Patti Smith and Duende

The poet Lorca has spoken of duende, a word sometimes translated as "primal earth magic" that has only recently begun it's migration northward to enter our language. I've always understood it to mean the experience one has of a performer who seems somehow rooted in the earth itself, who seems to channel the power and groundedness of the universal through themselves so as to somehow have it resemble a fucking freight train as it hits you between the eyes and sends chills up the back of your spine.

Patti Smith, last night at the Showbox, had duende to spare. The first few songs were knocked out nicely. I thought, based on her Redondo Beach warm up, that this might just be a night of familiar tunes delivered with professionalism and polish. I'd have been OK with that. I mean, anyone born in 1946 who can still hop up on stage and be a credibly sexy rock & roller deserves respect. Looking around the crowd last night, at 46 I may easily have represented the statistical mean.

But Patti Smith is nobody's fucking nostalgia act.

The moment of lift-off arrived three songs into the set, when she picked up a soprano clarinet and started honking waves of gorgeous dissonance into the microphone as the band launched into Hendrix's Are You Experienced. From there, the show never came back down, and I don't recall the last time I saw a crowd so completely slain by anyone. She was transcendent.

For a moment, as hundreds of forty and fifty somethings stomped their way with Patti through Gloria, I thought the floor was going to give way and that's how I was going to die. It would have been a stupid but happy ending to a short, charmed life.

Other highlights for me included an absolutely gorgeous version of We Three, and her scorching close with Rock & Roll Nigger, the outsider rock anthem of all time.

The sweetest moment came with the Nirvana cover, off her new album Twelve, which was simply beautiful and, again, delivered with great duende. The video from a show last April gives a sense — especially in its last few minutes — of last night, but you also have to imagine a more rocked up band, joined by REM's Peter Buck, and the crowd screaming back "hello, hello, hello, hello" loud enough to match.

Smith, whose remarkable life includes a relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe that extended through his tragic death from AIDS, was a great admirer of Kurt Cobain and was angered by his suicide. She told a reporter from Rolling Stone, "When you watch someone you care for fight so hard to hold onto their life, then see another person just throw their life away, I guess I had less patience for that."

Below is a clip from the 70s that I love, wherein Patti pogoes. Ask the Angels.

My Enduring Crush On Patti Smith

I've been using Patti Smith as my work soundtrack this week. It's just the thing to boost the dopamine in my adderall-addled brain up into the happy zone where I'm capable of pretty much anything.

Anything.

While I was looking around last night I stumbled across her MySpace page and learned that she's coming to the Showbox on August 11th with her longtime guitarist Lenny Kaye. I bought two tickets.

Smith is best known for her 1975 debut album Horses, but I'm more of a Radio Ethiopia guy. Released in 1976, this next effort was far more raw, dissonant, and experimental, and made all the more remarkable by the fact that the top Billboard release of that year was The Wings' Silly Love Songs.

Although a few of Radio Ethiopia's songs have tight pop rock structures, most are more improvisational, leading reviewers to charge that Smith lost control of her band. Lenny Kaye's guitar and Smith's ad libbed heroin inspired mutterings on the ten minute title track just kind of blow my mind every time I hear it. Critics gave the album a thorough trashing and hated this song in particular, but they're all idiots. To me, Radio Ethiopia is the 70s high water mark of rock & roll.

Born in 1946, Patti Smith blew into the seventies as the intellectual punk poet androgyn who would redefine cool for the next several generations. She was lovers with Robert Mapplethorpe (who shot the iconic photo of Smith that graces Horses), Jim Carroll, and Tom Verlaine. Smith wrote songs for Blue Oyster Cult, and in the early days earned an income as a rock journalist for Creem. She is the grande dame of punk rock and, as she's returned to the stage over the last decade, wears the role with great dignity and grace.

Maybe it's my age talking, but I swear she's sexier at 60 than she was at 29. Take a look at the clips below of her doing Free Money in 1975 and Dancing Barefoot in 2006 and tell me you don't agree.