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raven_cromwellMom loved Patti Smith; if I have any regrets about the transcendent performance that was Words and Music at the Minetta Lane, it's that I only understood why well after she was gone to gloat over having the finest of musical tastes.
My first encounter with Smith was Mom blasting Because The Night in our old Toyota Camry--a vivid sense memory of the seat-fabric, rough and ridged like corduroy, feeling cradled and protected because the sides of the seats rose slightly, so you were sitting in an elongated egg-shaped cup, and hearing this song that I had absolutely no name for. I was accustomed to the much more polished, highly auto tuned pop and country of the 90's, and while I'd recently fallen in love with Fleetwood Mack, they followed a very similar pattern; catchy rhythms you could hum along too, even if the lyrics felt odd and magically incomprehensible to my ten-year-old self.
But this? this was bizarre in a way I couldn't categorize, beginning with that soft lulling piano and then roaring! into the drum solo, while having lyrics I couldn't comprehend on top of it all. Even then, though, it was oddly mesmerizing, realizing that even if I didn't like it, people could be that audacious with music.
Back in 2018, I happened to hear that Patti Smith had done an hour-and-a-half concert with audible at the Minetta, and immediately thought of Mom. I slipped it into my wishlist, planning to gift it to her for Christmas one year. And then time passed, and things got in the way, as they so often do. Until I was cleaning out my wishlist Sunday night and was stopped cold by the Patti concert.
What the hell? for old times' sake, I'd pay the $6 member price. It's, without question, the best $6 I've spent in a long fucking time. I credit Anais Mitchell and Ani DiFranco with a lot of the groundwork that would let me appreciate Smith--Mitchell's Child Ballads, which're something close to spoken poetry put to music and DiFranco's Grand Canyon which's just a fucking masterpiece of how you use the lightest touches of music to emphasize a poem immediately come to mind as the works closest to Smith's blending of music and poetry, but honestly all their catalogues were formative in my appreciation of off-the-beaten-path music.
But also, this is a Smith stripped down from her punk-rock heyday; with only a piano and a guitar to back her, weaving seamlessly between readings from her work and songs in a way that puts that gorgeous, distinctively raspy voice on brilliant display. I've tried to write this entry for two days because trying to encapsulate the feeling of that kind of transcendent performance feels like cupping water in my hands. It felt the way slipping into a book felt as a child, blissfully unaware of time passing or responsibilities ignored; stunned by her vulnerability in remembrances and borne along on the music, pinned by that voice and the skill of the lyrics, brought into such sharp focus with the limited musical pallet.
From the opening arrangement of Rainer Maria Rilke's "Autumn" which was never a poem I appreciated and which will now indelibly be marked into my brain because her cadences were some of the most riveting poetry recitation I've ever been fortunate enough to hear, to her stripped-down version of Peaceable Kingdom--the anthem she penned after her brother's death--, it was a performance that entered my life at precisely the right moment. Rife with the acknowledgment of grief and loss, and yet ultimately exulting in being alive to share the memories, deeply quietly contemplative in a moment when I just needed to be lost in the beauty of something. Finding refuge in anything from books to TV to music still feels like pulling teeth to me, but I never once shifted or looked at the clock during this performance.
There're no good clips I can use as an advert, but this live performance of "Wild Leaves" from years ago comes closest to capturing the atmosphere:
If you loved that even half as much as I did, go and buy the concert! Even at the non member price, it's only $7, and it'll be the best money you've spent in a while.
(I've no idea whether audible makes it available outside the U.S.--I certainly hope and suspect so, so def check in non-U.S. countries, too.)
My first encounter with Smith was Mom blasting Because The Night in our old Toyota Camry--a vivid sense memory of the seat-fabric, rough and ridged like corduroy, feeling cradled and protected because the sides of the seats rose slightly, so you were sitting in an elongated egg-shaped cup, and hearing this song that I had absolutely no name for. I was accustomed to the much more polished, highly auto tuned pop and country of the 90's, and while I'd recently fallen in love with Fleetwood Mack, they followed a very similar pattern; catchy rhythms you could hum along too, even if the lyrics felt odd and magically incomprehensible to my ten-year-old self.
