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Tag Archives: Patti Smith
The Time Machine: Patti Smith Performs “Seven Ways Of Going,” “Gloria”
This is a beautiful performance by Patti Smith and her original band at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey, 1979. You really get a sense of the mystery of Smith’s ’70s performances. They were other worldly. I was lucky enough to see her at the Boarding House in San Francisco and at the Longbranch in Berkeley in 1975.
Check out “Gloria” too:
Time Machine: Patti Smith In New York, 2000
This is an excellent 50-plus minute Patti Smith concert with very good sound. Smith is one of the great artists of our time. She’s a superb writer, takes awesome photographs, is terrific live and has made records that more than 30 years after they were recorded still reveal new mysterious when I listen.
A Reporter Rides On Doug Aitken’s Station To Station Train
In today’s Los Angeles Times there’s a cool article by Deborah Vankin about Doug Aitken’s Station To Station project. The three week traveling art and music festival was heading from Barstow, CA to LA and Vankin reports on the journey. Musicians who have participated in Station To Station include Patti Smith, Beck, Thurston Moore and Cat Power. Savages and No Age will perform Saturday Sept. 28, 2013 at 16th Street Station in Oakland, CA.
Read Vankin’s story and see a great slide show by photographer Robert Gauthier here.
Video: Patti Smith Performs “Ain’t It Strange” In Detroit.
Check out Patti Smith and her band performing “Ain’t It Strange” at the Majestic Theater a week and a half ago in Detroit. She’s amazing. Watch her movements as the song starts, how she dances, the expression on her face.
Zappa, Beefheart, Prince & 22 More On Making Music
Today Flavorwire has a cool feature, “25 Music Icons’ Brilliant Advice On Making Music.” Among the artists quoted are Prince, PJ Harvey, Brian Eno, Patti Smith and Thelonious Monk.
Captain Beefheart: “If you’re guilty of thinking, you’re out. If your brain is part of the process, you’re missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.”
Frank Zappa: “Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
For the rest, head to Flavorwire.
Listen: Patti Smith Talks About The Sea Before Ottawa Folk Festival Appearance
Before her Sept. 17 appearance at the Ottawa Folk Festival Patti Smith talked about her love of the sea, Robert Louis Stevenson and being alienated as a kid in an interview with CBC’s Alan Neal. “I was always such an alien as a kid,” she told Neal. “But it’s positive alienation. I was sort of a loner and outsider since I was a child, a little different than other kids, skinnier, taller. I was just a different kind of kid but I embraced that…. Because I wanted to be an artist, poet, writer — these were vocations that had the stigma or blessing of alienation attached to them.”
Definitely worth a listen here.
Patti Smith’s Tips For Success
In an interview with Canada’s The Globe And Mail, Patti Smith offered five tips for success.
Tip #1: Cher is already Cher
“Early on in my career,” Smith told the paper, “I got a lot of different offers. There was one producer who saw me do a sort of musical poetry reading. i guess I was funny and I had a wry sense of humor and he had this idea to shape me into a seventies-style Cher. Of course it was an honor that someone wanted to invest time and money in me, but this guy had a specific vision for me and it wasn’t what I wanted to do. People often get tempted by success, celebrity, but I’ve always tried to sidestep the opportunities that aren’t in keeping with my personal vision. Everyone has to make a living – I worked in a factory, I was a really bad waitress – but in terms of your art, that’s not something your should compromise. You might think you will only compromise for a while, but that’s not the way it works.”
Other tips:
#2: Be selfish every day.
#3: Screwing up is good for the soul.
#4: I’m a girl…get over it.
#5: There’s no “I” in performer.
To hear what Smith had to say about the last four tips, head to The Globe and Mail.
Patti Smith Writing Detective Novel
In a recent interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Patti Smith said she’s writing a detective novel. “My detective is probably more of an existential detective,” Smith said.
Read the interview here.