No wonder Sonic Youth members and Ryan Adams get along so well: they all have a brilliantly unrelenting muse. Between Thurston Moore’s upcoming book, solo album, Jandek show, tributes, Lee Ranaldo’s own art exhibitions and Steve Shelley’s new band, it’s getting hard to even keep up with Sonic Youth side-projects as they come through the wire. Here’s the latest update from the Kim Gordon camp:

Rizzoli New York will publish Gordon’s new multimedia art book Performing/Guzzling, reports Art Info (via The Daily Swarm), a collection of watercolors, paintings, photographs, and poetry based on “[w]hat she sees when looking at her audience while performing.”

“Looking out into the audience,” Gordon writes, “light comes from the projector at the back of the hall… They appear as a collective mood… I wish I had a camera to record [what] it looks like.”

For more info and a few scans from Performing/Guzzling go here.

If you’re in the New York City area and haven’t stopped by Lee Ranaldo’s solo art exhibition yet, tomorrow (Feb 21) is the day to do it. Though the Sonic Youth guitarist’s “A Random Collection of Cells” has been showing at The Hogar Collection in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for over a month now, the run will end in just two days. Not only is it your last chance to see his work, but Ranaldo himself will be playing “a special afternoon sound performance” from 2-6PM on Sunday.

A 4-hour live soundtrack by Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo? Umm… yes, please. Check out this description of his work:

In one series of ink paintings on paper, imagery from newspaper clippings are magnified and subtly altered, removed from their original journalistic context and re-presented as purely visual images. Divorced from the stories surrounding them, the pictures begin to describe a new, accumulative narrative, free of topical content. Found texts in the form of spam are often used as a component in the free-form proseused to juxtapose unrelated images, texts or sounds.

For the Hogar Collection’s listing, go here, and the full “A Random Collection of Cells” press release, go here.

If you took my advice and followed Thurston Moore’s new blog Flowers & Cream last weekend, then you’ve already heard this news, as Moore ended a 6-day blogging hiatus this morning with a couple exciting updates worth noting…

The first one (via TDS), dubbed “mirror/dash ono,” actually makes a lot of sense given this week’s activities: “kim [Gordon] and i will be recording a trio LP w/ yoko [Ono] this year,” Moore said, “with blindfolds.” It can be hard to tell if he’s being sarcastic, of course, but I’ll bite.

And 6 minutes later, here’s Moore: “new solo lp/book this fall,” reads a post titled “in silver rain with a paper key.”

Wow. I’ll add these to our list of Sonic Youth-related upcoming projects, alongside that live DVD, 17th LP, and film soundtrack.

‘Twas a fun day in music news. Lots of bits to choose from, and I’m real proud of the updates we settled on. Here are some other stories that caught my eye…

After days spent digging through a dozen sites, mostly written in Japanese, I’m thrilled to report that Jim O’Rourke has produced All Kinds of People ~Love Burt Bacharach~, a tribute album featuring 11 pieces of the legendary songwriter’s most famous work as covered by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, O’Rourke himself, former Bacharach collaborator Donna Taylor, and 7 other artists.

O’Rourke—who previously released a faithful cover of Bacharach’s “Something Big” on Eureka—not only produced and sang on the album, but he also played guitar, banjo, keyboards, bass, harpsichord, and other instruments. Who’s the drummer? Oh, that would be Wilco’s Glenn Kotche on the skins.

The album is due out on April 7th via Japanese label AWDR, a week before being performed live in Tokyo and Osaka on 4/15 and 4/18, respectively, by O’Rourke, Kotche (just ahead of two Wilco gigs in Japan), other artists from the album, and “special guests.” Ready for the track/set list?

All Kinds of People ~Love Burt Bacharach~

1. Close To You (Haruomi Hosono)
2. Always Something There To Remind Me (Thurston Moore)
3. Anonymous Phone Call (Jim O’Rourke)
4. After The Fox (Akira Sakata, Masaya Nakahara)
5. You’ll Never Get To Heaven (Aoyama Youiti)
6. Do You Know The Way To San Jose (Kahimi Karie)
7. Don’t Make Me Over (Kosaka Tadashi, Jim O’Rourke)
8. Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head (Koike Mitsuko)
9. I Say A Little Prayer (Yoshimi)
10. Trains And Boats And Planes (Jim O’Rourke)
11. Walk On By (Donna Taylor)

Perhaps this week’s “Musicblogocide 2010” fiasco reminded Thurston Moore that he registered a Blogger/Blogspot account back in ‘06, as the Sonic Youth guitarist just dropped about a dozen posts on his music, art, and poetry blog, dubbed “Flowers & Cream,” in the past two days alone.

