Re: Patti - Meltdown - Songs of Experience - 26 June 2005

[Andrew F Wilson <andrewfwilson>]

Songs of Experience 
Royal Festival Hall, London 

by Caroline Sullivan
The Guardian, Tuesday, 28 June 2005

Patti Smith's stewardship of Meltdown, which came to an end on Sunday,
will stand as one of the most eclectic of the festival's history. It
ended with, typically, a theme night featuring a gaggle of musicians
with nothing in common. I would have liked to have been there when she
explained to Kimmo Pohjonen and Yat-Kha (a Finnish accordionist and
Siberian throat-singing ensemble respectively) that they would be part
of an evening dedicated to the music of Jimi Hendrix. Better yet, I'd
have enjoyed hearing guitarist Jeff Beck's response to her starstruck
offer to iron his shirt if he would headline the evening.

Beck saved her the bother by wearing a crease-proof leathery vest, the
only artist of the night to approximate the kind of outfit Hendrix
might have worn. He lived up to Smith's introduction of him as "the
jewel in our crown", slicing through All Along the Watchtower and Hey
Joe with feline fluidity. His appearance, at the end of a night that
saw Hendrix's songs subjected to every conceivable interpretation,
felt like a redressing of the balance because even Hendrix, the
consummate musical free-thinker, might have questioned what preceded.

For every out-there experimentalist like Pohjonen, whose version of
Driving North proved that an accordion can sound as brutal as a
guitar, there were three superfluous novelties. The idea of the throat
singers doing guttural things to Purple Haze was interesting but you
wouldn't want a whole night of them. Drafting in harpist Joanna Newsom
to daintily pluck out Angel was unnecessary, and to have two bassists
- the Chili Peppers' Flea and drum'n'bass type Squarepusher -
performing separate endless feedbacky solos was too generous. There
were three hours of this, and by the time Smith slouched in to
introduce Beck and sing along to All Along the Watchtower, the crowd
were lolling in their seats. "S'matter? You all took Quaaludes before
you came in?" she drawled. No. Just noveltied out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/reviews/story/0,,1516051,00.html