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