In Damnation of...Horses by Patti Smith

I don't think I'll ever be able to read fans of Killing Joke and Grizzly Bear throw shade on Patti Smith without rolling my eyes.

I dont really understand why Patti needs to be compared with Debbie Harry anyway, and why it is 'remotely useful'.

I love both equally, but when I listen to Patti I feel like she's positioning herself as part of a lineage that reaches backwards into the Velvets and the Beats, even as she's reacting against that lineage. A kind of bohemianism that predated rock and assimilated it. Whereas Debbie feels like she's reaching forward, into the kind of pop moves and pop forms (rap, disco) that will dominate the decades to come. As icons of a particular scene, they feel like they're on different sides of a watershed.

In general I find the comparisons between them pretty facile and not remotely useful, but people still make them, a lot.

You just made a good/interesting one tho, so that's something

I think there was some level of rivalry between the 2 back in CBGB days. Patti trying to poach Clem Burke when he auditioned for Blondie was one thing that caused friction. It happened in CBGB itself when Smith happened to be there, not sure how intentionally, but wasn't a very tactful move on her part.

Last two posts signed Matt DC are right otm

I was behind her in line at Kim's Underground once, when she dealt with aplomb with an asshole Kim's employee, which forever endeared her to me.

Matt DC tellem

I love this album btw, although I may love Easter more.

I feel like she's positioning herself as part of a lineage that reaches backwards into the Velvets and the Beats, even as she's reacting against that lineage. A kind of bohemianism that predated rock and assimilated it.

feel the phrase "jim morrison" needs to occur somewhere in that sentence, tho it's perhaps what's giving her detractors the hives

Did you not read the thread subject?

fuck a thread title, punk

the reality was that the lines between "punk" and "hippie" were always very blurred and ppl on this thread seem to be having some sort of bizarre 1984 argument

greg ginn saw like 80 dead shows!
johnny rotten sold acid at hawkwind shows!
joe strummer walked around in flares strumming acoustic guitar & looking like nick drake!

I don't think I'll ever be able to read fans of Killing Joke and Grizzly Bear throw shade on Patti Smith without rolling my eyes.

― Matt DC

truth bomb

ums OTM

i feel like just the image of her on the album cover alone is more important than a lot of bands

iggy pop & johnny ramone, you could make the argument the 2 men most responsible for US punk, both loved the Doors

I don't even really see her as reacting against a Velvets/Beat (or Stones/Doors) lineage.
xp

... that wasn't what was being said.

i just don't understand how people are acting like "oh ppl always say that she was supposed to be PUNK MAN but she doesn't sound PUNK" it's like well duh punk evolved out of a stew of post-60s stuff and she did play an important role in that it's like not like Mother Earth just pooped the The Exploited fully formed out of her geological vag

however they might've spun it later on, a huge portion of punks were former hippies, or at least former wannabe hippies.
i dunno, it might be hard to see from this vantage point but patti smith, horses etc -- it must've been a pretty original, striking thing at the time. which maybe is why there might be some overrating that's gone on over the years ... but I still like that record a lot.

a lineage that reaches backwards into the Velvets and the Beats, even as she's reacting against that lineage

How is this not what was being said?

iggy pop & johnny ramone, you could make the argument the 2 men most responsible for US punk, both loved the Doors

― rockpalast '82 (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, May 6, 2016 2:11 PM

i thought iggy was primarilly motivated by jim morrisons stage antics - i cant remember any time he has talked about specific doors songs - put them on any of the mixes he sometimes does etc...if he was into the doors i dont think it was an infatuation that lasted - but i guess he knows best

The first Stooges album cover was meant to be influenced by The Doors lp, yes.

Yeah I always saw it that way.
Iggy with airbrushed chin after his alternative cover design idea fell on its face.

Much as it pains me to say it, I believe Iggy has also said he was influenced by Jimbo's singing style. I mean just listen to something like "Tonight." Maybe he felt a little extra simpatico because they were "name brothers."

Why would it pain you? Jim Morrison is a brilliant rock singer. My turn to quote a quote I am constantly quoting, Iggy saying that he'd borrowed so much from Jim Morrison and Mick Jagger that "you might as well call me Jim Jagger or Mick Morrison".

the ian penman LRB article is just tremendous. i never cared about or liked patti smith's music but that article hypnotized me.

there's a relevant anecdote in Please Kill Me where Iggy recalls going to a Doors show at University of Michigan ca.1967-68 and admits to being influenced by Jimbo. He also remembers how the MC5 sneered at the Doors music because it's wasn't heavy Detroit rock & roll. "I hate those pussies" said Fred Smith (and thus the circle to Patti is completed).

