she goes down however many tens of octaves and sings those low notes by reaching into her belly and emitting these notes — she was fantastic in that way.”

During the interviews that led to the creation of the book “SWANS: Sacrifice And Transcendence – The Oral History”, there was one conversation, focused on his song-writing at the time of Cop/Young God (1983-1985 era) that truly enthralled me. I had to cut the tale down for the book but the original transcript reads:

“I remember reading Wilhelm Reich’s The Mass Psychology Of Fascism in ’83-’84 and it had a particular influence on the song ‘I Crawled’ from the Young God EP. In that book, if I can summarise it in a very plebeian manner, he draws the parallel between the typical model of the family with a strong father as a microcosm of the state. He talks about how that shapes behaviour and identity and helps to inculcate a kind of obeisance to authority very early on. It was written pre-World War Two, and he talks about the parallels between Hitler and Stalin, which was pretty prescient of him: he notes how both men reached back to this mythic atavistic past when everything was great in the country and their goal was to bring it back — they were like avuncular, paternal figures for the nation.

At that time, Ronald Reagan was being re-elected and I thought the parallels — though less overtly deadly and destructive — were very apposite. I wrote that song — “you’re my father, my father, I obey you,” and took it a step further. I had read this essay by J.G. Ballard Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan and thought the image of Reagan fucking and choking me was an apt image for the times.

I had been obsessed with the media’s — not that the media is one entity or one conspiracy — colonisation of our consciousness, particularly in the west and capitalist corporate countries, its shaping of our identities and its formulation of the anxieties that compel one to consume: a recent phenomenon that didn’t begin until the end of the Second World War when advertising and production amped up and corporations had to create need. It had a lot to do with having all these factories after the war that needed to do something, so they began manufacturing anxiety in people so they would consume products. Nowadays that equation is rampantly out of control, culminating in the probable destruction of the planet and the species — all the horrible social effects from mass media on our consciousness and our sense of who we are on the planet.

I felt this whole process, along with working as a low-level wage slave for most of my life, was akin to being raped: being invaded against your will by stimuli over which you have no control and where you’re helpless as it impinges on your consciousness. That’s another reason I used the word ‘rape’, I felt it was what modern existence was. I carried that sort of imagery on for some time and then grew weary of it because it became a cliché in its own right to harp on such things. That was the kind of thing that I was obsessed with in those early days. The song ‘Your Property’ from Cop was probably another way in which I dealt with it, and Time is Money (Bastard), of course… that way of thinking about media, mind control, work as slavery, and consumerism was very much on my mind in those days.”

I’ve interviewed around 600 people in my spare time after/around work since 2012 and I’d not encountered an artist or musician who was able to articulate the imaginative process behind their writing in this way. Sure, I’d heard people ‘tell me the story’ of a song or what it’s lyrics related to – this was something else. This wasn’t just an emotional response. This was hundreds of pages of reading, clearly much independent thinking, intellectual and conceptual influences being woven together into a succinct, concise and tangible result.

The nearest comparison I had was a conversation with the painter Chris Gollon describing the painting he contributed to Thurston Moore’s ROOT remix/art project. He had received a 52 second composition from Thurston and it called to mind Native American burial grounds; a film called Jeremiah Johnson starring Robert Redford where the lead rides his horse through a burial ground; Chris’ studio on an island in the Thames formerly used for WW1 aircraft hangars and where the spice girls would rehearse; the studio next door which created prosthetic limbs which would hang from a washing line; Toledo Cathedral where cardinals’ hats are hung from the ceiling and left to decay; an art exchange between Mexico and the Glasgow Print Studio so he included a death mask; the title coming from Morpheus, the god of dreams, and the House of Sleep/Kingdom of Sleep…

To me, Gira possessed that same artistic intensity: the drawing together of disparate ideas into a composition as sharp, honed and visceral as ‘I Crawled’. I was stunned to really understand that behind the stark lyrics there was this depth: factories, fascism, Reich, Reagan, parents, working, media, the mind, consumerism…

…And Gira was able to grind that down to

You’re my father/I obey you/I want you to be my father/Eliminate my freedom/I know what I am/You know what I am/I’m weak/Take what’s mine/Come into my room/Put your hands on my throat/Now choke me, choke me/Make me feel good/Be my father/Make it right/Think for me/Choke me

You can see all the associations and wider connections flowing from fewer than a hundred words. My feeling is that it’s what makes Gira an excellent writer: that each word is precisely what is needed, but each  word opens up an entire universe of ideas.

