http://www.salon.com/ent/critics_pic...8/05/24/may24/
"Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth" by David Browne
During their 27-year career, noise rockers Sonic Youth sculpted post-punk into alternative rock, using tools like feedback, controlled chaos and primal rhythm. Few bands could approximate their imaginative song structure, screwy guitar tunings or earsplitting volume -- perhaps only Royal Trux and Dinosaur Jr. count as direct descendants. But the Youth's art world sensibility set the ultracool, ironic pace for the alternative nation, and leaders Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon lured Nirvana and Beck to the minor major label DGC, securing mainstream success for their protégés, though never quite themselves. If "Goodbye 20th Century," David Browne's rollicking, epic biography of the band, which hits stores Monday, lacks lurid tales of drugged-out rock-star misbehavior, it's not the author's fault. Despite their wild, experimental anti-aesthetic, the group has lived shockingly normal lives. Moore was nicknamed Opie as a kid and married the Warholishly detached Gordon when they were in their early 20s. New York scared Lee Ranaldo so much at first that he ditched his apartment and ran back upstate. Steve Shelley was embarrassed to tell his parents that he played in a band called the Crucifucks. Faced with such straitlaced bourgeois bohemians, Browne cannily opts to tell, in a crisp, novelistic style, the compelling story of the cultural tornado of galleries, rock clubs and unique personalities (Lydia Lunch, Kurt Cobain and Chloë Sevigny, to name a few) Sonic Youth swirled around in, the band's ongoing fight to maintain the purity of their vision, and above all, their shared passion for new ideas and sounds.
-- James Hannaham