The mood of the crowd at the Neptune last night for Kim Gordon's conversation with Bruce Pavitt about her book Girl in a Band ranged from slightly confused to completely livid. No one, as far as I could tell, left feeling satisfied. I interviewed folks as they came out, asking them simply what they thought of the night. All their quotes are at the end.

But what happened?

Many people blamed Pavitt for talking too much about the past—the early Sub Pop days (Sonic Youth's contribution to the first Sub Pop compilation is how they met and know each other), inviting her to dish on Courtney Love, reminiscing about the time Sonic Youth invited Mudhoney to tour Europe with them, and riffing on Gordon's early-'90s clothing line X Girl. It did feel very casual and unstructured, two people just sort of chatting a little awkwardly about the good old days, neither one of them exactly jumping into the topic of the book.

Other people were disappointed by the audience questions, which, save for maybe three of them, either made no sense or clumsily pushed her to talk about feminism. Though it was a bit hard to hear, I swear someone asked: "So, what's it like being a woman in a band?" Then someone asked: "Do you spell Riot Grrl with two Rs or three?" Gordon's response: "That's not really my area of expertise. I'm, um, a bad speller."

The very best question, in my opinion, was from our own Kelly O, who asked: "In Vanity Fair, you said that you listened to a lot of hiphop during your breakup. Was there one particular record or artist who helped you the most?" Kim responded that she had mainly listened to mixes from friends, but that there was "a lot of Nas on there."

I'll try not to dwell on this all day, as I could easily word-barf on art, women, music, books, and expectations for the next four hours and rest of my life, but there's one last element in all this muddlement that we haven't talked about much—Kim Gordon herself. As with any art form, writing a good book does not necessarily mean you will be able to talk about it well, or even want to talk about it at length, no matter how the commercial book-selling cycle is supposed to work ("Except for this book [laughs], I don't really know how to do anything commercial or conventional," Gordon said at one point). Gordon was and is the eternally cool cucumber, but she too could have steered the interview had she wanted to. If you don't like a question or the direction of a conversation, take it somewhere else. Take the mic and talk about what you want to talk about. But honestly, it seemed like she wasn't in the mood to talk too much, not in an uptight way, maybe more in a stoned way (also very cool). And let's be real, it's Kim Fucking Gordon—does she really need Pavitt or anyone in the audience to help her talk about her book? I can't imagine she was just sitting there, waiting for someone to ask the right question so she could jump up and launch into the feminist rant we were all secretly hoping for.

Now then, here's what people outside of the Neptune thought about Kim Gordon's interview with Bruce Pavitt in which no one felt like talking about her completely excellent (from what I hear) book, Girl in a Band:

"Is Bruce his name? The Sub Pop guy? Yeah, he did 70 percent of the talking, which was like... part of the book is just a woman trying to find her artistic freedom within patriarchy and here she is on the stage with a dude doing 70 percent of the talking. It was fucking annoying."

"It felt like he did the majority of the talking and he kept saying names of people in the scene—the name-dropping, it was the name-dropping. Let her talk! I kept thinking the anecdotes were going to lead into a thing, and they didn't."

"I felt uncomfortable for the last 15 or 20 minutes. The audience stuff. It was pretty awkward."

"It was interesting that he was sort of mansplaining her biography to her. Specifically about when Sonic Youth first played in Seattle. I wish there was more of Kim talking... and the audience questions were fun, too."

"I don't know, she didn't seem like she wanted to go too deep into any topic. The questions were weird—it was so weird in there—but I thought the one asking if she was inspired by women musicians when she was growing up was okay, but she was like 'Umm, I don't really know.'"

"I felt like the last place I would ever expect a bunch of men to want to talk about themselves and talk over somebody would be at an interview with Kim Gordon. Because she's so highly respected and this is a book about her. And it was unbelievable and made me really really sad. I was disappointed by both the interview and the questions. Bruce didn't seem like he was even prepared to interview her. And the stuff he did ask were things you could read anywhere, and I felt like it was disrespectful to her. And the audience questions were beyond baffling to me. I could not fucking believe my ears, from beginning to end I was waiting for just one question that was worthy of Kim Gordon and there were not any, which was really sad."

"If ANY woman had interviewed her, literally ANY woman had interviewed her, it would have been better. It's just hard. I mean, I care about social media, but it's Kim Gordon, and people are asking her questions about her Instagram? She's a fucking world-class musician! It's Kim Fucking Gordon! Ask her a question about music or art!"

"I think she might have been on Xanax, but I don't blame her."