Patti Smith does good, if not great (Concert was a Bush bashing fest)

The two-hour set was loosely organized around a protest theme that had genuine moments of insight and power. But by the end of the night, Smith's viewpoints about President Bush, the war in Iraq and the forthcoming election smacked of overkill, if not preaching to the converted.

I'm thinking that this may be the Patti Smith who was involved with playwright/actor Sam Shepard during the late 70's.

This is the same Patti Smith. The much prettier Patty Smythe was the "Goodbye to You" girl in heavy rotation on MTV circa 1984.

Gilda Radner on the original SNL did a killer, vomit-induced impression of Patti Smith--armpit hair and all.

From Launch Yahoo!

A central figure in the earliest days of '70s punk rock, poet-turned-rock star Patti Smith (b. Dec. 30, 1946, Chicago) may be remembered not so much for her music as the inspiration she provided to fledgling members of that growing scene. Preoccupied with art in all its forms, she was especially enraptured by rock 'n' roll, and claimed Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan as personal heroes. When Smith's 1975 album Horses arrived in the stores, the depth of its artistic intensity sounded a wake-up call for many--who saw Smith as an unschooled musician and singer who was nonetheless very capable of making a credible, sometimes profound personal statement via music. In many ways, Smith was America's first and best female punk rock star.

Inspired by cultural figures such as Yeats, Modigliani, Greta Garbo, Lorca, and Arthur Rimbaud in her early years, Smith wrote poetry and found herself captivated by Bob Dylan's classic 1964 album Another Side. "I've always loved singing," she later said, "But I never knew how to approach singing out of my poems. Dylan released that in me." Moving to Manhattan's famous Chelsea Hotel in 1968, Smith became friends with playwright Sam Shepard; together they then collaborated on a book of plays (Mad Dog Blues) and performed in an off-broadway production of their play Cowboy Mouth. Her name began appearing regularly in rock periodicals such as Creem, Rolling Stone, and Crawdaddy--though as a bylined journalist and record reviewer rather than performer. Her serious pursuit of poetry resulted in the publication of two collections, 1971's Seventh Heaven and 1973's WITT. When she began doing readings from the latter at St. Marks Church in lower Manhattan, she decided to feature musical accompaniment--first in the form of music critic/ guitarist Lenny Kaye, then in 1974 adding pianist Richard Sohl, drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, and guitarist/bassist Ivan Kral. The result was a rock band, the Patti Smith Group, which would eventually play at early local punk clubs such as CBGBs, record the early independent single "Piss Factory," and, in 1975, sign to Clive Davis's new label, Arista Records.

Horses, Smith's first album, was received with open arms both by critics--who called it one of the most inspired debut albums in rock history--and also by the public, who bought it in sufficient quantity to send it to the top 50 despite its lack of a commercial single. The album was unique: Smith's voice wasn't especially good, yet she sang so energetically and passionately it still dazzled; her song lyrics were poetic but not pretentious, filled with images that were surrealistic and emotionally wrenching at the same time. She borrowed from rock royalty by incorporating Van Morrison's mid-'60s hit (with Them) "Gloria" into her own song of the same name; further, Horses was produced by John Cale of rock's legendary Velvet Underground. The album's opening lyrical passage--"Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine"--still ranks among the most vivid in all of rock 'n' roll.

Despite one wrong career turn---the unfocused, lackluster follow-up to Horses, 1976's Radio Ethiopia--Smith had an extremely impressive reign during the tail end of the '70s. A career-long critical favorite, she genuinely seemed excited by rock 'n' roll as mythology, rather than as a business, and her enthusiasm was contagious. Unexpectedly, she continued to win fans from the legions of the era's self-professed "punk rock haters"; largely helping matters was her 1978 top 20 single "Because The Night," written with Bruce Springsteen, who at the time was unheard from since 1975's Born To Run. The song pushed Smith's Easter into the top 20, and brought her increasing international acclaim.

In 1979, following the release of her most successful album yet--Wave, which peaked at No. 18--Smith surprised the industry by retiring at the peak of her fame. Following her final show, in Florence, Italy, before an audience of 85,000, she took a lengthy, nine-year sabbatical. During that time, she married former MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith (who had been the subject of Wave's opener "Frederick") in Detroit, where they lived and had two children together. In the interim, her fame only grew; her song "Dancing Barefoot" from Wave, for example, saw several late '80s/early '90s covers by such prominent bands as U2.

Smith returned, again unexpectedly, in 1988 with Dream Of Life, an album that purported to be Smith and her husband's "intensely personal statement of their happy communion," according to her label. Though not a massive success, the album reached No. 65 on the charts and was convincing proof that Smith's talents had not evaporated in the decade of her absence. After a second relatively lengthy silence--this time a troubled silence that sadly involved the deaths of close family members, including Smith's husband--the singer released Gone Again in 1996.

This Biography was written by Dave DiMartino

And this says it all, too. She's not quite sane. Must've been all the drugs she took with Sam Shepard:

Patti Smith isses an indictment of George W. Bush in London by Todd Baesen Wednesday September 17, 2003 at 07:29 PM Toddbaesen@juno.com

Patti Smith, who headlined a Berkeley anti-war concert earlier this year, ended her politcally charged summer tour in London with a spirited recitation of the Declaration of Independence, followed by this indictment of the policies of President George W. Bush.

PATTI SMITH: When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpation's, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The history of the present President of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation's all having as a direct object, the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these United States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

George Bush has suspended the rights of American citizens to fundamental civil liberties.
He has forgotten that the United States was founded on the proposition of the separation of Church and State. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation. A President whose character is thus marked by every act, which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Whether or not I fumble, or stumble over certain words, the truth is just, the truth is here.
And we indict George Bush.
Just as the revolutionaries indicted King George III, so we indict George Bush:

For refusing to abide by international agreements for the protection of the environment,
for abandoning Alaska to the oil companies,
for abandoning Afghanistan,
for humiliating the United Nations,
for squandering a vast federal surplus,
for giving tax breaks to the rich,
for refusing to participate in international courts,
prosecuting crimes against humanity, for flouting the Geneva convention by sequestering captured prisoners at Guantamano Bay,
for holding captured Iraqi's in barbaric conditions, where neither their families or the Red Cross have access to them,
for destroying the Baghdad International Library,
for destroying the oldest copy of the Koran,
for napalming Iraqi soldiers,
for killing innocent Iraqi citizens,
FOR WAGING A WAR BASED ON LIES! - LIES! - F**CKG LIES!!! (I added the asterisks)

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