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‘The moment of creative impulse’: Artwork by Patti Smith
04.13.2020
02:57 pm
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Self-portrait by Patti Smith, 1969.
 

“The first time I saw art was when my father took us on a trip when I was 12. My father worked in a factory, he had four sickly children, my parents had a lot of money problems, and we didn’t go on excursions often. But there was a Salvador Dali show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that included the painting “The Persistence of Memory,” and my father found Dali’s draftsmanship just astounding, so he wanted to see the show in person. So he dragged us all to the museum. I had never seen art in person before. And seeing paintings - seeing work by Picasso, John Singer Sargent - I was completely smitten, I totally fell in love with Picasso, and I dreamed of being a painter.”

—Patti Smith on her first exposure to art.

The sublime Patti Smith once described her drawings as the “merging of calligraphy with geometric planes, poetry, and mathematics.” While in her early 20s and living with artist/photographer Robert Mapplethorpe at the Chelsea Hotel, the inseparable lovers would draw together side-by-side for long periods. Mapplethorpe would be a constant stream of encouragement to Smith, empowering her to keep creating despite the noise in her head telling her she wasn’t good enough. She would draw images of Mapplethorpe as well as his gorgeously aggressive X-rated photographs. In 1978, Smith and Mapplethorpe would sign on with New York art dealer Robert Miller who had just opened his art gallery on Fifth Avenue a year earlier. 1978 would mark the first time, at the age of 32, that Smith would show her original works of art alongside Mapplethorpe’s photographs—including a variety of his portraits of Patti. As I will never tire of hearing stories told by Patti Smith, here’s a bit more from the high priestess of punk on the wonderful thing that is “creative impulse”:

“The moment of creative impulse is what an artist gives you. You look at a Pollock, and it can’t give you the tools to do a painting like that yourself, but in doing the work, Pollock shares with you the moment of creative impulse that drove him to do that work. And that continuous exchange—whether it’s with a rock and roll song where you’re communing with Bo Diddley or Little Richard, or it’s with a painting, where you’re communing with Rembrandt or Pollock—is a great thing.”

Her artwork has been exhibited everywhere from New York to Munich, and in 2008 a large retrospective of Smith’s artwork (produced between 1967 and 2007) was shown at the Fondation Cartier pour I’Art Contemporain in Paris. In 2019, Smith’s illustrations were used for the album, The Peyote Dance, a collaboration with Smith and Soundwalk Collective (Stephan Crasneanscki, Simone Merli). So, without further adieu, let’s spend some time perusing a few of Patti’s illustrations produced over the last four decades.
 

Self-portrait, 1974.
 

“Ohne Titel,” 1968.
 

Portrait of Rimbaud, 1973.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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04.13.2020
02:57 pm
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Punk magazine’s ‘Patti Smith Graffiti Contest’
02.11.2020
11:58 am
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One of the entries for Punk magazine’s “Patti Smith Graffiti Contest” from 1976.
 
One of my very favorite possessions in my home library is the massive 2012 coffee table book Punk: The Best of Punk Magazine, gifted to me by a punk rock pal of mine. If you don’t already own a copy of it, find a way to part with $20 (or so), buy the book, and I promise you won’t ever regret it. Every so often, I pick it up and start reading from a random entry point and am taken back to the magazine’s heyday and its gritty yet comical approach to covering the punks of the scene when it began its glorious print run in 1975.

Core components of Punk were the comic strips based on the fictional exploits of the punk elite, the photo pictorials used for “The Legend of Nick Detroit” (starring Richard Hell) and another epic punk rock tale, “Mutant Monster Beach Party.” Both pictorial “movies” featured appearances by, well, everybody involved in the New York City punk scene and beyond, like David Byrne, Debbie Harry, Andy Warhol and Joey Ramone. Punk marched to the beat of its own high-hat-loving drum kit, but they also did regular magazine stuff like running contests.

In 1979 Punk solicited submissions from readers for their Patti Smith Graffiti Contest, requesting that they deface a press photo of Patti. When Volume I, Issue #5 published in August of 1976, the magazine noted it was still receiving entries commenting they “maybe” might print more, but they “doubt it.” Eight Graffiti-inspired press photos of Patti were chosen for the three-page, black and white layout and run the gamut from Patti looking a bit like Alice Cooper (pictured at the top of this post), to a topless collage of Patti (with her name spelled “Paty”) with tattooed boobs. It would take three more years for Punk to launch the Shaun Cassidy Graffiti Contest, announcing it in Punk #17 in 1979. Submissions were strong, but sadly, Issue #19 was scrapped, Da-Doo-Womp-Womp. Lucky for us, Punk’s John Holstrom included nine of the brutal illustrations of Cassidy, sent to Punk in Punk: The Best Of Punk Magazine. What a time to be alive. Some of the images that follow are NSFW.
 

