- Thurston Moore
Thurston Joseph Moore (born July 25, 1958 in Coral Gables, Florida) is an American musician best known as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist of the band Sonic Youth. He has participated in many solo and group collaborations outside of Sonic Youth, as well as running a small record label. - Kim Gordon
Kim Althea Gordon (born April 28, 1953) is a musician, vocalist, and artist. She plays bass and guitar in the alternative rock band Sonic Youth. She also plays in the band Free Kitten with Julie Cafritz (of Pussy Galore), and she has collaborated with musicians such as Ikue Mori, DJ Olive, William Winant, Lydia Lunch, Alan Licht, and Chris Corsano. - Lee Ranaldo
Lee M. Ranaldo (born February 3 1956) is an American singer, guitarist, writer and record producer, best known as a co-founder of the rock band Sonic Youth. Ranaldo was born in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, and graduated from Binghamton University. He has three sons, Cody Linn Ranaldo, Sage Ranaldo and Frey Ranaldo and is married to the experimental artist Leah Singer, with whom he has performed many live installation pieces with improvised music. - Steve Shelley
Steven Jay Shelley (b. 23 June 1963, Midland, Michigan) is a drummer of rock band Sonic Youth. He played in several mid-Michigan bands, and was among the original lineup of the seminal punk band the Crucifucks. Since 1985, he has performed with the experimental rock band Sonic Youth, when he replaced Bob Bert. After leaving the Crucifucks, he moved to Manhattan, subletting the apartment of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon while the band was in Europe. - Jim O'Rourke
Jim O'Rourke (born January 18, 1969) is an American musician and producer. He was long associated with the Chicago experimental and improv scene. Around 2000 he relocated to New York City. Known for his idiosyncratic tastes, and regarded as something of an expert on modern experimental music, he has released albums of jazz, noise and guitar rock music. O'Rourke has collaborated with the likes of Thurston Moore, Derek Bailey, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Nurse With Wound, … - Jack Rose
Jack Rose is a guitarist, originally from Virginia, USA. In the mid '90s he joined the noise/drone group Pelt with Patrick Best and Mike Gangloff. Over the course of ten years and a dozen records, Pelt transformed slowly from an electric group, heavily influenced by Sonic Youth, the Dead C and Theater of Eternal Music-style minimalism to an acoustic maximilist group whose sounds has been described as "a swirling keening drone, that unlike much drone music, … - Greg Dulli
Greg Dulli (born May 11 1965) is an American singer and instrumentalist. Dulli was born and brought up in a working-class suburb of Hamilton, Ohio. He is of German (father) and Irish (mother) descent. He first came to public attention in Cincinnati in the late 1980s with The Afghan Whigs, when Dulli joined D.C. transplant bassist John Curley and Louisville, Kentucky, guitarist Rick McCollum. The band was comic punk rock. - Nikki Sudden
Nikki Sudden born Adrian Nicholas Godfrey in London, was a prolific English singer-songwriter and guitarist. He co-founded the post-punk band Swell Maps with his brother Epic Soundtracks born Kevin Paul Godfrey whilst attending Solihull School in Solihull. Following the band's break-up in 1980 he started a solo career, as well as releasing records with Dave Kusworth as The Jacobites. Kusworth had been a member of the Dogs D'Amour and led his own band, … - Andres Alberti
- Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay (born 1955) is a visual artist and composer based in New York. Marclay is a former lecturer of video collage and sound at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland where he conducted a summer workshop. Marclay's work explores connections between sound, photography, video, and film. A pioneer of using gramaphone records and turntables as musical instruments to create sound collage, … - Kk Null
KK. Null (born Kazuyuki Kishino in Tokyo) is an experimental multi-instrumentalist. He began as a guitarist, but soon added composer, singer, electronic, drummer to his list of talents, and also studied Butoh dancing. Null joined the noise/progressive rock band Ybo2 in 1984, issuing several albums and EPs throughout the remainder of the decade. Later he started to more bands, such as Absolute Null Punkt (aka ANP) and his most well known one, … - Mike Mills
