Miami Plays a Pivotal Role in Thurston Moore's New Memoir, Sonic Life

Miami, the city Thurston Moore now calls home, plays a pivotal role in his excellent memoir, Sonic Life. In the book's second chapter, the former Sonic Youth frontman and godfather of indie rock waxes poetic about Coral Gables, the city of his birth, as "a paradise of huge banyan trees presiding over narrow streets, their trunks and branches knotty and adorned with thick hanging vines."

He paints a similarly vivid picture of New York City in the 1970s when he fell in love with the underground music and arts scene. He describes with wonder the first time he went to a show in the city that was a double bill of the Cramps and Suicide. Later, he nostalgically narrates the first time he entered CBGB by pretending to be part of Joey Ramone's entourage.

The first portion of the nearly 500-page book seems to be an autobiography of the world's most devoted music fan rather than an integral part of the 1980s and '90s alternative music boom.

"I think it's about 200 pages in before I get into Sonic Youth," Moore tells New Times. "I always wanted to write a book. The only chance I had to get a deal with a major publisher was to write about Sonic Youth. And I do write about that. I write about how the '90s Nirvana explosion was so special. But I also wanted to write about those experiences of discovering music. I really wanted to write a book of record reviews, but I don't think I'd have gotten the same deal for that book."

Most of Sonic Life was written in South Florida during the COVID-19 lockdown. "There's a lot of research to this. People think I have a great memory, but I had to look a lot of the stuff up. The only library with the full archive of the Village Voice is in Fort Lauderdale. I'd bring a banana in a brown paper bag for lunch, and I'd be in there from 10 a.m. to closing, finding the dates of shows."

Though much of his story takes place in the Northeast, where his parents moved the family when he was 10 and where he shot to fame with Sonic Youth, South Florida keeps re-entering his story. "I told Iggy Pop when I met him down here that I first bought his record Fun House at a record shop in Miami Beach when I was visiting family. I was 14 and rode a bicycle to the shop."

In the '90s, at the height of his fame, he was a frequent visitor to his mother's house in South Florida and got immersed in the local noise rock scene bringing local band Harry Pussy as an opener on a 1995 Sonic Youth tour. "Harry Pussy is one of America's greatest bands," Moore insists. "I had a friend, Tom Smith, who gave me a VHS tape of all these Miami bands. Harry Pussy was on there, Kreamy 'Lectric Santa, Monotrack — Miami was a hotbed of weird noise music. I think the scene was as strong as anywhere. There must have been something in the water because the people were just wild."

He continues to be amazed by the music being created down here. "I went to Rat Bastard's 24-Hour Noise Fest in Opa-Locka. He's around my age, in his sixties, and I'm like, wow, this guy's still going," he shares. It was a rare night out for Moore. "I hardly see music out. I'm too long in the tooth. I have tinnitus, so I can't be around loud music for too long. I like to stay stationary and involve myself with writing."

But he's still creating music. In September, Moore released his ninth solo album, Flow Critical Lucidity. "The record's very contemplative of cohabiting on Earth at this time of radical changes," he says. "I was surrounded by nature in Switzerland, and it really affected the songwriting."

He's currently working at his home in South Miami, writing a follow-up solo record along with his first novel. "I get really inspired down here. It's a great place to get away from things."

As the continued audiophile you meet in Sonic Life, Moore thinks Miami is an Eden for record collectors. "I tell people there are as many good record stores here as any place in the U.S. I'm constantly going to Sweat, Technique, Found Sound, My Mama's," he says, as he remembers a story about a recording shopping trip long ago. "I was with my mom and aunt, and I asked them to go inside Yesterday & Today's Records when it was on Bird Road. I asked them to go inside and buy me the new Harry Pussy record. They were outraged. I had to tell them, 'No, it's spelled H-A-R-R-Y.'"

While that anecdote didn't make the cut in Sonic Life, plenty of other ecstasies and agonies of being a true music aficionado and collector did. With that being said, for someone with such a wide catalogue of music released over the course of 40 years, where would he suggest someone unfamiliar with his music begin?

"As far as the solo stuff, I find it's progressive. I'm always more into what I just did, so I recommend Flow Critical Lucidity," Moore says. "For Sonic Youth, I'd say Confusion Is Sex, our first full-length. Bands are always more interesting when they start out. Then I'd go to The Eternal, our last album. Any band that has been around as long as we were, the last record is going to be interesting."

Sonic Life. By Thurston Moore. Doubleday. 496 pages. Hardcover; $35. Paperback; $20.

Thurston Moore at Miami Book Fair 2024. 2:30 p.m. Saturday, November 23, at the Pavilion at Miami Dade College Wolfson Campus, NE Second Avenue and Third Street, Miami; 305-237-3258; miamibookfair.com.