Scribbles announcing the winners of the Patti Smith contest. The photo below is the one mentioned, sent in by Bimbo.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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02.11.2020
11:58 am
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Boho Life: Photographs of a young Patti Smith (NSFW-ish)
01.08.2020
11:13 am
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011htimsittap.jpg
 
When Patti Smith first met Judy Linn they were two young artists just starting out on their careers. It was one-nine-six-eight. Smith was a poet, born in Chicago, then raised in New Jersey. She’d worked in a factory, had given birth to a daughter in ‘67, given her up for adoption, moved to New York, where she met a young man called Robert Mapplethorpe.

Linn was a photographer, born in Detroit, who had come to New York to study at the Pratt Institute. She showed great promise, a natural flair, a real talent. She graduated with BFA in 1969.

After they met, these two young women worked together, collaborated, daydreamed, conspired to change the world. Some people set themselves goals. Write them down. Make a plan. Put the plan into action. Linn took photographs of the movies she and Smith created in their heads. It was the start of making their dreams real.

They were living in Chelsea Hotel. Linn was making money taking pictures for papers and magazines. Smith was working in a bookshop supporting Mapplethorpe.

Linn photographed Smith “because she was taking photographs of everything.”

Patti posed for Judy because:

I was eager to be Judy’s model and to have the opportunity to work with a true artist. I felt protected in the atmosphere we created together. We had an inner narrative, producing our own unspoken film, with or without a camera.”

We were two girls with no one to please.

Linn and Smith chose props and clothes to create their pictures. Some looked posed. Some look like they captured a moment of spontaneous intimacy. Unselfconsciously caught off-guard. Each picture presents an image of emotional truth. We’re in that moment with them, wondering what happens next. Here’s where their future began.
 
01htimsittap.jpg
 
02htimsittap.jpg
 
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More of Judy Linn’s photographs of Patti Smith, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.08.2020
11:13 am
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Highway to Hell: Marilyn Manson’s cyber-goth covers of AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Bowie, & more
11.18.2019
09:03 am
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Marilyn Manson looking more than a bit like David Bowie.
 
It makes sense that Marilyn Manson would campaign hard to make his cover of the Eurythmics 1983 world-wide smash, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” the single of his 1995 EP Smells Like Children. Dave Stewart, praised the cover calling it “oddly infectious.” Vocalist Annie Lennox agreed with Stewart, who appreciated Manson’s “extreme” take on “Sweet Dreams.”

His instinct proved to be right on the money, and “Sweet Dreams” a-la Marilyn Manson, would become an international hit. “Sweet Dreams” was not the only cover on Smells Like Children as Manson also took on Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ signature song, “I Put a Spell on You” and Patti Smith’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll N***er.” During his career, Manson has covered songs which range from selections that totally make sense like Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” to a chilling rendition of “Suicide is Painless,” the theme song for the film and television series M*A*S*H. The list of artists and songs covered by Marilyn Manson is long and full of surprises, including a tune made famous by Johnny Cash, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” which Manson recorded for the soundtrack of the 2017 film 24 Hours to Live.

In 2002, Irish bootleg label Murphy Records put out Killer Wasps-The Real Ultra Rare Tracks best described as a schizophrenic sampling of Manson rarities. The various covers on the release include Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” and David Bowie’s “Golden Years.” A huge Bowie fan, Manson would collaborate with Shooter Jennings (the son of Waylon Jennings) on a mystical cover of “Cat People (Putting out the Fire)”—a song Manson used for years as a warm-up for his live shows. The song appears on Jennings’ 2016 record Countach (For Giorgio)—a collection of covers originally done by electro-music wizard Giorgio Moroder. Jennings and Manson’s “Cat People” would also spawn a curious eight-plus minute NSFW video presented in old-school 16-bit style.

A selection of Marilyn Manson’s many covers follows after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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11.18.2019
09:03 am
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Amazing, forgotten Patti Smith Group show with Iggy, David Johansen & others (but no Patti), 1977
08.08.2019
09:17 am
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Patti Smith 1974
 
On March 9th, 1977, members of the Patti Smith Group played an incredible yet little-known gig. A recent accident had sidelined Smith, and it’s likely the guys in Patti’s band did this show (and at least one other at the same venue) in order to both stay active and make a few bucks while Smith was temporarily out of commission. A slew of special guests appeared with them over the course of the March 9th performance—and we have the audio.

At the time, Smith was recovering from an incident that transpired during a January 26th concert in Tampa. She was seriously injured when, failing to see a monitor on the dark stage, she tumbled over it into the orchestra pit, falling fifteen feet before landing on the concrete floor. She reportedly suffered broken bones in her face, cracked vertebrae in her neck, and required stitches to close head wounds. Yikes, right? Though it could have been a lot worse, Patti obviously still needed time to heal.
 