I had such good intentions to write up my Kurt Cobain/Michael Gira comparison (bear with me on this) but totally didn’t make it…

…So what am I doing that might amuse you? Well, I spent some time absorbing some intriguing work on YouTube: always kinda awesome what people get up to!

What I like about these is the construction of a fictional scenario to explain the context surrounding the making of each record in an imaginary world where Cobain lived. Then there’s the music: full band mockups built on top of shreds never taken to conclusion, revised mixes of work that it always would have been nice to hear without demo hiss, songs placed next to each other creating intriguing resonances and comparisons…The sheer workload that must have gone in impresses me – and what the hey, it makes for a good accompaniment to work on a Friday.

Covers of Nirvana have always left me a bit cold but the cheapness of modern technology has opened up this new avenue of exploration – hearing original Nirvana works tweaked and altered in different ways is intriguing. It’s also valid: Cobain’s death in ’94 leaves an utter void in terms of understanding any musical intentions. There’s simply such limited data that one guess is as good as another – it’s not something worth getting uptight about. Seeing the above in that context I just think, “why not?” and dig through the results to find moments I enjoy.

Also listening to Jpegmafia. The Sonologyst record that just came out on Cold Spring (I’m ALWAYS finding something of interest on Cold Spring: the Bleiburg 2 disc record was five quid well spent) http://coldspring.co.uk/2018/03/sonologyst-silencers-cd/#.Wxp4q4pKhPY

Best gig of the past month was catching Aidan Moffat (Arab Strap) and RM Hubbert at Rough Trade Bristol (really neat performance space they have – even if no one can open the bloody door to get in n’ out!) They were promoting their new record Here Lies The Body which sounds like prime-era Arab Strap (that’s a compliment) with renewed warmth and gentility. http://www.hereliesthebody.com/

Currently putting together a playlist related to the SWANS: Sacrifice And Transcendence. Music books always deserve a soundtrack!

 

 

At the Louder Than Words literary music festival in Manchester last weekend I watched Penny Rimbaud (once and always of Crass) speak of his life philosophies and experiences including time spent at a meditational retreat: his conclusion being (I paraphrase) “I stared at a wall for 13 hours a day and discovered I only had enough content for 3 days.” It’s a fun thought, that ultimately the brain gets bored, can’t regurgitate enough of its memory banks to entertain for longer than that. I feel the same at times: writing about Nirvana near every single day from February 2012 to the tail-end of 2016 left me, suddenly, with an absence, a feeling that I didn’t automatically have a reservoir of additional words to draw on. What to do? Well, I’m a strong believer that when inner resources are low, other people are a source of energy.

In this case, I was privileged enough to speak at an event in Carlisle on Friday night for Words & Guitars during which I was asked a fine question (which, again, I paraphrase): “was Cobain unable to bring himself to change?” The question has been whirring round in my mind for a few days now.

The question was a reaction to some of my earnest beliefs regarding Cobain: that music had been a way to live a life free of bosses and free of control, to achieve an unmediated expression of self when, where and how he wanted (an understandably powerful force for a boy/teen who had so many homes, been rejected by so many people, had been so unwilling to exist within the context of a job.) That this way of being had been compromised repeatedly from the days of Sub Pop onward and – in late 1991/early 1992 – became an intolerable imposition on the privacy and freedom he sought. Interviews, intrusion, his personal life and desires, how and when and where he played, the expectations placed upon his performances and his music, the analysis of his lyrics and thoughts, the commercial requirements, legal requirements, managerial requirements: it meant music was no longer an escape, hence the evidence seems to show he virtually ceased to write music, perform music, interview, record music for the remainder of his life.