Though the initial posts were pretty typical blog fare (a photo of Marianne Faithfull, a Youth Brigade album cover), Moore got a bit more comfortable late on his first day of blogging, posting new poem “7th floor overlooking manhattan bridge,” a photo and blurb from a recent performance, and, most recently, an awesome memoir/review of Iggy and the Stooges’ recently reissued classic Raw Power. Follow Friday Saturday!

Details are scant at this time (we’re still awaiting replies from respective publishers), but there are two exciting books coming out that I’ve been dying to mention. Only three deets are publicly known about the first one (the editor, publisher, and title), but throw some good ol’ speculation into the mix and this is kind of a big deal.

According to Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room, in an announcement about upcoming Loren Connors/Alan Licht album Into the Night Sky, which features Lee Ranaldo, both Licht and Ranaldo have books in the works: the former, which Licht is currently at work editing, is called Bonnie Prince Billy on Will Oldham and will be published in 2011 by Faber & Faber.

I can’t say for certain, but if this book is a longer version of Oldham’s infamous self-written press bio/interview, “Will Oldham on Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Vice-Versa”, then we’re in for quite a treat. Seriously, this thing is one of my all-time favorite musician-penned pieces.

As for Ranaldo, the Sonic Youth guitarist is prepping the follow-up to his last collection of poetry, Hello From the American Desert, for April of this year. The book, Against Refusing, will be published by the tiny Sudbury, Massachusetts-based publisher Water Row Press (they’ve previously published Thurston Moore, Ranaldo, and William Burroughs). But here’s the best (and most Sonic Youth-style) part: Against Refusing will be a “book of modern poetry based on internet spam.”

Thurston Moore and Meg Baird will lead an impressive lineup of solo artists/bands performing at Philadelphia’s Latvia Society at a memorial concert and record release party for the late Jack Rose, who passed away of a heart attack at only 38 years old last month.

As Pitchfork reported, Rose had signed to Thrill Jockey for the release of his 10th LP, Luck in the Valley, before his unexpected death. “Luck In The Valley: A Record Release Party And Memorial Concert” will take place the day before Valentine’s Day, about three weeks before the album’s scheduled release date (Feb. 23). Tickets will be available on Monday here.

But before Moore plays that memorial show, ArtsBeat reports that he and the rest of Sonic Youth will share the stage with Lou Reed and John Zorn at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse later this month at a benefit concert for Beat poet and former Fugs member Tuli Kupferberg, who is struggling to pay medical bills after suffering two recent strokes that left him blind.

Sonic Youth, Zorn, and Reed? Now that’s a brilliant lineup, I say. Perhaps it’ll make Thurston’s next “Best of” list.

We’ve heard from Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo about the top three albums of the decade, and now we have a year-end list from guitarist (and Gossip Girl fanboy) Thurston Moore. On the official site of his record label, Ecstatic Peace, Moore contributed to an ongoing poll of the best live performances from 2009. I’ve listed his picks below, but you should definitely check out Moore’s amusing blurbs here, as well.

1) John Olson and Khristopher Reinshagen “in the basement of some pad in
Detroit”, Michigan.

2) Cold Cave [opening for Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr.] at Terminal 5, New York City

3) Jesus Lizard at Irving Plaza in NYC and Awesome Color at Glasslands in Brooklyn.

Thurston declares David Yow’s stage banter, “Thank you, you’ll never see us again,” the best end of gig line ever.

4) Leslie Keffer and Thurston Moore in Nashville, TN

“I only list this because I got to smash my guitar in Leslies face only to have her wrestle me to my back and strangle me while some weird, drunken bearded dude knelt down and yelled in my ear “dude 100% is like the greatest jam ever!!”

5) Talk Normal at Hampshire College Tavern  - Amherst, MA

6) Iggy & The Stooges in Rio, Brazil (first Raw Power reunion set with James Williamson.)

7) Okkyung Lee and Carlos Giffoni duo at Glasslands, Brooklyn