Patti Smith Group 1977
 
The March 1977 Patti Smith Group shows without Patti took place at the Lower Manhattan Ocean Club in New York City. The establishment was partly owned by Mickey Ruskin, the founder of legendary hangout, Max’s Kansas City.
 
Ocean Club 1976
L-R: John Cale, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and David Byrne at the Ocean Club, July 1976 (photo by Bob Gruen).

The core of the band—billed simply as “The Group”—was comprised of Smith mainstays Lenny Kaye (vocals/guitar), Ivan Kral (vocals/guitar), and Jay Dee Daugherty (drums). The March 9th guests included the Paley Brothers (Andy Paley was in Patti’s band for a short spell); reggae figures Tapper Zukie and Linval Thompson; session guitarist Elliott Randall; and current Patti Smith Group bassist Leigh Foxx. Audience members David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Brian Eno stopped by the Ocean Club together, with Iggy eventually jumping up to sing “96 Tears.” At one point, Pop breaks into “Scene of the Crime,” a then-unreleased Stooges song—how cool is that?
 
Ocean Club 1977
L-R: Iggy Pop, Cyrinda Fox, David Bowie, and Lisa Robinson at the Ocean Club, March 1977 (photo by Bob Gruen).

Another highlight, after a bumpy start, is a lively, ‘60s garage rock-style rendition of “Pills,” with David Johansen on vocals and harp. The set is nearly all covers, save one Patti Smith song, the reggae-tinged Radio Ethiopia track “Ain’t It Strange,” with Tapper Zukie toasting over it. You’ll also hear ripping versions of “It’s All Over Now” and “Goin’ Down,” both featuring Leigh Foxx. Those in attendance are frequently boisterous—obviously excited by what they are witnessing. At the end of the evening, it’s announced “The Group” will be back on March 10th, but there’s very little information online about this subsequent date, and it’s unclear if any of their special guests returned for night two.

The setlist:

01. The Kids Are Alright
02. You Really Got Me
03. No Jestering
04. Parachute Woman [w/David Johansen on harp]
05. Pills [includes false start - w/David Johansen]
06. Some Kinda Wonderful [w/Elliott Randall]
07. Route 66 [w/Elliott Randall]
08. The Worst That Could Happen
09. Ain’t It Strange (toasting version) [w/Tapper Zukie]
10. One More Chance [two attempts - w/Linval Thompson]
11. Gimme Some Lovin’
12. 96 Tears/Scene of the Crime [w/Iggy Pop]
13. “Get well, Patti”
14. It’s All Over Now [w/Leigh Foxx]
15. I Can’t Explain [Jay Dee - lead vocal & guitar]
16. A Certain Girl [w/Jonathan Paley]
17. Goin’ Down [w/Leigh Foxx]

 

 
Even with her injuries, Patti couldn’t be kept from the stage for long, and a Patti Smith Group gig at CBGB on April 10th marked her return. The Easter Sunday show was advertised as “La Resurrection,” with the subtitle, “Out of Traction, Back in Action.”
 
PSG 1977
The Patti Smith Group, CBGB, 1977 (note Patti’‘s wearing a neck brace).

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Patti Smith pays homage to reggae genius Tapper Zukie
Patti Smith on The Mike Douglas Show, 1977
Two hours of Patti Smith live and raw in 1979

Posted by Bart Bealmear
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08.08.2019
09:17 am
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Patti Smith would have been stoked to pose nude in Playboy
11.15.2017
02:11 pm
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Patti never made the Playboy scene, but she was a CREEM Dream at some point in the late 70s

Bebe Buell was one of the most famous rock and roll girlfriends of the 1970s (she doesn’t like the term groupie, calling Pamela Des Barres’ scene in L.A. “West Coast crap”). Her first relationship with a rock star came when she dated Paul Cowsill of the Cowsills; she was 16 at the time. During the 1970s she also had romantic involvements with Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, and Jimmy Page. Famously, she gave birth to Steven Tyler’s daughter but knowingly named her with the “wrong” name Liv Rundgren to shield her from Tyler’s addiction problems. Although Todd Rundgren and Buell were breaking up around around the time of Liv Tyler’s birth, Rundgren committed to the deception and for years did not divulge that he wasn’t Liv Tyler’s biological father. Liv Tyler herself didn’t know the truth until she was nine years old.

One of the major turning points in Buell’s life was becoming the Playboy Playmate of the Month in November 1974. She didn’t need Playboy to date Rundgren, whom she’d already been seeing for a couple of years. (In her Playmate Fact Sheet, she lists “My boyfriend, Todd Rundgren” under “Favorite Performer.”) While posing in Playboy probably didn’t help her recording career any, it did have the effect of elevating her status among the rock elite—as she said, after “I did Playboy ... the rock stars came-a-hunting.”
 