His attempt at ‘change’ was an interesting one: he essentially reverted to the only other happy life he had ever known – the family that had existed until 1976 (Montage of Heck, the film, portrayed this sense of the mirror image very effectively). It’s 1992, he gets his girlfriend pregnant and instead of insisting on abortion he decides he wants a child and, more so, he wants to get married to create the stability he had never experienced – it’s a strangely conservative move for the world’s foremost punk icon of the era. It creates a retreat for him: a cocoon which his managers, fans, band need have nothing to do with – where he can escape them all. It’s essentially what he does: buries himself in a series of hotel rooms and temporary residences right the way from the end of the Asia/Pacific tour until January 1994 when he moves into his lakeside mansion in one of Seattle’s exclusive areas; hides away with his new family (and his drugs) as long as he can. It’s an attempt to escape, to change the destination his life has reached, to escape the nagging feeling that his genetic inheritance and his owninging condemned him to re-live all that was worst.

It fails. Ultimately he has to return to performance, he’s too polite to turn down a lot of the demands on him (though he might rage in private or engage in mild protest, for example, by never playing Smells Like Teen Spirit for MTV, only turning up to 18 days in studio after the recording of Nevermind, refusing most interviews), he ends up with almost everyone who loves him explaining to him the consequences of his continued drug use…And with his music and his family both no longer providing him a retreat he has a significant spiritual crisis to confront: if the only lives he’s ever known, family and music, are at risk, then can he imagine or foresee a life after them? The answer is no.

So, on the one hand, it’s clear he does make a quite significant attempt at change right there in 1992. But then again, the question really seems to be asking whether there wasn’t a more positive way out – could he stop drugs? Couldn’t he leave music behind (if necessary) or change his engagement with the music industry to suit himself better? Wasn’t there any chance of a continued existence with Nirvana or without it? Couldn’t he envisage life as a divorced father or, at least, a lengthy period of mending the familial bond (not being doped off his head likely helping with that)? My answer at the time came down to the futures I could imagine for him: Cobain was an incredible magpie for the sounds of the underground (think of it: an album at Easter 1986, near entirely new album by Jan 1988, an entirely new album by Jan 1989, a new album by April 1990, a different album by May 1991 with the band saying in interview after interview that they had their next album ready to go and that it’d be out in the summer of 1992 – so fast!) but there’s not much evidence that he could take on the freewheeling Thurston Moore/Sonic Youth cavalcade vibe with diversions into electronica, art/music, free jazz, improvisation – that path would have required something more expansive.

The singer-songwriter, Johnny Cash-vibe doesn’t seem to beckon: people forget MTV Unplugged in New York was a corporately imposed format, that ‘Do Re Mi’ was acoustic because it was a demo not because he definitely intended it to be an acoustic song, that he only placed three fully acoustic songs on any of his albums, that his music had been getting wilder and more aggressive in 1992-1993 (remove the older songs written pre-Nevermind and placed on In Utero and what’s left is a lot of aggro and gloriously punky noise) with the last new songs he played with Nirvana being the raucous ‘You Know You’re Right’ and the small shred played live in November/December 1993 then demo’ed briefly in studio in January 1994. But he was verbally dissatisfied with the repetitiveness of playing loud-quiet, verse-chorus-verse material too: so a more likely path is a dive back into the underground – it was suggested to me that Cobain could very readily have slotted into the noise provocations of Earth, perhaps his continued relationship with Melvins might have inspired him to follow their more aggressively independent path. Essentially if he chose to keep repeating the formula that made him mainstream worthy then he’d have sunk, same as the other alt rock gods of the era (Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam) did when tastes moved on in the mid-to-late Nineties: popular taste waits for no man and few artists get a top flight career for more than a few years.

My favourite vision of him, however, was suggested to me when I thought of another character Cobain is often compared to – Axl Rose. Beyond the mutual abhorrence, the clear differences in style, ego, impetus – Rose achieved what Cobain had wanted: an apparently utter independence from any fresh label demands or requirements. The fading of hard rock hadn’t decapitated Guns ‘n’ Roses, they remained ‘the other’ biggest rock band of the years 1991-1994. I have no desire to see an aged Cobain taking to the reunion circuit looking flabby, plastic, weary and leading audiences in karaoke run-throughs of Nirvana songs: my fondest outcome would be a clean Cobain, retreating entirely into private recording, maybe the odd show here or there, the odd guest appearance with friends, but otherwise devoted to recording the album the world is waiting for…And then never releasing it. Just letting the expectation, the imagining, the myth run wild – while remaining utterly immune to it. It’s pretty much what happened with his death – it’d be lovely if it had been his life too.

