Been harmonizing with Patti so long that she really should hire me to sing back up. Our voices are very well suited to one another.
At 20, I attended my second Patti Smith concert in Boston. By that time, she had released Horses, the underplayed Radio Ethiopia -- which I totally love, Pumping (My Heart), Ask the Angels, Ain't It Strange -- does it get any better than that?, Because the Night and Frederick. I was a naïve college student at Brandeis and went with my friend Naomi to the concert, which I still remember vividly and after which I waited for her at the musicians' exit in an alley with dozens of other young fans.
I had brought back an eye from Greece (an amulet that protects you against the evil eye) the summer before and was determined to give it to her. Through the crowd went my arm and at the end of it was my hand outstretched holding the blue, glass eye in a tiny gold setting. She actually noticed it, so I shouted out, "It's an eye from Greece. It will protect you!" Then she yelled over to her lead guitarist, the awesome Lenny Kaye, "Lenny, Lenny get a button for the Grecian girl!" He handed me a button with the album and tour's logo on it. Of course, I was thrilled in a way that only college girls can be and have the button to this day.
I already included Patti Smith in my 2006/2007 List of Women who embody the phenomenon I call the "Helen Mirren Effect," women 50 and over who've still got it and got it in spades. This was based on her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Twelve, her new album, is sublime. It has 12 covers stretching from the songs of Stevie Wonder all the way over the rainbow to Nirvana and then turns a corner and lands on Jimi Hendrix with stops at the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Neil Young, the Doors, Dylan, Jefferson Airplane and even Tears for Fears. Yup, Patti sings "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and knocks the song out of the rock 'n roll park with an interpretation that allows her voice to be as beautiful as it can be. Still so Patti Smith though. It's the Patti she pulls out when she sings classics like "Be My Baby," (sorry, not on this album but I do have it on bootleg vinyl) paying homage to the Ronettes and other songs that tap our memories of music on the radio that delighted and ignited our youth.
Her version of Wonder's "Pastime Paradise" is equally satisfying yet haunting all at once. And socially relevant if you listen hard and well.
Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" is a wonderful battle cry and her notes on Grace Slick are poetic and insightful. "Her voice defied gender." Hey Patti, ditto to you and Cher and Joplin and Hynde.
Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is all you imagine it will be yet still surprising and fresh. In her wonderful notes she writes, "I sensed Kurt Cobain's love of Leadbelly and Roscoe Holcomb. I could hear a banjo in his voice and so decided to record it porch style." She sings the lyrics so you can understand every word. Do you know the words? I didn't before I heard her version. It's worth the trip.
With the lights out, it's less dangerous. Here we are now, entertain us.
I feel stupid and contagious. Here we are now, entertain us. A mulatto. An
albino. A mosquito. My libido.
No better description of adolescent angst was ever written.
Photos of Elbows?
Of all the elbows in all the gin joints! Why'd we have to pick hers? Sweet Jesus, what's with the photographs of Madonna's elbows? And what's with all the press coverage of Madonna and her elbows? Know what I think? And I think Patti would agree with me on this, coverage of the condition of Madonna's elbows and speculation about how many sit ups she does is ludicrous.
Let's do a photo essay on Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty's elbows and compare them with Brad Pitt and George Clooney's.
Okay? Okay.
The Fever
HBO recently broadcast The Fever, a film directed by Carlo Nero, which stars his actress, activist and humanitarian mother Vanessa Redgrave. It was adapted from Wallace Shawn's play of the same name by Shawn and Nero. I seem to have been one of the few who saw it and possibly the only one who appreciated it.
The central character (Redgrave) is a middle-aged woman who has a deep awakening about the fact that everything we do really does affect everyone else. It takes her character on a journey from a privileged life in London to a mysterious, Eastern European country where torture and political oppression reveal themselves to her and become part of her reality. This changes what she believes about herself and the world forever.
Given that The Fever also dares to take a crack at highlighting some of Karl Marx's most profound concepts in Das Kapital like the fetishism of commodities, I think it's something of a coup. The film distills another core concept from Marx's voluminous text, i.e., that capitalism is theft. In an animated sequence that even children can understand, Redgrave narrates her realization that property belonging to her family was originally stolen by violent means by her ancestors and kept in her family for generations. The amount of land grew because their privilege allowed them to keep buying more and more further solidifying their position and those of the poor as well.
If we go back far enough, we see the land we live on was at one time stolen. Remember the story of our Native Americans and the settlers from England?
The Fever. It's hot and too hot (for most) to handle.