 
Another notable woman living in NYC at that time was Patti Smith, who had yet to record any music under her name. She also had some fairly serious dalliances with Rundgren, and was also friendly with Buell. According to Buell in the essential oral history of punk Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, it was actually Smith who convinced Buell that she should say yes to Playboy.

More interestingly, Smith would have been totally down with posing for Playboy herself.

Here’s Buell on the subject:
 

The person that talked me in to posing for Playboy magazine was Patti Smith. At the time I was doing well as a cover-girl model for Revlon, Intimate, and Wella. I had four or five big accounts. But my role models weren’t models. I admired girls like Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull, those were the girls I looked up to and aspired to be like.

So when Playboy asked me to pose, Patti said, “I wish Playboy would ask me, I’d do it.” Patti had really big boobs, a lot of people don’t realize that. She was extremely well-endowed and she always thought that kind of stuff was really cool. She showed me pictures of Brigitte Bardot, Ursula Andress, Raquel Welch, and all these Playboy pictures. She’d say, “Being in Playboy is like Coca-Cola. It’s Andy Warhol. It’s American, you know, it’s part of America, this magazine.” She said, “Do it. It’ll be great. It’ll fuck up that fashion thing.”

-snip-

Patty’s idea of feminism seemed to me to be about not being a victim–-that women should make choices in full control of their faculties and make a rebel stand.

Posing for Playboy was a rebel move. It almost ruined my career as far as legitimate Fashion work went. The only magazines that ould book me after that were like Cosmopolitan and stuff. I lost all my bread-and-butter clients. I lost Avon and Butterick. All the straight fashion magazines stopped booking me.

But how could I regret it?

 
So there you have it. Patti Smith, of course, did not end up ever posing for Playboy but instead released Horses in 1975 and eventually became an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Posted by Martin Schneider
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11.15.2017
02:11 pm
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Rare concert photos of Blondie, Zappa, Iggy, Fugazi and more, from the Smithsonian’s new collection


 
In December 2015, the Smithsonian Institution began an ambitious crowdsourced history of rock ’n’ roll photography, calling on music fans to contribute their amateur and pro photos, launching the web site rockandroll.si.edu as a one-stop for accepting and displaying shooters’ submissions. One of the project’s organizers, Bill Bentley, was quoted in Billboard:

We talked about how it could be completely far-reaching in terms of those allowed to contribute, and hopefully help expose all kinds of musicians and periods. There really are no boundaries in the possibilities. I’d like to help spread all styles of music to those who visit the site, and show just how all-encompassing the history of what all these incredible artists have created over the years. What better way than for people to share their visual experiences, no matter on what level, to the world at large.

The project, sadly, is now closed to new submissions, but it’s reached a milestone in the publication of Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen, authored by Bentley. The book is a pretty great cull of the best the collection had to offer, full of photos rarely or never seen by the public, chronologically arranged, and dating back to the dawn of the rock era. Some of them are real jaw-droppers, like the concert shot of Richie Valens taken hours before his death, Otis Redding drenched in sweat at the Whiskey a Go Go, Sly Stone looking like a goddamn superhero at the Aragon Ballroom in 1974. From Bentley’s introduction:

Although the sheer breadth of the offerings was overwhelming, that fact only underlined the importance of an organizational strategy. The publisher sorted through the submissions, categorizing them by performer and date to create a complete historical timeline of rock and roll. Approximately three hundred photographs are included in the following narrative, many of them by amateurs whose enthusiasm and passion for their subjects are here presented to the public for the first time. The balance of the photos were taken by professional “lens whisperers,” whose shots were selected to flesh out this overview of rock and roll. The results, spanning six decades, aim for neither encyclopedic authority nor comprehensive finality, but rather an index of supreme influence.

Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen isn’t due until late in October, but the Smithsonian have been very kind in allowing Dangerous Minds to share some of these images with you today. Clicking an image will spawn an enlargement.
 

Blondie at CBGB, New York City, 1976. Photo Roberta Bayley /Smithsonian Books
 

The Clash at the Orpheum Theatre, Boston, September 19, 1979. Photo Catherine Vanaria /Smithsonian Books
 

Frank Zappa at Maple Pavilion, Stanford University, CA, November 19, 1977. Photo Gary Kieth Morgan /Smithsonian Books
 
Many more after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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09.18.2017
11:00 am
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That time Mary Hartman and Patti Smith unwittingly formed a fantasy presidential ticket, 1976


 
Any discussion about the presidency in 2017 has to start with the notion that about 90% of Americans living or dead would be an improvement over the current occupant of the Oval Office. Having said that, it’s much more fun to contemplate an actual presidential hopeful of several decades ago that really might have been waaaaaaay better in many respects than ANY of the 45 men we’ve had as president so far (okay, actually 44).