So, could Cobain change? The additional thought that came to me was how much change Cobain had already experienced in his life: a vast number of addresses, homes, temporary homelessness and so forth during his young life – he rolled with it. The daily change that comes with touring as one rolls in and out of vans, floor-space or other inadequate sleeping arrangements, on and off stages, round towns and down roads. The changing array of personnel lined up behind his musician vision. The move from demo, to studio, to single, to album, to full label artist, to new label…It seems churlish of me to have forgotten how much change Cobain had endured in a very young life. In many ways he had changed more than most people do by age 27: most people have rolled with the expectations placed on them – from school, to university, to work, to relationship being just one path. People value positive change: quitting smoking, taking up exercise, moving home, moving job – Cobain is maybe not being credited for the amount of change he did endure though it’s very true he remained a man with a particular vision and particular desires until the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvAv5l2MoAw

 

Courtesy of the ever awesome Mr. Mike Ziegler…

http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/31722/1/listen-to-previously-unreleased-nirvana-recordings

Interesting, since early last year the locks seem to have fallen off the ol’ Nirvana vaults somewhere down the line. My suspicion is that activity surrounding Montage of Heck led people to hunt out buried tapes, source material, to surreptitiously snag copies that are now emerging. That’d be ironic if part of the impetus around MoH was for the Estate of Kurt Cobain to safeguard the material.

So! What does it amount to? Incidentally, yes, I’m doing something I find fun and comforting – chatting about the music of Nirvana – to distract me from the dreary reality of the U.K. voting its way out of the EU. Probably best I don’t get into that one eh?

The first piece of interest is the emergence of ‘Lullaby’, a title that has floated around in fan circles (as ever kudos to LiveNirvana) for years. What does it amount to? Alas, not much. A jammed out improv with organ to the fore. There’s a guitar part low in the mix but is there – it seems all three members of Nirvana were in on this. The drum sound makes me think it might be Cobain drumming (thoughts and opinions welcomed!) Alas, these stabbing chords and little strolls don’t offer much and the band clearly know there’s not much left to offer other than a final shambolic breakdown. Noise is a good refuge for any jam that has run its course. Shame it didn’t quite live up to it’s name – I think I’d actually been hoping for some kind of slight ‘Marigold’ style acoustic piece.

Speaking of Marigold…Two versions have come out. The instrumental take one of Marigold is intriguing for giving a sense of what a more muscular guitar part might have lent to the track. The decision to keep it as a light pop tune, something whispered and gentle, certainly created something unique but that doesn’t mean it didn’t have potential to be a more standard fit for the Nirvana template.

Take two of Marigold, again an instrumental, seems primarily intended as a run-through of the drums. The guitar part is far more familiar but the drums are more forcefully delivered. Maybe it’s my ears but the drums seem to become more confident as it develops, like this is a practice exercise, warming up, Dave coaching Cobain through it until Cobain has it ready for what will become the proper cuts.

Oooo… ‘Dave Solo’, southern-fried boogie-down grunge rock! It’s pretty likable! The scratchy guitar sound and the growling rhythm guitar fit beautifully, it’s something different to verse-chorus-verse, works well as a relatively brief n’ spunky run-through of basic ideas and doesn’t outstay its welcome. There’s basically just a couple of thoughts at work in it, pretty-vestigial, no sense of how it might shift or develop…So it doesn’t, which is fine for a sub-two minute running time.

There’s also a barely different version of Dumb released. To be fair, by February 1993, Dumb had been worked over for so many years it would have been stunning if there were any significant changes or inflections left to make to it. The only thing I noticed is the absence of backing vocals (and perhaps a slightly less powerful delivery of the “I think I’m dumb” outro line:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFZp830KIj8

Just for fun, here’s Dumb from KAOS 1990 too – nice to compare the takes and the small elements that shifted 1990 to 1993. The humming on the chorus is a lovely touch and does make me wonder if he was using a vocal sound to indicate where he already imagined another sound (the cello in 1993?) would substitute:

 

To finish on a high note…Now THIS I could listen to all day. Some kind and awesome soul has spliced together Nirvana’s ‘live destruction’ efforts from 1991 into two ten minute efforts. Ah…The sweet sweet sound of Nirvana torturing their instruments…

 

 

I’ve been rather enjoying this – really controlled, well-weighted vocal performance then the fun of hearing the familiar shapes of the song twisted through another instrument. It’s fun! My feeling is that Nirvana’s discography is full of very adaptable songs, quite stripped down shapes that lend themselves well to alteration and aural surgery.