Mike Mills (born 1966 in Berkeley, CA.) is a film director/music video director and graphic designer. He graduated from Cooper Union in Lower Manhattan, New York City. He has created videos for such musical acts as Moby, Yoko Ono and Air. He has also worked as a graphic designer on promotional material and album covers for such acts as Beastie Boys, Beck, Sonic Youth, and Ol' Dirty Bastard. In addition he has created graphics for X-Girl, Marc Jacobs, … - Brigitte Fontaine
Brigitte Fontaine, born in 1940 in Morlaix, Finistère, in the Brittany region of France, is a singer of avant-garde music. During the course of her career she employed numerous unusual musical styles, melting rock and roll, folk, jazz, spoken word poetry and world rhythms. She collaborated with such celebrated musicians as Stereolab, Michel Colombier, Jean-Claude Vannier, Areski Belkacem, Gotan Project, Sonic Youth, Antoine Duhamel, … - Byron Coley
Byron Coley is an American music critic who wrote prominently for "Forced Exposure" magazine in the 1980s starting with their 5th issue until the magazine ceased publication in 1993. Prior to Forced Exposure, he wrote for NY Rocker, Boston Rock, and Take It! magazine. Coley is one of the first writers to have extensively documented indie rock from its inception to the present day. He was a contributing writer to "Spin" in the 1990's. - Chris Whitley
Christopher Becker Whitley (August 31 1960 - November 20 2005) was a singer songwriter who recorded albums on various labels. Highly acclaimed by critics and fans alike, he had a strong devoted following who continued to support his work. Whitley was an intense live performer and had proven very consistent with his studio recordings. In 2001, the "New York Times" called him "restless ...evoking Chet Baker and Sonic Youth as much as Robert Johnson". - Bob Bert
Bob Bert is a rock drummer. Based in Hoboken, New Jersey, Bert initially came to prominence as drummer for the experimental rock band Sonic Youth during the early to mid-1980s. Bert played on the Sonic Youth releases "Confusion Is Sex", "Sonic Death", and "Bad Moon Rising". After "Bad Moon Rising", Bert quit the group. Sonic Youth replaced Bert with drummer Steve Shelley. - Michael Azerrad
Michael Azerrad is an American author, journalist and musician. He grew up in the New York City area and received his BA degree from Columbia College in 1983. During his college years, he was both a roommate and a bandmate of keyboard virtuoso Marc Capelle (who later went on to become a member of American Music Club.) After college, Azerrad played drums in various small bands while pursuing a career in music journalism. - Jeff Mangum
Jeff Mangum (born 1970 in Ruston, Louisiana) is the founder and driving force behind the band Neutral Milk Hotel and one of the cofounders of The Elephant 6 Recording Company. Robert Schneider (of The Apples in Stereo), Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss (formerly of The Olivia Tremor Control and now comprising Circulatory System and The Sunshine Fix, respectively) and Mangum all attended the same high school in Ruston, Louisiana in the late 1980s. - Richard Kern
Richard Kern (born 1954) is a New York underground filmmaker and photographer. He first came to underground prominence as part of the underground cultural explosion in the East Village of New York City in the 1980s, with erotic films featuring underground rock personalities of the time such as Lydia Lunch,Kembra Pfahler, and Henry Rollins in movies like "The Right Side of My Brain" and "Fingered." Like many of the musicians around Kern, … - Christina Rosenvinge
Christina Rosenvinge is a Spanish singer born to Danish parents. She was a member or several Spanish groups (including Christina y Los Subterráneos) before she started a solo career with help from Lee Ranaldo, the guitarist of Sonic Youth. She moved to New York City in 1999 and her partner, Ray Loriga, took the photos of her album Foreign Land. =Discography= - Jim Sclavunos
Jim Sclavunos is an American rock music drummer, percussionist and producer. Sclavunos, who is a Greek-American from NYC, has performed with Sonic Youth, Tav Falco's Panther Burns, Lydia Lunch and was member of 8 Eyed Spy, The Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Alice Texas. Sclavunos is memorably described in the pages of The Wire as an "infamous elegant degenerate", has been a key player in Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds since 1994. - Big Youth