I refer to Mary Hartman, the doubly eponymous main character from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Norman Lear’s groundbreaking and addictive soap parody from the mid-1970s that starred Louise Lasser and also did so much to introduce the country to the prodigious talents of Mary Kay Place, Martin Mull, Dabney Coleman, and Doris Roberts. (One of the most astonishing aspects of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was that it was produced five days a week for more than a year, meaning that it left behind a remarkable 325 episodes in its 2 seasons. Today you can buy the entire series on DVD of course.)

You probably didn’t know that Mary Hartman was a presidential candidate in 1976, the year that Democrat Jimmy Carter narrowly bested the Republican incumbent Gerald Ford. And if you didn’t know that, then it’s extremely unlikely you knew that Patti Smith was her running mate. I’m not a constitutional scholar, but I will assert with a high degree of confidence that the Constitution does not bar fictional characters from the presidency. As for Patti Smith, who is definitely not fictional, she became the ticket’s VP pick without any consent or even knowledge that it was happening, but she graciously accepted the bid after the fact.

The whole thing was a kind of prank or stunt by the Fluxus practitioner and “mail art” pioneer Jerry Dreva, a native of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In the early 1970s, Dreva and some of his fellow Wisconsinites, finding themselves in Southern California, founded a collective known as Les Petites Bonbons that specialized in mail art pranks.
 

 
One thing about mail art is that it tends to announce the location of its projects. The Hartman/Smith ticket mailing, which appears to have numbered about 1,500, actually has a return address on it, 629 Madison Ave., in South Milwaukee, so it might be the case that Dreva had returned to his home state by that time. It’s not clear. Dreva passed away in 1997.

There is incredibly little information about the Hartman/Smith project. In a 1984 issue of High Performance, Suzan Carson wrote that “Dreva livens up the most boring presidential election in memory with two flyers promoting the candidacy of Mary Hartman for president and Patti Smith for vice-president of the United States.” She also added that Smith accepted the nomination as “president of vice” (har har) at a Milwaukee concert. That concert was probably held at Milwaukee’s Oriental Theatre in March 1976—anybody reading this remember that show?

Earlier this year, there was an auction on Canadian eBay for a “small collection of late-1970s works by mail-art pioneer Jerry Dreva, including glossy prints for the Mary Hartman / Patti Smith campaign in 1976,” which also included several other amusing mailings by Dreva from 1976 and a little bit later, and I’ve reproduced some of those here for the fun of it.

It’s a shame Mary Hartman didn’t get elected president—it would have been fun to watch the Supreme Court tussle with that legal conundrum. Of course I suppose it’s likely that Smith would have become president instead. Or maybe Hartman would have stayed president—and done more good for the country than Donald Trump will ever do.
 

 

 
More of Jerry Dreva’s postal tomfoolery after the jump…..

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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07.05.2017
04:06 pm
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Punk, Patti Smith, William Burroughs & capitalism: A ‘conceptual conversation’ with RE/Search’s Vale


Vale with William Burroughs

This interview with V. Vale was conducted by Michael Lee Nirenberg, director of the 2014 documentary Back Issues: The Hustler Magazine Story

Early in my conversation with publisher and writer V. Vale he called me a “conceptual conversationalist,” although that moniker really belongs to Vale himself. Vale has had an interesting life. He was born in a Japanese-American internment camp in 1944, moved to Haight-Ashbury at the height of the 1960s counterculture movement, joined the original lineup of Blue Cheer, went on to publish punk zine Search and Destroy while working at beatnik bookstore City Lights, and then made his serious mark on the emerging post-punk culture with RE/Search.

For me, the seminal RE/Search journals which Vale has been publishing since the 1980s are a snapshot of culture at its most vital and ideas at their most radical. RE/Search was like early Interview magazine but the interviews were largely unedited, ran long, and each volume more or less tackled a particular subject. Some of the more well-known ones are: Pranks, Incredibly Strange Films, and The Industrial Culture Handbook.

Needless to say Vale’s work has been an influence on me. I met Vale at the New York Art Book Fair last year and interviewed him by phone on April 2, 2017. Below is that conversation edited lightly and segmented because Vale is a stream of consciousness type guy and you have to just roll with him. Enjoy.
______________________________
 

 
On interviews and conversations

VV: So I invented a phrase for you while I was waiting for you to call; “conceptual conversationalist.” How’s that?

MN: That’s pretty good, man. All of a sudden I feel like I’m in a RE/Search interview.

VV: (laughs) Well that’s proper. It’s all useful. Conversations are two-way streets.

MN: I agree and I think that’s what attracted me to RE/Search throughout the years, and why I return to the volumes. I wrote out a dozen or so question but that doesn’t mean I have a script I’m going to follow. As you know a conversation takes you elsewhere.

VV: The holy grail of a conversation is when suddenly there appears a concept or an idea that neither person has contemplated before.

MN: Yeah. I agree with that and I think that’s when it’s the most successful.