It’s part of his ‘Bedroom Closet Covers’ series – but there’s also an album ‘Songs From a Toxic Apartment’: this is the video for ‘They Turned Away’

And one for ‘To Isis Sleeping’ – a mellower tune with a rather charming video

So! There’s been no posts the last few weeks – is it really touching three weeks since New Year…? It’s been a busy 2016 so far. Long may it continue.

My main rambling has been a piece for Words & Guitars:

Never Ever Gonna Get Old: on the passing of pop stars

I had been intending to soften it but ultimately, what the hey. I’m not denying that age has some lush perks (I enjoyed 27-30 more than 16-27 and I enjoyed 30-35 more than anything before) but we’re living in a fascinating era where, in the next decade to a decade-and-a-half, we’re likely to witness the deaths of most of that generation of musicians who became superstars in the Sixties. An entire origin is about to vanish – and not in photogenic ways. Bowie has done an amazing thing by not just focusing on death in a defiant ‘The Show Must Go On’ way, or an accidental “doesn’t it seem poignant now,” way – but by wrapping his entire last project in the image and words of being a dead man walking. A stark, harsh and honest last mode.

I confess I ended up bored witless of the media coverage of Bowie – it was so cheap. It’s hard not to believe that various news departments were rubbing their hands together with glee; “quick! Crack out the archive images for a clickbait gallery! Start trawling for unrevealing tribute quotations from famous names! Open up a livefeed and shovel the punters’ own sh** back at them!” There’s a Viz feature called Tony Parsehole that pretty much smashes the art of the empty-hearted obituary: http://viz.co.uk/tony-parsehole-remembers-amy-winehouse/ and a lot of the endless commentary has followed this model – a few flaccid references to “oh he really changed a lot – oh he wore some outrageous clothes,” all showing, gloriously, a complete lack of engagement with the topic and an absolute determination to hit deadlines and get something up fast. There was little dignified about it all. I’m not saying that many of the comments and articles weren’t heartfelt but there was little that indicated an engagement with Bowie’s work or that offered anything radical in depth – it was a parade of articles saying “isn’t it sad?” Nothing more. Which is unfortunate when Bowie himself ended with such a spirited and revelatory musing on the approach of mortality.

Next month we see what would have been Kurt Cobain’s 49th birthday – odd to think of him as just 20 years shy of the age Bowie and Lemmy departed at.

If you haven’t already caught all of these…

Kurt Cobain – Montage Of Heck: The Home Recordings

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/kurt-cobain-montage-heck-home-recordings

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/kurt-cobain-montage-of-heck-the-home-recordings-20151113

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/11/12/montage-of-heck-the-home-recordings-kurt-cobain-ew-review

Review: ‘Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings’ Is a Reminder That Kurt Cobain Is Dead

http://www.nme.com/reviews/kurt-cobain/16327

http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/11/album-review-kurt-cobain-montage-of-heck-the-home-recordings/

http://soundblab.com/reviews/albums/8458-kurt-cobain-montage-of-heck-the-home-recordings

http://www.newsobserver.com/entertainment/music-news-reviews/article45320130.html

Montage of Heck: A Look Inside Cobain’s Mind

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21157-montage-of-heck-the-home-recordings/

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/nov/12/kurt-cobain-montage-of-heck-the-home-recordings-review

Tape Me: Re-Considering Kurt Cobain’s Montage of Heck

I’ll have more to say next week but this is a starting point. I’ll confess I’ve found the snarky remarks of various music sites a true yawn populated with the endlessly repetitious cliches that always emerge when a posthumous recording is released. The simple truth, ultimately, is that there’s no way any post-death recording will live up to the hopes and dreams of fans; will compare to the finest moments in an artist’s back catalogue; will provide comfortable certainty over an artist’s intentions.