Manley Augustus Buchanan (born April 19, 1949, Trenchtown, Kingston, Jamaica), better known as Big Youth (sometimes called Jah Youth), is a Jamaican DJ, mostly known for his work during the 1970s. Influenced by U-Roy, he started singing with Lord Tippertone's sound system in 1970. His first LP "Chi Chi Run" was produced by Prince Buster in 1971. The name of the band Sonic Youth is in part a tribute to Big Youth. - Mark Ibold
Mark Ibold (b. 1962) was bass guitarist in the indie band Pavement. While he mostly played bass he also did some back-up vocals, most notably on the track Carrot Rope from the album "Terror Twilight". He also worked with Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon in her project band Free Kitten. Currently he is a bartender in Great Jones Cafe in New York City. - Ron Asheton
Ron Asheton (b. July 17, 1948 in Ann Arbor, Michigan) is guitarist and co-songwriter with Iggy Pop for the rock band The Stooges for their first two albums, and later appeared as bassist for their third, "Raw Power", when he was replaced in both instrument and songwriting prominence by The Stooges' new guitar player, James Williamson. However, with the Stooges reformed, he once again appears as the band's guitarist. - Don Fleming
Don Fleming (born September 25, 1957 in Valdosta, Georgia) is an American musician, best known for being the frontman of bands such as Velvet Monkeys, B.A.L.L., and Gumball. He is more widely known as a seminal producer for bands such as Sonic Youth, Teenage Fanclub, and The Posies. - Richard Edson
Richard Edson (born 1954, New Rochelle, New York) is an American actor and musician. He was the earliest drummer of Sonic Youth, from 1981 to 1982. During that time he also played drums for Konk. After quitting that group, Edson turned to acting. He has appeared in over 35 movies and is probably best remembered for his portrayal as one of two disreputable parking garage attendants in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". - Paul Smith
Paul Smith is probably best known as the founder and manager of Blast First, the British alternative record label that released artists such as Sonic Youth, the Butthole Surfers, Big Black and Dinosaur Jr. in the UK. He continued to manage the artists and work in the music industry when Blast First was bought by Mute Records. He is also known in subcultural circles as the man behind King Mob/Disobey, and the occasional Club Disobey underground art events in London. - Wharton Tiers
Wharton Tiers (born 1953 in Philadelphia) is an audio engineer and record producer for bands such as Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca, Dinosaur Jr, Helmet, and Gumball. He is also known as a percussionist and drummer for the Theoretical Girls, Laurie Anderson, and his own Wharton Tiers Ensemble - Harry Crews
Harry Crews (b. June 7, 1935) is an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He was born in Bacon County, Georgia in 1935 and served in the Marines during the Korean War. He attended the University of Florida on the GI Bill, but dropped out to travel. Eventually returning to the university, Harry finally graduated and moved his wife, Sally, and son, Patrick Scott, to Jacksonville where Harry taught Junior High English for a year. - John Wiese
John Wiese is an American noise and experimental music artist. He is extremely prolific, releasing many albums both as a solo artist and as a member of groups such as Bastard Noise, Sissy Spacek, and LHD, and he frequently collaborates with other musicians, including Sunn O))), Wolf Eyes, Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Brace Paine (The Gossip, Die Monitr Batss), Lasse Marhaug, and Merzbow. Wiese also runs the record label Helicopter, on which he releases his own work, … - William Hooker
William Hooker (born 1946) is a jazz drummer and composer. Early in his career, he played with the Isley Brothers and Dionne Warwick, among others. In college, Hooker began broadening his musical vision: He wrote a paper on Alban Berg, and befriended some members of Funkadelic. A move to New York City in the mid-1970s led Hooker to the so-called "loft scene" of adventurous free jazz performers. While Hooker was active in music throughout the 1980s, … - Martin Bisi
Martin Bisi is an American producer and songwriter. He is known for recording seminal records by Sonic Youth, John Zorn, Material, Bill Laswell, Swans, Herbie Hancock's Grammy-winning Rockit, and Angels of Light. In 1979, Martin Bisi started BC Studio with Bill Laswell and Brian Eno at The Old American Can Factory in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, where he recorded many of the No Wave, punk bands, and hip-hop of the early 1980s including Lydia Lunch, … - Todd P.