VV: Whatever. I’m not a success or failure guy, I just observe what’s happening but that’s kinda rare and when it happens it’s a mini cause celebre.

MN: I think that’s a good point. I was wondering if everyone who has ever interviewed you has attempted to do a RE/Search interview on some level.

VV: I don’t really call them interviews, I call them conversations. That gives you a lot more latitude to go into some unexpected direction. Play and humor are like the supreme goal I suppose. I don’t know. I suppose I don’t know how to answer that one (laughs), I just try to have fun with whoever I’m talking to.

MN: Yeah, I think I do the same thing.

VV: Good! Hooray we’re on the same wavelength.

MN: Yeah, it seems obvious that humor is the thing that makes life bearable. And ideas.

VV: Well yeah… ideas. Especially ideas. Yeah, humor of course.
 

 
On Capitalism

VV: Oh yeah, ideas especially. The main idea always (laughs) is the overarching theme of how do we make this world a better place? How can we conceptualize a better world? How do we visualize a better world? For example I don’t understand why there aren’t more young artists making films about how life ought to be and dare I say a future that’s post-capitalism. I’m sure you know who (Slavoj) Žižek is and I think the best thing he ever said was, “You can imagine the apocalypse, you can imagine the end of the world, but you can’t imagine a world after capitalism.”

MN: Oh, that’s good.

VV: I’m a capitalist. I make books and hope someone buys them and I obviously need to make a profit so I can pay my rent, but I can’t imagine another system. Boy, if you can you will be the first!

MN: I struggle with this too. For all its flaws, the critiques don’t offer a way out. Look at the countries that went all in with socialism and communism. They started off as such high-minded concepts until they became religion.

VV: Even worse than religion (laughs). I think it’s all patriarchy, but yet I like most ideas of feminism which are actually the same ideas found in anti-racism i.e fighting privilege. There’s that famous saying you probably know which is “privilege confers blinders.” A lot of times if you have privilege you don’t feel it. It doesn’t even exist within the world you’re conceptualizing.

I always said my goal in publishing was (and I stole it from Hegel), “if you’re working, work for more freedom, more consciousness (that’s a great word) and more justice for more people.” The hard thing is the justice because then you get into the grimy world of lawyering and criminality and it’s just so much. Can you imagine if you were a heterosexual seeking a relationship with another heterosexual of the opposite gender. Let’s say complementary gender. I’m not a fan of opposite. I’m a fan of complimentary.

MN: Yes and relativity.

VV: Yes. Can you just imagine a world in which you try to act in perfect justice with another partner? I’m a huge fan of having a partner for a simple reason which is the hardest thing you can do. I’ve never had a job and I managed to support myself mostly and the hardest thing to do is guess what? Make next month’s rent.The other person (your partner) has to worry about the same thing. Take my word for it. It makes life a helluva lot easier and bearable.

More with Vale after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.15.2017
05:44 pm
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A young Patti Smith and Jonathan Miller star in a 1971 BBC doc about New York City


 
Jonathan Miller became famous in the cast of the great 1960s comedy show Beyond the Fringe, sharing the stage with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, and—I can’t tell if a heart emoji would be out of place here—playwright Alan Bennett. To this day, Dr. Miller is well-known in the UK as a public intellectual, prominent atheist, TV documentarian and opera director. (During the early 1980s, Miller was briefly famous in America, too, as the host of the popular PBS history of medicine, The Body in Question, and as the author of the best-selling book of the same title. He was often a guest on Dick Cavett’s talk show for an entire week at a time.)

In 1971—YouTube says ‘72, but I’ll take Miller’s biographer’s date—Miller returned to New York, a city he’d first visited when Beyond the Fringe played Broadway a decade before, and he brought a BBC camera crew. West Side Stories: Two Journeys into New York City juxtaposed his impressions of New York City and those of a very young Patti Smith.
 

 
She looks and sounds like Rimbaud if he just stepped away from a stickball game, which is to say she’s already, as Oliver Stone made Ray Manzarek say, “making the myths.” Patti talks Godard, rock journalism, “slopping the hogs,” spending the whole day on 42nd Street for fifty cents, and the first porno double feature she watched (Orgy at Lil’s Place and Blonde on a Bum Trip), all with unusual verbal facility and charm for a 24-year-old.

In my whole life, no matter where I lived—Chattanooga, Chicago, South Jersey—I was always an outcast. Y’know, even in my own neighborhood, even in my own family. I looked different than my whole family. I always felt alien. Not that I wasn’t loved, but people thought I was weird-lookin’ and skinny and all that. I had an eyepatch which I’ve since got rid of. And I never had no friends or boyfriends. When I came to the city, my whole life changed.

The uploader of this footage, YouTube user Pheidias Ictinus, claims it was the cameraman’s idea to interview Patti:

This film was made by the director Tristram Powell. At the suggestion of his cameraman he went to meet Patti and she ended up as an integral part of the film he was making with Jonathan Miller. The decision was made on the fly, during filming in New York, it was not part of the original concept. That’s what you call creative freedom.