I would say two things; I think Brett Morgen has made a very valid audio accompaniment to the film. His thinking is clearly in visual/live action terms – that this is a day hanging out with Kurt Cobain in his apartment in Olympia somewhere between early 1987 and mid-1991 – and it’s that picture in one’s head that matters, not audio fidelity, not song development, not whether anything here should be part of one’s essential Cobain playlist. Most of what a musician or artist does on the road to a classic is inessential – if you just want the ‘finest’, then cool, go buy the greatest hits and skim the main albums then go listen to something else. This release is about an honest portrait of an unpressured day in the company of someone who created for the hell of it, constantly and regularly.

The second thing, however, is that Morgen has quite clearly been left to act as the fall-guy for decisions taken elsewhere. There’s no way this should have been promoted as ’31 tracks’ – even if strictly accurate – given most of the pieces here are interludes and mood-adding sound effects. I’ve never gone with the eternally tedious “oh everything a record label does is wrong!” position but on this occasion there have been clear failings.

The proliferation of approaches led to over-complexity which has disappointed and upset supporters of the release (including myself.) Some cities got to experience the (genuinely great) cinematic experience while many didn’t – OK, I could live with that, it happens. Then the U.S. TV showing meant that region has waited months for the DVD while Europe, on the other hand, got the DVD months ago but will have to pay again to get the extras which will now emerge on the U.S. edition – I’m less chuffed with that but, OK, whatever, I don’t watch extras more than once…

But the soundtrack announcements were abysmal. As recently as this week I received an email from a fan still confused over what music was available on which of the five formats emerging (double LP, cassette, deluxe CD, standard CD, digital download) and whether he could even buy the 31 track release in his country. A failure to simplify the global message, to ensure clarity, has spread confusion and made fans less willing to view the soundtrack kindly. For at least a fortnight I had no idea what I was going to have to do in order to ensure I got all the music. The communication was pathetic.

Similarly, there’s obviously been a kneejerk decision “it’s Kurt Cobain – that means Uber-Treatment!” An automatic decision to load up formats and approaches when there’s no way a collage of this nature requires or deserves it. What Morgen seems to have handed to the record label was a 31 track continuous experience, a sound collage mimicking Cobain’s own penchant for mashing up sounds and material, and what the record label has done is artificially slice it into a ‘non-deluxe’ release which makes no sense, has no artistic validity, has no rational reason for being – then a ‘super-deluxe’ that is hugely redundant, loaded with ephemera, provides nothing extra for its egregious price.

As an addendum; again, I’m not someone who sympathises much with whinging about price. Most music releases cost no more than a few cups of coffee. I believe the creativity of individuals is worth money – just as any individual’s daily labours lead to a wage. Musicians are among the people most likely to end up without medical coverage, without retirement funds, without savings and without stable employment – yet a world without their efforts would be a dreary, sad and feeble one. They deserve support far above ‘electronic tips’ or a demand that their efforts should only exist as a sideline to “a real job.” Musicians do far more than most jobs out there to make life better and more livable – that should be recognised.

…In this case though, the division of the record into three price points – standard, deluxe, super-deluxe – makes absolutely no sense. It’s the only time I’ve agreed with the view that exploitation is occurring in the Nirvana release schedule. It would also have helped if someone said “this is NOT a singer-songwriter album!” before all those who think ‘lo-fi’ means Ed Sheeran got involved.

Brett Morgen’s audio vision should have been allowed to exist as a single artistic vision – released months ago – and appreciated for it’s own whimsical pleasures. I think what’s he’s done is valid, is in line with Cobain’s visions and desires (look at the cut-up nature of Live! Tonight! Sold Out! as well as the ‘Montage of Heck’ collage for a sense of how much Cobain enjoyed splicing things together), is great fun…And I feel Morgen has been let down and left to swing.

http://www.alternativenation.net/unreleased-1987-nirvana-songs-leak/

Courtesy of my friend and comrade JJ! A few shreds of Nirvana ’87 material apparently from the same session as Mrs Butterworth.

Apologies for absence of posts here this past month – been LOTS on!

Here’s a piece on Kim Gordon’s book I did for a new online culture mag just while I’m passing things on:

Kim Gordon – Girl In A Band