Here's the unique, extraordinary, androgynous artist who is Patti Smith, singing Nirvana's iconic Smells Like Teen Spirit. It's rare you get a cover version as good or even better than the original — but this is one. I was so lucky to see Patti at Nottingham's Rock City some while back. It's a gig which will be always stay in my memory: the commitment, the intensity, the poetry, the coolness and musicianship of the whole band, the charismatic presence of Patti herself. I was standing near the front, and the sound throbbed through my whole body like a divining rod.
Only for hardcore fans:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiOawMRrKRo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdEzvaOKEis
As Lucinda says, "too cool to be forgotten".
ReplyDelete...and then, with all due respect, there's Tony Bennett's cover.
ReplyDeleteI heard it last night in company of three professional Classical guitarists, it was muzak in a fancy restaurant in Fromista, a Spanish backwater.
Their review summed up in a word?:
JFC.
I kept coming back to this post and have been thinking about Patti Smith's moving book, Just Kids. This early morning I followed up on sackerson's Virginia Woolf links and was startled to notice that Virginia Woolf in some photos looks as if she might be Joan Baez's mother. Something in the shape of her pensive and weary eyes, her mouth, her nose and the bone structure of her face. "The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face." There are few photos of Joan Baez in Google images where she is not smiling broadly, but I found several where I detect a resemblance:
ReplyDeletehttp://woolf.thefreelibrary.com
http://culturalcat.com/?p=492
Kind of a stretch, but nevertheless I see something there.
And then I remembered this gem from Patti Smith:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcAkyRicMDw
have you seen
dylans dog
it got wings
it can fly
if you speak
of it to him
its the only
time dylan
cant look you in the eye
have you held
dylans snake
it rattles like a toy
it sleeps in the grass
it coils in his hand
it hums and it strikes out
when dylan cries out
when dylan cries out
have you pressed
to your face
dylans bird
dylans bird
it lies on dylans hip
trembles inside of him
it drops upon the ground
it rolls with dylan round
its the only one
who comes
when dylan comes
have you seen
dylans dog
it got wings
it can fly
when it lands
like a clown
hes the only
thing allowed
to look dylan in the eye
My longest comment ever. Thanks to you and sackerson and Rubye and Rebrites and Patti Smith and Virginia Woolf and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan for the inspiration (-:
Thanks for all these comments.
ReplyDeleteWow, Am, that was a record breaker! Thank you. Perhaps there is something in that resemblance — the bone structure, the shape of the face — but VW's face is usually much more haunted, and, I think, betrays her mental problems (and, of course, other things — a formidable intelligence, for example).
Good fun, that Patti Smith monologue! Teasing and perceptive about Bob.