Who would Jonathan Miller’s cameraman tell him to interview in today’s Manhattan? Some tech guy? I can’t wait to turn on the TV in 2047 and hear some tech guy reminisce about New York on the roof of the Chelsea Hotel. Lord, take me now. . .
 
Watch after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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10.07.2016
09:05 am
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‘Dream of Life,’ impressionistic study of Patti Smith
10.05.2016
01:51 pm
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Fashion photographer Steven Sebring exhaustively documented Patti Smith’s wanderings for 11 years after her return to public life in 1995. Of his movie Dream of Life, which came out in 2008, Sebring says, “I want to turn people on to Patti Smith.”

Dream of Life is mostly black-and-white, quite impressionistic in style, and (unfortunately) stints on live performances of Smith on stage. Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating portrait of one of the most important figures of the NYC downtown scene that blossomed in the 1970s.

Camille Dodero wrote an amusing stanza (in Smith’s voice) about this movie in the Village Voice. It goes like this:
 

As long as I can remember I sought to be free
Bob Dylan once tuned this guitar for me
My mission is to give people my energy
Fred, Jesse, and Jackson are my family tree
New generations, rise up, rise up, take to the streets
Me and Flea talking about pee.


 
In Dream of Life Patti jams and reminisces backstage with her old lover Sam Shepard, visits her parents in New Jersey and has some burgers with them, and has an amusing conversation with the bassist Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Her admiration for Allen Ginsberg, Rimbaud, and Dylan is a constant. And I’m pretty sure she invented the Salvation Army look that has been fashionable for some time.

Watch ‘Dream of Life’ after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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10.05.2016
01:51 pm
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Patti Smith on Bob Marley, comics, and opening her own pot cafe when she ‘grows up,’ back in 1976
09.26.2016
09:41 am
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‘The Two Faces of Patti Smith.’ photograph by Guillemette Barbet and art design by John Holmstrom.
 
Over the weekend I was yet again getting in some good quality time with my lovely copy of The Best of Punk Magazine and came across an amusing and highly entertaining interview by a musician and performer that undeniably embodies the word “hero” the multi-talented punk powerhouse Patti Smith.
 

 
In the interview that appeared in Punk (Volume One, Number Two from March of 1976) Smith agreed to talk to the magazine in the backroom of legendary Long Island club My Father’s Place where she sat on the grungy floor before her gig later that night. Of the many highlights and wide variety of topics covered in the lengthy chat include her love of comics, Bob Marley, her vivid dreams about Jimi Hendrix and her not-so-secret plan to hijack The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (who Smith very much admired) and turn it into “totally stoned TV every night.” If you are at all a fan of Patti Smith (who was 30 at the time of this interview), prepare yourself to adore her even more. Here’s Smith on her love of two things that go great together—comics (or “comix” as Punk likes to spell it) and rock and roll:

I was a painter. All I cared about was art school and painting. I used to be an artist before I became an artist. You know the French love comic strips. Comix are considered art. Comix are art. I mean the only two arts—comix and rock n’ roll are the highest art forms.

If that last passage got you daydreaming about what it would be like lounging around with Patti Smith in France in some cafe reading comic books and while listening to Alain Kan belting out David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” then get in line. As the interview progresses Smith talks a fair amount about Bob Marley while lamenting the current “grass shortage” in New York (never forget!) and her dream of opening a pot cafe that pretty much sounds like the best plan ever:

I’m gonna have a cafe when I grow up where it’s just gonna feature coffee and dope and mint tea and great music. What I’m gonna do is work to legalize marijuana and hashish. We’re gonna start a string of cafes where you smoke, drink coffee and listen to great music—like McDonald’s.

More Patti Smith, after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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09.26.2016
09:41 am
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Patti Smith’s review of ‘The Beach Boys Love You’
09.02.2016
10:12 am
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The Beach Boys Love You, from 1977, is not everyone’s favorite Beach Boys LP, but it is Bucks Burnett’s. The onetime manager of Tiny Tim believes Love You is of a piece with another ‘77 record that nearly everyone regards as a classic, David Bowie’s Low. Burnett wrote in a recent Facebook post:

My bizarre theory is that the two albums are almost interchangeable. Here it is, ugly medicine in a plastic spoon; this was Brian Wilson’s Berlin trilogy, in one album. Low is Bowie’s Love You.

If you aren’t familiar with The Beach Boys Love You, it’s called that because it was dedicated to Brian Wilson by the other members of the band. One might question whether the album was really the other Beach Boys’ to make a present of in the first place, since its major selling point was that Brian Wilson himself not only produced it, but had written or co-written every song. (“Happy birthday, honey. Here’s that delicious cake you made!”) But it’s the thought that counts, right?
 