Todd P (aka Todd Patrick) is an organizer and promoter of underground DIY and indie rock shows and parties in New York City. Patrick was born in 1975 in Indiana. Before relocating to the New York City area in 2001, Patrick founded and ran a successful all-ages rock club and art space in Portland, Oregon called Seventeen Nautical Miles. Todd Patrick began organizing concerts in Brooklyn, New York under the name "Todd P" in 2001, first at several lofts, … - Fred Sonic Smith
Fred "Sonic" Smith (13 September, 1949 - 4 November, 1994) was the rhythm guitar player in proto-punk band the MC5. He later went on to form Sonic's Rendezvous Band. With Sonic's Rendezvous Band, Smith released only one single, the classic Detroit rock song, "City Slang". Smith was married to the punk pioneer and poet Patti Smith, until a sudden fatal heart attack, at the age of forty five. Patti Smith's 1996 album "Gone Again" features a tribute to her late husband. - William Winant
William Winant is a virtuosic and highly-regarded percussionist. In addition to contemporary classical music, he has also performed and recorded with a variety of musicians and composers including Glenn Spearman, Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth, Mr. Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3 and Oingo Boingo, and is a well-regarded performer of Lou Harrison's music. He has also frequently collaborated with John Zorn. - Lance Bangs
Lance Bangs (born September 4, 1972 in Sacramento, California) is a documentary filmmaker and music video director, who has created videos for Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Green Day, the Arcade Fire, the Shins, Belle & Sebastian, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, R.E.M., Mike Watt, Death Cab for Cutie, Kanye West, and Pavement. He directed the David Cross film Let America Laugh. As a commercial director he has worked with UPS and Volvo for several campaigns, … - Brody Dalle
Brody Dalle (born Bree Leslie Pucilowski on January 1, 1979 in Geelong, Australia), is a singer, songwriter and guitarist. She rose to fame as lead singer/guitarist for the punk rock band The Distillers. She is currently a member of Spinnerette. When she was young, Dalle was expelled from four schools, and was sent to a Catholic girls' institution. The strict rules did not deter her antisocial and self-destructive behavior. - Gerard Cosloy
Gerard Cosloy (b. 1964) ran Homestead Records in the 1980s; DJ'd at WFMU; played in the group Air Traffic Controllers, and later became part owner of Matador Records, the New York independent label founded by Chris Lombardi. Cosloy wrote and edited Conflict during the '80's and early '90's. It was as writer and editor for Conflict that Mr. Cosloy first heard the band Pavement after Spiral Stairs (Scott Kannberg) sent the zine the band's first studio work 'Slay Tracks'. - Lung Leg
Born Elizabeth Carr in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Lung Leg is best known for appearing on the cover of the Sonic Youth album "EVOL". The pin-up girl and star of the transgressive movement, she disappeared as quickly as she rose to fame. She appeared in several Richard Kern movies, including the starring role in one of his longest features "You Killed Me First", as well as "Fingered", … - Savage Pencil
Savage Pencil is a comics artist, and is the "nom de plume" of English music journalist Edwin Pouncey (b. Leeds, West Yorkshire, June 1951). As Savage Pencil and otherwise, Pouncey has contributed to magazines such as "Sounds" ("Rock'n'Roll Zoo", etc), "Forced Exposure" and "The Wire". He has illustrated record sleeves for bands such as The Fall, Big Black, Sonic Youth and Rocket From The Crypt amongst others.
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