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Patti Smith


BFrank

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Any fans out there?

Last night I saw her at a small club here in SF (tonight she plays The Fillmore). What a great show! She poured it on for well over 2 hours and the crowd left exhausted. I've always liked her, but this is only the third time I've seen her in concert and a great treat to see the show in a small venue. She doesn't seem to have lost a beat.

The band was as tight as ever, including "lifers" Jay Dee Daugherty (who I went to high school with, actually) on drums and Lenny "LENNY!" Kaye on guitar.

She performed stuff covering the full gamut of her career - from early tunes like "Free Money" and "Ask The Angels" to more recent songs like "1959" and "Summer Cannibals". A nice touch was the lead in to "Rock & Roll Nigger" which is called "Babelogue" on record, but she read "Spell" from Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" in appreciation of City Lights books.

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Found "Easter" on vinyl at a garage sale last weekend and am enjoying it quite a bit. I've always passed on her stuff before, but 25 cents seemed like a good price.

I've been getting more into the early NY punk scene lately. Television's "Marquee Moon" has been on heavy rotation in my CD player lately. Must be getting older, starting to prefer poetry to power chords (apologies to Johnny Thunders).

Edited by Jad
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i made my wife go with me to a small club here last summer.

she is not much of a music fan, and she absolutely loved it.

she knew nothing going in, but the next day she made me give her some of my patti cd's for her car.

the cool part during the concert - it was a small, loud, smoky club, and someone down in front brought their toddler. patti stopped the show mid song and made them leave. she explained that she loves kids, and this was no place for a kid.

that was cool.

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  • 5 years later...

well, I like her prose - but as a singer songwriter I just find here to have a sort of reverse-feminist macho with literary and intellectual pretensions - I just don't find her songwriting compelling; the Christ line is, to me, representative. Don't know if you've read the book New York Rocker by Gary Valentine, but it neatly sums up the whole pretentiousness of that scene with Burroughs et al (and Burroughs Senior, except for Junky, is a lesser writer, IMHO, than Burroughs Junior, but that's another thread) ; Smith, like Richard Hell, to my way of thinking, was smart and sharp but was like a lot of smart, sharp people I've met who just didn't know enough to carry off the kind of poetry or to which they aspired - I feel the same about Tom Verlaine in many respects. And I like a lot of Hell's work - but ultimately they are classic examples of their reach exceeding their grasp - too many intellectual shortcuts (if I can I will cut/paste a section from the liner notes of my cd which is relevant to this in some respects) - they knew enough to know what they should have known, from a literary standpoint, but that's really it.

and I am in an admitted minority in thinking this, I should add -

Edited by AllenLowe
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well, I like her prose - but as a singer songwriter I just find here to have a sort of reverse-feminist macho with literary and intellectual pretensions - I just don't find her songwriting compelling; the Christ line is, to me, representative. Don't know if you've read the book New York Rocker by Gary Valentine, but it neatly sums up the whole pretentiousness of that scene with Burroughs et al (and Burroughs Senior, except for Junky, is a lesser writer, IMHO, than Burroughs Junior, but that's another thread) ; Smith, like Richard Hell, to my way of thinking, was smart and sharp but was like a lot of smart, sharp people I've met who just didn't know enough to carry off the kind of poetry or to which they aspired - I feel the same about Tom Verlaine in many respects. And I like a lot of Hell's work - but ultimately they are classic examples of their reach exceeding their grasp - too many intellectual shortcuts (if I can I will cut/paste a section from the liner notes of my cd which is relevant to this in some respects) - they knew enough to know what they should have known, from a literary standpoint, but that's really it.

and I am in an admitted minority in thinking this, I should add -

I know it's not a poll, but I don't agree with you on almost all of the above.

Just my 2 cents.

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I'm seeing her with Philip Glass!!!

That wouls be fun. Where is that?

Allan, she has a lot more going on than one line from one song. And I think she's pretty great live.

UCSB In February. Part of series which also includes Sonny Rollins.

Wow, close enough to seek out....

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I'm seeing her with Philip Glass!!!

That wouls be fun. Where is that?

Allan, she has a lot more going on than one line from one song. And I think she's pretty great live.

UCSB In February. Part of series which also includes Sonny Rollins.

THAT'S interesting. I need to go to SB sometime in the next several months on personal business. That might be a good excuse to make that trip.

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  • 10 years later...

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