From the sleeve: “TO BRIAN WHOM WE LOVE WITH ALL OUR HEARTS”
 
Many of the songs—especially those credited to Brian alone—are marked by an unconventional approach to lyric writing, compared to the way the art is generally practiced by the human people of the planet Earth. Take the often-mocked (but lovely) “Johnny Carson”:

He sits behind his microphone
(John-ny Car-son)
He speaks in such a manly tone
(John-ny Car-son)

Ed McMahon comes on and says “Here’s Johnny!”
Every night at 11:30, he’s so funny.
“It’s nice to have you on the show tonight
I’ll see your act in Vegas—outta sight!”

When guests are boring, he fills up the slack
(John-ny Car-son)
The network makes him break his back
(John-ny Car-son)

Ed McMahon comes on and says “Here’s Johnny!”
Every night at 11:30, he’s so funny.
Don’t you think he’s such a natural guy?
The way he’s kept it up could make you cry.

Who’s a man that we admire?
Johnny Carson is a real live wire.

I think Bucks might be onto something. As far as I can tell, Beach Boys fans who hate this record just can’t stand the words, while I find them oddly affecting. Who but Brian Wilson could have seen his own body torn on the gears of showbiz in the image of Johnny Carson, of all people, or heard “such a manly tone” in the Tonight Show host’s voice? Is the objection that these lyrics give too clear a view into Wilson’s pain and confusion? Whatever: I don’t recall anyone disputing this album’s musical merits, and in my opinion, reconciling oneself to lyrics such as “Honkin, honkin’ down the gosh-darn highway / Tryin’, tryin’ to get past them cars” and “Love is a woman / so tell her she smells good tonight” is an excellent form of spiritual discipline.

Patti Smith looked into this controversy at the time, and “you’re into it or you’re not” was her conclusion. From the October 1977 issue of Hit Parader, here is the confirmed Johnny Carson fan’s review of The Beach Boys Love You:
 

via smileysmile.net
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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09.02.2016
10:12 am
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Patti Smith covering Nico is unforgettable
08.16.2016
10:27 am
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This all begins with a chance encounter on an airplane, when singer/pianist Jesse Paris Smith—daughter of ur-punk high priestess Patti Smith—encountered Stephan Crasneanscki on an airplane bound for New York City. Crasneanscki is the founder and leader of Soundwalk Collective, an acclaimed experimental music trio known for incorporating field recordings and other concrète elements into lush ambient music, and that meeting led to the conception of Killer Road, a 2014 multimedia performance with projections by Tina Frank, that endeavored to examine the work and death of Christa “Nico” Päffgen, the singer best known for her work with the early Velvet Underground, and who died in a bicycle accident in 1988.

That performance has been turned into a studio album for Sacred Bones, also called Killer Road and due out on September 2nd. The album variously features Nico cover songs and poems with Smith mère reciting/singing the lyrics. The songs that have been pre-released suggest that the album will likely be a stunner—a video for the title track, again by Tina Frank, was released in July:
 

 
Over the weekend, a new video was issued, for “Fearfully in Danger,” a cover of a song from Nico’s final studio album Camera Obscura. The track underscores the connection between Nico and Smith, who related “…when I was young … I had no ambition to be a singer – I was simply trying to deliver my poetry – as [Nico] did – in a unique way.” The harmonium played on the song once actually belonged to Nico—it was rescued from a pawn shop by Patti Smith herself, in 1978.

Watch more after the jump….

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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08.16.2016
10:27 am
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‘I don’t need no f*cking shit’: Patti Smith on getting bleeped
04.26.2016
02:09 pm
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We’re big fans of the Blank on Blank series of animated versions of interviews of prominent people like Tom Waits, Martin Scorsese, Hunter Thompson, and Nina Simone. PBS Digital Studios are responsible for producing these, and they’re always very diverting.

The interview excerpts are always very well-chosen—by which I mean they’re interesting and lend themselves well to animation—and the animating style, mostly by Pat Smith, is always very lively and appropriate to the subject matter.
 

 
Blank on Blank just released an interesting new one that derives from an interview Patti Smith gave in London in 1976 to Mick Gold, a journalist who wrote for CREEM and Melody Maker and that year also published Rock on the Road, a collection of photo essays about rock music.

It’s amazing how much stuff they manage to cram into this 5-minute video. It’s ostensibly about Smith’s annoyance at having her re-working of Pete Townshend‘s “My Generation” bleeped because she changed one of the lines to “I don’t need no fucking shit,” but it wanders freely from there to cover Smith’s early interest in the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud (I think this is the edition she was talking about), her collegial relationship with Bob Dylan, and her learned ability to inhabit a dream state whenever she chooses.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Poem for Keef’: Patti Smith’s poem for Keith Richards, 1978

Posted by Martin Schneider
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04.26.2016
02:09 pm
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