Thurston Moore

Apart from his work in Sonic Youth he released many solo rekkords - the biggest is "Psychic Hearts", which could be described as more-or-less pop-rock, sounding similar (and as good as) the Sonik records of the same period (1994). His other records are mostly experimental noise works, with collaborators like William Winant, Nels Cline, Beck, Lydia Lunch, Tom Surgal and many others. A lot of these records are rare and limited edition. The ones i heard of are:

1. Piece for Jetsun Dolma
2. Just Tell Her I Really Like Her
3. Root
4. Foot
5. Pillow Wand

Thurston also participated in other artist's records - those include REM's "Monster", Mike Watt's "Ballhog or Tugboat?", "Velvet Goldmine Soundtrack" Blur's remixes compilation and others.

Thurston J. Moore

b. 07/25/1958, FL.

One brother, Gene Moore.

Lives Northampton, Mass.

Married to Kim A. Gordon, b. 04/28/1953, Los Angeles, CA.

One daughter, Coco Hayley Gordon Moore b. 07/01/1994


Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon are founders and members of the New York-based art/punk/rock/pop band Sonic Youth, formed NYC 1981. Since then, they've transformed from willfully abrasive art-punkers to godparents of the alternative scene (without getting mired in post-"alternative" backlash) to pop- and high-culture icons.

As a teen high on Television and Patti Smith in the late 1970s, Moore fled his mother's home in Connecticut for Manhattan, where he formed a band with a handful of other, slightly older guys called The Coachmen. (The band released one posthumous EP years later, "Failure To Thrive.") Prior to Sonic Youth, he also collaborated with Lydia Lunch. Moore and Lee Ranaldo also toured with Glenn Branca in the early 1980s; both men were featured on recordings of Branca's first three symphonies. Eventually, Moore bumped into Gordon, a jazz aficionado and visual artist fresh from Los Angeles, who was playing guitar in the trio CKM at the time.

Over the past 20 years, Moore has colloborated with countless others of an avant-garde bent, including Nels Cline, William Winant, Tom Surgal, Loren Mazzacane Connors and William Hooker.

Possibly the wildest and most experimental of his side projects is foot, formed circa 1998 with Don Fleming and Jim Dunbar. (Details have been moved to full foot write-up.)

Moore released a solo album in 1995, "Psychic Hearts", on Geffen. SY bandmate Steve Shelley played drums, with Two Dollar Guitar frontman Tim Foljahn playing guitar also. The album spawned one MTV-aired video, for "Ono Soul," shot in, around and on top of Jim Dunbar's Canal Street pad. Chillingly, one shot features a jetliner streaking toward the World Trade Center towers in the background.

Moore still oversees Ecstatic Peace!, the record label he founded in the early 1980s which focuses on unheard musics he feels are deserving of a wider audience. The output is released through Shelley's Smells Like Records.

Moore founded, wrote for and edited his own Killer! fanzine in the 1980s, and he has written for countless other publications since then. His first book, "Alabama Wildman", a collection of prose and poems, was published in 2000. A handful of copies were sold in a limited-edition slipcovered format, complete with a unique poem by Moore scrawled in the endpapers.

Moore and the other Sonic Youth guitarists play a dizzying array of instruments, sometimes "hot-rodded" to facilitate their sound-sculpture and noisemaking. Moore's favorite guitar is the Fender Jazzmaster, though he also uses a few other Fenders, too: Jaguars, Mustangs, Stratocasters and Telecasters. His first recorded debut with an acoustic guitar, 1993's "Winner's Blues," saw him use a 1930s-era Gibson Carson J. Robinson acoustic. For amplifiers, Moore favors a Peavey 160-watt Roadmaster head with Marshall 4x12 cabinets. Favorite effects include the Pro-Co Turbo Rat, Sovtek Big Muff, and MXR Blue Box and phase shifter. In July 1994, the band suffered a massive gear theft when a truck full of all their equipment was heisted at a festival in Orange County, CA. Insurance paid for the band to get new stuff, and Moore restocked his quiver with several new Jazzmasters.

Resources: Moore on free jazz, from the Beastie Boys' now-defunct Grand Royal 'zine:
http://saucerlike.com/sy/articles/thurston_grandroyal.html