Sonic Youth cofounder Thurston Moore talks Georgia memories at Atlanta book event

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Chad Radford (left) interviews Thurston Moore (right) at Atlanta's Tara Theater on Dec. 11, 2024.

Credit: Jake Cook / GPB

Thurston Moore, 66, has immortalized his whole artistic journey in a new biography, Sonic Life.

The alternative and noise rock icon, who founded the band Sonic Youth with Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo in 1980, visited Atlanta's Tara Theater on Dec. 11 to discuss his page-turning memoir during a Q & A with Georgia author Chad Radford, followed by a screening of the documentary film Desolation Center, in which Sonic Youth perform.

For Radford, who wrote Atlanta Record Stores: An Oral History, the event was the culmination of an almost lifelong fandom.

“Sonic Youth has been a presence in my life since I saw the “Kool Thing” video when I was 15 years old.” the writer said in an email to GPB before the book event.

“[They were] a doorway into a larger world; a passage from punk and hardcore into drone music and the avant-garde, minimalism pushed to the max. For me, all roads lead back to Sonic Youth.”

Radford wasn't alone: The theater was packed with fans eager to hear about the guitarist and singer-songwriter's life firsthand. 

Although Moore did not perform at the event, he covered the tracks of the band's history. 

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Atlanta's 688 club was a popular venue on Spring Street which featured alternative rock and punk bands and closed in 1986.

Credit: Wikipedia

Georgia memories

In 1982, Sonic Youth embarked on their first U.S. tour, supporting fellow New York musical agitators Swans, which took them all along the eastern seaboard. The last two stops — on Nov. 16 and Nov. 17 — were the famous 40 Watt in Athens, Ga., and the 688 in Atlanta, a legendary punk rock haunt on Spring Street which shuttered in 1986.

Moore remembered that excursion with a certain level of humorous disdain.

“Michael Gira from Swans coined the name ‘Savage Blunder tour;’ that was prescient", Moore recalled with a laugh. “I mean, we thought we were going into some kind of glorious escapade, and he was like, ‘It’s a savage blunder.’ He has nothing but rotten memories of it. We played in front of three people each night, and there was no money and we were starving.”

Despite that reality, the musical history of 688 was not lost on a young Thurston Moore, who noted the powerful aura of both the venue and the city itself.

“Iggy Pop's setlist was on a wall [at 688]. So we thought we were like in this 'land of plenty,' you know?” Moore said. "There wasn't that many people there. My cousin Allison, her mother was there because we were staying at their house [in Dunwoody]. She was very complimentary. But we were up there, really smashing our guitars, and Swans came out and were brutal, you know. So people were just like, they couldn't get out of the room fast enough.”

Radford told Moore and the audience he was too young to attend that first Sonic Youth concert in Atlanta, but over the years he got many more chances to see the band, and Thurston Moore, in action.

“The one Sonic Youth show that really stands out in my mind was when they played at the Tabernacle in 2000 with Stereolab.” Radford had said in his email.

“NYC Ghosts and Flowers had just come out," Radford said. "Jim O’Rourke and Mark Ibold had joined the band at the time. The sound was monstrous — the group was at the peak of its powers. The backdrop was a raw film footage of a day in the life on the New York subway. No cuts. No edits. Just one stationary shot of people getting on and off the train. It gave a very dreamlike flow to the whole show that night. Just a wonderful, powerful show.”

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Historic sounds

The “no wave” musical movement of the late 1970s to early '80s was a bold response to the perceived commodification of punk rock. Add the emergence of hip-hop, the groundbreaking performances of Patti Smith, the art-rock deconstructionism of bands like the Talking Heads, and the disruptive work of visual artists like Jean Michel Basquiat, and you start to get a picture of the creative inferno from which Sonic Youth was originally forged.

Sonic Youth's sound and ethos was borne from a New York arts scene defined by brash, often confrontational experimentation. The band released albums at a steady clip over the course of almost three decades and achieved great critical success before ultimately calling it quits in 2011. 

Though Sonic Youth always staunchly purveyed the left-of-center, they had a few moments of crossover interest. Among those moments: in the fading twilight of grunge, the music video for “Bull in the Heather” from their 1994 album Goo received regular rotation on MTV. The band was featured in a 1995 episode of The Simpsons which skewered Lollapallooza, the alternative music festival at which they headlined the main stage that same year.

Following Sonic Youth’s disbandment, Moore’s artistic output never slowed. Besides releasing nine solo albums, his work has included collaborations with fellow artistic iconoclast Yoko Ono; creating the score for the 2022 HBO miniseries Irma Vep; and the formation of Ecstatic Peace Records, which has fostered a rotating roster of experimental, avant-garde musical acts since 1981. 

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Thurston Moore performs in a church in this undated photo.

Credit: Courtesy of Shore Fire Media

Moore's book recounts some of the highlights of how the sound was created. 

At the Tara, Moore and Radford held the audience in rapt attention for over an hour. There was a palpable sense of reverence as the crowd soaked in the recollections of a person considered a boundary-pusher and a stalwart of uncompromising self-expression; someone who lived and created during what’s often noted as a truly paradigm-shifting moment in American cultural history.

In response to an audience member who asked how he could introduce the music of Sonic Youth to his younger employees, Moore closed the discussion by quoting Albert Ayler, the avant-garde jazz saxophonist whose primal squonks partially set the precedent for the “no wave” movement.

“’If music is the healing force of the universe,’” he quoted, “’then let’s start there.’”

Thurston Moore’s latest solo album Flow Critical Lucidity was released in June, and Sonic Life is now available in bookstores everywhere.