Remembering a post-Longhorn friendship with Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore
May 13, 2015
Hello there, fellow listeners.
It's Dick Champ here from the legendary Longhorn-era band NNB, which I formed in 1977 with guitarist/songwriter Mark Freeman, bassist Rusty Jones, and drummer Jim Tollefsrud.
The fact that the inaugural title for The Current's Rock and Roll Book Club is Kim Gordon's memoir Girl in a Band has me waxing a little nostalgic. You see, when NNB — like a bunch of other Minneapolitans, mind you — rolled the dice, hopped into our Ford Econoline van, and relocated to New York in the fall of 1980, my then-girlfriend Claudia Hazlebeck took a job as a line cook at a place in Soho, Elephant & Castle, where Kim Gordon happened to work bussing tables.
When Claudia would be wrapping up her shift, I'd head over there so Claudia and I could make the trek crosstown to our East 9th St. digs together. Before we left the restaurant, it wasn't unusual for the two of us to sit down at a table with Kim and talk about the state of music, including Kim's interest in putting a band together. We even invited Kim and Thurston Moore out to Maxwell's in Hoboken to see our band...stuff like that. I have to tell you, the scene back then could be a very small world — like, miniscule — and making good connections was pretty easy.
About six months later, NNB played the Noise Fest at White Columns, the festival that by some accounts launched Sonic Youth. All of which goes to illustrate: There's a little bit (and sometimes even a lot) of Minneapolis in the history of rock music.
Thinking about those golden days in New York, I'm also remembering the many visits Kim and Thurston would make to the East Side Bookstore at 34 St. Marks Pl. where I worked for probably a couple of years, maybe '81-'82. The proprietor of that shop was a guy Jim Rose, who about 15 years earlier had the Intergalactic Trading Post, surely one of the first head shops in all of America; Jim once showed me the dang original sign for that store, a really long rectangular piece he kept in the building he owned across the street and almost next door to the Holiday Cocktail Lounge, the tiny bar at St. Marks and 1st Avenue that the many transplanted Minneapolis scenesters took over! No kidding! We were all over the East Village.
Anyway, Michael O'Neil, a St. Paul punk rocker who had a couple years previously had a unique shop in Minneapolis called Rock-it Cards with the legendary Lorna Doone, was the manager of that bookshop in the Village. That's how I got the gig! Thank you, Michael! It was quite a fluid period, still a lot going on, though eventually it kinda sputtered. But yeah, T and K would come in, browse, say hello. And a lot of other music luminaries...
Years later, Thurston Moore called The Scene Is Now, my more "NY" band, "drunken sailor music" by way of compliment. Boy did he get that right!
Tossed salad days of my youth!
We invite you to read Girl in a Band along with us this month and share your thoughts in the comment section as well as via social media, using the hashtag #RockandRollBookClub. Read Jade's take on Kim Gordon's memoir here.
This Saturday, there will be a Longhorn Bar reunion concert at First Avenue. Read Andrea Swensson's feature on the Longhorn scene.