I think Patti in general came across at both the right AND the wrong point in musical history, in that I associate her with a kind of bohemianism that was starting to feel old-fashioned.

Don't forget this crucial and rather forgotten figure who actually sold records:

http://www.rickieleejones.com/images/discography/fotos_rel/Rickie-Lee-Jones-Rolling-Stone_79.jpg

Forgotten by who?

Some forgotten figures who didn't sell too many records:
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0001/620/MI0001620218.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

In the end, back to the subject at hand, as it were. I was put off for a long time by the thick laying on of all the poète maudit (poétesse maudite?) stuff that she seems to like to invoke- with the original Bobby Z that element was always tempered with the Robert Johnson refrains (Happy Birthday Weekend!) and was sometimes underwhelmed by the sonics (lower-case) of the band, but in the end I like some of her tunes and performances plenty, as well as some of her iconic cover poses.

Forgotten by who?

― Wrecka Stow Ralph (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, May 7, 2016

outside ILM

Ah yes, of course. You know, when you first posted that, for a split second I was sure it was a picture of David Johansen.

I'm giving this another shot later today.

Ah yes, of course. You know, when you first posted that, for a split second I was sure it was a picture of David Johansen.

― Wrecka Stow Ralph (James Redd and the Blecchs),

lol yeah

At some very early, often overlooked, period in his solo career, when he still hadn't transitioned to putting the Dolls dress code fully behind him, and had elements of that mixed in with his incipient new look.

funky funky but chic!

Ou est la boutique?

It kinda makes sense that 2 guys in awesome rock bands would be into awesome rock bands like the Doors

MC5 were such bros

Speaking of some people's disappointed reaction to finally hearing Horses and how not "punk" it was, I actually like em a lot now but first hearing MC5 who I'd read about as the fathers of punk at 19 was more damn this kinda sounds like Steppenwolf

Why would it pain you? Jim Morrison is a brilliant rock singer. My turn to quote a quote I am constantly quoting, Iggy saying that he'd borrowed so much from Jim Morrison and Mick Jagger that "you might as well call me Jim Jagger or Mick Morrison".

The only thing that quote that you quote is missing is a mention of Clem Cattini.

I think a lot of Patti Smith's "punk" cred came from her live performances, which were high-energy and frenzied and of course fronted by a woman with an unconventional voice/appearance who had never really done that sort of thing before. So in that sense Patti Smith was "punk" the same way Lenny Bruce (or hey, Mapplethorpe) was punk, by dint of doing anything out of the box. Anyway, I think there were clearly two strains of punk, the dangerous, radical scare your parents punk (or proto punks) and the no less radical but maybe less overtly confrontational free to do something different punks (which is where you'd slot , say, Talking Heads or Television). Smith probably split the difference.

Keep in mind, just a few years later no one knew where to file Tom Petty! And a few more years after that Los Lobos was sharing bills with PiL and Dwight Yoakum with Husker Du, which shows how easy it was for the longest time to stick out just by doing something a little bit different.

Anyway, sure, Smith's touchstones were the Doors and Dylan and Jimi Hendrix and a whole bunch of classic rock warhorses, but who else would they be at that time?

Right.

Ou est la boutique?

decades old battles
http://www.dangermouse.net/blog/images/trek/LetThatBeYourLastBattlefield.jpg

Steppenwolf > MC5 x 1,000,000

MC5 Wayne State University live footage >>>>>>>>>>>>>Steppenwolf.

"it must've been a pretty original, striking thing at the time."

radio ethiopia definitely struck me. well, not in 1976, but it was the first thing i heard/bought by her around 1981. "pissing in the river" was what i loved about it. so big and dramatic and goth. and i was a doors fan back then, so, maybe those elements appealed to me. a year or two before i was listening to joy division 24/7, the doors of their day. and then echo & the bunnymen, the doors of THEIR day.

i had always been aware of patti in the 70's because of the ads in magazines and i would see the records in stores and i read rock scene in the 70's so i stared at endless pictures of her canoodling on couches with lisa robinson and joey ramone, but she definitely still packed a punch in the early 80's. more so than joe jackson or elvis by that point. old hippie elvis showed his true trad colors soon enough. patti remained weird. and even disappeared from the rock life. which you weren't supposed to do if you had a name/heat.

Again, her most recent album Banga from 2012 is rather great, which was an absolute surprise. It goes downhill (sadly) when she goes all Doors-y, though in some ways she now sounds like Lee Renaldo doing his beat thing circa Ghosts and Flowers. Anyway, I'm not sure who else from the 70's NYC scene has put out anything so good in recent memory.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a82/bobbysixer/pam-ayers-orses_zpsset1rci9.jpg