But this? this was bizarre in a way I couldn't categorize, beginning with that soft lulling piano and then roaring! into the drum solo, while having lyrics I couldn't comprehend on top of it all. Even then, though, it was oddly mesmerizing, realizing that even if I didn't like it, people could be that audacious with music.
Back in 2018, I happened to hear that Patti Smith had done an hour-and-a-half concert with audible at the Minetta, and immediately thought of Mom. I slipped it into my wishlist, planning to gift it to her for Christmas one year. And then time passed, and things got in the way, as they so often do. Until I was cleaning out my wishlist Sunday night and was stopped cold by the Patti concert.
What the hell? for old times' sake, I'd pay the $6 member price. It's, without question, the best $6 I've spent in a long fucking time. I credit Anais Mitchell and Ani DiFranco with a lot of the groundwork that would let me appreciate Smith--Mitchell's Child Ballads, which're something close to spoken poetry put to music and DiFranco's Grand Canyon which's just a fucking masterpiece of how you use the lightest touches of music to emphasize a poem immediately come to mind as the works closest to Smith's blending of music and poetry, but honestly all their catalogues were formative in my appreciation of off-the-beaten-path music.
But also, this is a Smith stripped down from her punk-rock heyday; with only a piano and a guitar to back her, weaving seamlessly between readings from her work and songs in a way that puts that gorgeous, distinctively raspy voice on brilliant display. I've tried to write this entry for two days because trying to encapsulate the feeling of that kind of transcendent performance feels like cupping water in my hands. It felt the way slipping into a book felt as a child, blissfully unaware of time passing or responsibilities ignored; stunned by her vulnerability in remembrances and borne along on the music, pinned by that voice and the skill of the lyrics, brought into such sharp focus with the limited musical pallet.
From the opening arrangement of Rainer Maria Rilke's "Autumn" which was never a poem I appreciated and which will now indelibly be marked into my brain because her cadences were some of the most riveting poetry recitation I've ever been fortunate enough to hear, to her stripped-down version of Peaceable Kingdom--the anthem she penned after her brother's death--, it was a performance that entered my life at precisely the right moment. Rife with the acknowledgment of grief and loss, and yet ultimately exulting in being alive to share the memories, deeply quietly contemplative in a moment when I just needed to be lost in the beauty of something. Finding refuge in anything from books to TV to music still feels like pulling teeth to me, but I never once shifted or looked at the clock during this performance.
There're no good clips I can use as an advert, but this live performance of "Wild Leaves" from years ago comes closest to capturing the atmosphere:
If you loved that even half as much as I did, go and buy the concert! Even at the non member price, it's only $7, and it'll be the best money you've spent in a while.
(I've no idea whether audible makes it available outside the U.S.--I certainly hope and suspect so, so def check in non-U.S. countries, too.)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-02 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-03 03:45 am (UTC)Should've guessed you were a Smith fan--are there any of her albums that're especially heavy on the ballads, perchance that'd be a good place to start?
no subject
Date: 2020-12-03 05:04 am (UTC)I'm actually woefully underinformed on Smith's later work. We had Horses, Easter, and Wave around the house when I was growing up, but those are light on ballads and heavier on the punk and pop-rock. But her 2012 studio album, Banga, has some lovely stuff that might fit the bill.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-03 09:12 am (UTC)(And I suppose there's a slight quidproquo justice in that the new Trickster tv series is hard to obtain for us americans ;) You watching/enjoying it?)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-03 07:44 pm (UTC)I've been sitting on my thoughts about Trickster and planning to revisit the season after the last book comes out. I think that...quality issues from being a CBC show aside, I might have really liked this if I hadn't read the originals. But man, did they ever change a lot. And I get it! The books are so quiet and internal, taking place in the grounded spaces between bigger forces. That's what I love about them, but that's also really hard to translate to the screen. So instead they've had to put more on screen and made more of a supernatural thriller/adventure, and something that focuses more specifically on the family rather than the broader theme of community. It's not bad, but it's very different, and I think I might be able to assess it better when I've had closure on the books.
Unfortunately, none of my usual ways of downloading streaming video are working on CBC Gem at the moment. It's got better security that I would have expected from CBC. But it's up for free there if you're ever able to get a VPN on your end, because I think all it requires is a Canadian IP address.