ABSTRACT
S onic Youth is the classic name of a pop-music group thatbegan in 1981 in SoHo’s outer precincts defined by the clubs Max’s Kansas City on lower Park Avenue and CBGB on the upper Bowery (which is by geographical definition north of the flea-bag dormitories). Its founders were the guitarist Thurston Moore, who also sang, and his wife-to-be Kim Gordon, who played bass and guitar and sang. Moore had previously participated in other groups; Gordon, an art school graduate, had befriended such downtown artists as Dan
Graham and Jenny Holzer. After early collaborators departed, Moore and Gordon added Lee Ranaldo, a guitarist/singer, who later published books of his poetry, as would Moore, much as Kim Gordon would establish a clothing business. These three made an eponymously titled mini-LP released in 1982 by Neutral Records, a label founded by downtown NYC guitar/composer Glen Branca, himself an avatar of abrasive and loud music based on rock, noise, jazz, and high modern composition in the tradition of Frank Zappa. The latter acknowledged as his principal musical guru Edgar Varèse (who lived on Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village, just north of Houston).
