70. Kool Thing – Sonic Youth

Okay, maybe I was hasty before, maybe Kim Gordon is actually the coolest bass player rather than Kim Deal: it’s got to at least be a tie.

There’s a lot to love about Sonic Youth, the benchmark of effortless NYC cool who could have been huge but didn’t want it (they were going to change their name to Washing Machine after Goo sold too well, just to put people off the scent, until Michael Stipe of REM talked them out of it: they named an album after it instead): the Lee Ranaldo noise machine, a bloke who looked like my big brother (before Tom took over the job a bit later) dicking about with his guitar and singing, a bloke they nicked from some preppy liberal arts college and stuck behind the drums, and Kim. You can see why Kurt Cobain was in love with them in a hot second: I’m slightly amazed he didn’t take up the bass, but he certainly styled himself after her.

They were untouchable for years until Thurston messed it all up, the lanky idiot, but this song shows what they were in their prime. And it’s always amusing to me that they roped Chuck D, probably the biggest name in rap at the time, and got him to play Flava Flav behind Kim.

Fear of a Female Planet, indeed.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDTSUwIZdMk