Too Old to Rock and Roll
Me, that is. Patti Smith put me to shame last night. Twenty years older than I am and still rockin' the house. The opening band, as you can see, was Television, which Em hated (poor bun, she had a terrible head cold last night and her tolerance level was understandably lower than usual). They're a guitarists' band, with lots of noodling, and that sort of grinding rhythm that some the early Cure has: tonally dark, sometimes droning, heavy on the bass line, lots of fuzz and feedback and playing with pedals (when they could find them). What surprised me about the band was how low energy they were, how disorganized, and lacking in stage presence. In some ways they're an odd choice for an opening band, if it weren't Patti Smith they were opening for.
When I was working with Legs on transcribing tapes for his punk book (Please Kill Me), I'd hear the name Television breathed with awe and wonder. Listening to them, I could see a bunch of garage band kids stoned on weed, sitting around going, "Yeah! Yeah!" watching the record go around on somebody's turntable. Live, it's about the same, but more disorganized. They are a garage band. I suspect it's also a band best listened to while stoned. Sadly, they're more interesting on a recording than they are live because there's so little energy to their performance. Em asked me if it was just a jazz thing that she wasn't getting or if they'd gone over the line into "just bad" and I'd have to say the latter, or at least into self-indulgence, because the point of all that noodling, whether it's Mozart inventions or Jazz or Rock solos, is to ramp up the energy of the the piece or the room. In classical music, with Bach or Mozart, I imagine there was always the tension in the original live performance of how the musicians were going to get back to the original piece, as in Jazz there's the tension of how're they all going to bring it back to the beat and wrap it up together. The solos always seem more programmed and rehearsed in Rock (and now the inventions are codified in classical music), but there's that same sense of energy in them, usually, at least in the technical virtuosity. Television is heavy on the technique, the bells and whistles, but not much on the invention part. It's music that's more fun for the players than for the listeners. Like Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler (who is a brilliant guitarist), but not as slick or polished, and yet without the raw energy of some of the best metalhead guitarists. It's—what? Calculated? Pretentious? Let's just say nobody got fired up for Patti.
Who ripped into her first number like her hair was on fire, so that was all right. She didn't need a warm-up act.
Patti Smith. What can you say about Patti Smith? She's Patti Smith, and still deserves every bit of that Patti Smith reputation, the hiatus in Detroit notwithstanding. Detroit took some of the juice out of her, but the last couple of years back here put it back in. She's incredible. Most of what she performed was new and she had a full band with her as well as a media show behind her, which started out kinda psychedlic and a bit reminiscent of oh, say, very early Jefferson Airplane. We had the dead rockers tribute with Marc Bolan and Jim Morrison among others, which also sent me back a bit; the dead Mom tribute, which seemed awfully sentimental for Patti; and the chanting, spoken word (Patti with GLASSES! Egad!) bits, which can sound strangely like Television's droning, but again with more energy. The media show got odder and odder as it went on, leaving me vaguely disturbed, which is, I suppose, a good sign, but I wish I could put a finger on what bothered me about it. The walk through the graveyard for the dead rockers tribute seemed almost silly, with Marc and Jim superimposed in all their youthful glory. The morphing Islamic art struck me as kind of heavy handed, and now that I write that, I think that's what bothered me about the media show. Nothing subtle about it and therefore verging on propaganda. 'Course, it's her show and she can say whatever she damn well pleases. And, damn! the music was good and Patti was in fine form and the band was tight.
The crowd, strange mix that it was, didn't seem to care one way or the other about the media show. It was full of geezers and middle-aged farts like Em and I, and sprinkled with newbies, including two little baby dykes that were like Chip and Dale, I swear, and one jailbait boy with a blond frizz and pouty lips like Jim Morrison's, and with his hip huggers, too, and two underage girls who looked about twelve except for their outfits, who were paying some guy in his 20s to get them beer. Em wanted to stage an intervention, not because he was buying them beer but because they were giving him money. There was a little coterie of Hudson Valley suburbanites camped by one of the pillars, one of whom evidently ate the brown acid and was having a very bad trip. She spent the entire concert propped on the floor against the pillar, head down, legs crossed out in front of her, either too stoned to move or completely out, one of the husbands hanging out and watching her while wife and wife's girlfriend went off into the crowd to dance. And the crowd was, indeed, very, very white, as Em pointed out. I saw two, count 'em, two black people and a sprinkling of Asians. Jimi Hendrix presided in a token manner over the intermission with the "Star Spangled Banner." Eeek! Who knew punk was so white? (Rhetorical question.)
In the interim, I ran into Jean, whom I haven't seen in ages. For a minute, I didn't recognize her because she's lost weight from being sick and didn't have much leeway to begin with. As usual though she was brimming over with enthusiasm for life that I find energizing and endearing. I have to call her next week so we can have coffee or drinks or something and catch up. She pointed out that Brian Eno and David Byrne were standing right behind me. Horribly, I wheeled around to gawk and was caught at it and then felt so like a bridge and tunnel bimbo. How uncool of me. Also saw some of Legs's cronies and the St. Mark's crowd drifting around, including (I think) Richard Hell and what looked like the ghost of Joey Ramone. Which was somehow fitting.
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