If you’re still kind of devastated that you weren’t there to see Broad City chat with Sleater Kinney, relax: the whole thing is online plus you’ve got another couple of chances to recoup your riot grrrl cred. First off, in an equally epic meeting of the minds, Lena Dunham is going to be chatting with Miranda July tomorrow, and somehow there are still tickets left (BAM just announced that July will be singing copies of her new novel after the event). And also: the Strand just announced that none other than Kim Gordon is coming to chat about her memoir, out in about a month.
That’s right, Gordon has written Girl in a Band, about her time in Sonic Youth (or did you think she was in Sleater-Kinney? Because, no: singing “I wanna be your Thurston Moore” would be kind of awkward. Though, not surprisingly, customers who pre-ordered the memoir on Amazon also bought Sleater-Kinney’s new album and Miranda July’s novel. Oh, and also: Gordon has been on Lena Dunham’s Girls. And Carrie Brownstein’s Portlandia.)
In an excerpt from the book published by Vogue, Gordon recalls her first band Introjection, her first job as an assistant in Larry Gagosian’s gallery, the time she met Thurston (“he had a glow about him that I liked”), the first time her future hubby and bandmate visited her Eldridge Street apartment (they bonded over a crappy guitar that would eventually be used for “Eric’s Trip”), and walking with him on Eighth Street (“That night, I felt so happy, and so close to him, as if in this dirty, scrappy, adopted place he and I were the only people who existed within a perfect moment”).
According to the publisher, the book tells the story of the renaissance rocker’s “childhood, her life in art, her move to New York City, her love affairs, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, and her band.” And rest assured she’ll touch upon “the examination of what partnership means—and what happens when it dissolves.”
The book will cover everything from Gordon’s “childhood in the sunbaked suburbs of Southern California, growing up with a mentally ill sibling who often sapped her family of emotional capital, to New York’s downtown art and music scene in the eighties and nineties,” according to the jacket copy.
No word on whether she’ll tell us what she’s saying at the end of “Swimsuit Issue” — is it “us women”? “ice women”? “I’m swimming”?
Hopefully that question will be asked by Elissa Schappell, the Vanity Fair contributing editor and Tin House co-founder who’ll be leading the conversation at Strand. In order to attend the event on Feb. 24, you’ll have to buy a copy of the book or a $15 gift card.
