Kim Gordon Quotes
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It's really hard for me to sing and play bass.
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The last two records I liked playing a lot.
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I feel most free onstage. The audience, it's an abstraction. You don't really see anyone out there, but you feel the audience inside you.
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Sonic Youth, for better or worse, is/was a machine that carried me along through pregnancy, motherhood, and creative opportunities I never would have achieved on my own. I'm grateful and surprised that we were listened to, loved, ignored, and overrated.
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Anyone becomes mannered if you think too much about what other people think.
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Well, it was kind of accidental that Jim started playing with us, although it wasn't sudden... we hadn't really looked around to think who could be a fifth member.
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It's hard to say when the life of a band starts and stops... but playing music together is an act of trust. When that's broken, it's impossible to continue.
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I mean, I don't even think of myself as a musician, really.
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I don't have any desire to do something that sounds explicitly rock. Like, I don't have a burning need to be a rock musician. I feel like I've taken that as far as I can take it, for me.
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I like the adrenaline of playing improv - it makes me feel really calm.
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I wasn't very confident about clothes; I was always hunting through racks, never sure what looked right. It can be like that again when you're older.
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I just happened to start playing music for the conceptual ideas.
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I never really thought of myself as a musician. I'm not saying Sonic Youth was a conceptual-art project for me, but in a way, it was an extension of Warhol. Instead of making criticism about popular culture, as a lot of artists do, I worked within it to do something.
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I grew up listening to John Coltrane and jazz, so they were subtle influences. I sometimes think about doing some kind of weird jazz record, but I don't know... It's on my list of things to do. I don't want to have to then go promote it.
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I would be too self-conscious if I just thought of writing lyrics for a song. I have to trick myself into doing it.
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In a lot of the art world, you have to present yourself as you know what you're doing at a young age. Music gave me another outlet. The 'no wave' bands were such an inspiration; it felt so free - once you start doing it, it's hard to stop. But I can't get away from art. It comes back around. I wouldn't be true to myself if I didn't pursue it.
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I don't see myself as a rock star. I don't see myself in that way. I'm interested in work that offers some sort of critical dialogue.
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I don't even know if I always entirely get what I'm trying to say right away with lyrics. I like a lot of things that are more subtext. I grew up mishearing lyrics my whole life, but somehow there's so much more, too, that's implied in vocal delivery and the music itself and the gestural quality of it.
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Women make natural anarchists and revolutionaries because they've always been second-class citizens, kinda having had to claw their way up. I mean, who made up all the rules in the culture? Men - white male corporate society. So why wouldn't a woman want to rebel against that?
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I still don't really feel like a bass player.
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I love the way Lady Gaga finds humour in fashion, but it's still very stylised.
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I try not to think too much about what the audience is thinking and what they think I should do.
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Because our daughters have school and it's just such a hassle going down to New York all the time, we can really only go on the weekends, we kind of... Steve came up here and worked out stuff for the second half of the record.
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I've done art on my own, and I've also collaborated with other people to make art. And collaborating with other people is always interesting because you end up doing things you probably wouldn't do otherwise.