Patti Lee reviewed in today's NYTimes!

[GoRimbaud]

 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/arts/music/02patt.html

Rock Review | Patti Smith
Celebrating 'Horses' and Everything After

By LAURA SINAGRA
Published: December 2, 2005

Patti Smith appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Wednesday dressed
as her younger self in Robert Mapplethorpe's cover photo for her seminal
1975 album, "Horses." This year the punk godmother has celebrated the
record's 30th anniversary by playing it at the Meltdown Festival in London,
and now here.

Aside from the gray hair, Ms. Smith's spindly, androgynous figure - still
kinetic and fist-pumping - appears uncannily unchanged. Her use of space is
still pure Antonin Artaud and Theater of Cruelty, with its emphasis on
convulsive rigor. With the first salvo from the album-opening "Gloria" -
"Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine" - her full-throated alto
pushed to the corners of the room. When the beat kicked in, she took the
place to catharsis with easy command.

The band matched her thrust. The writer and guitarist Lenny Kaye, a longtime
co-conspirator, led the reconstituted Patti Smith Group, which was absent
Ivan Kral and Richard Sohl, who is deceased, and included three newcomers:
the keyboardist-guitarist Tony Shanahan, the bassist Flea, and Ms. Smith's
fellow punk pioneer, the guitarist Tom Verlaine.

If the transition from "Gloria" to the reggae vamp "Redondo Beach" felt like
an energy dip, Ms. Smith tore through the later "Land" suite, a surreal
conflation of sex, violence, teeny-bopper dance crazes, and rock 'n' roll
redemption. But this time, as Ms. Smith riffed on global destruction, the
"sea of possibility" that the song envisions took on a more menacing churn.

Life will do that. Since 1975, Ms. Smith has experienced, among other
things, a serious neck injury from a stage fall; an extended break from
music; a marriage to Fred (Sonic) Smith of the MC5, and his subsequent
death; the raising of their two children; the deaths of a brother, her
mother and some close friends; and a move into political activism.

After dispensing with "Horses," when Ms. Smith returned for the night's
second set, dressed in a cropped leather jacket, she seemed years younger.
This portion's honest exploration of more communal concerns was raw and
fresh, if less excitingly brash.

Strumming acoustic guitars on "Southern Cross," the whip-thin Mr. Kaye and
Ms. Smith conjured the aggression of mating mantises. Later songs cycled
through faith and doubt. The doo-wop plea for mercy "We Three" was countered
by the love-submission anthem "Dancing Barefoot" and the ultimately hopeful
"My Blakean Year."

The show climaxed with a speed-metal version of the still-problematic "Rock
'n' Roll Nigger." This bid to reclaim a slur has always seemed like
overreach. The song's sentiment, though, continues a thread extending from
the working-class rant of Ms. Smith's first single through her current
Katrina-aid advocacy, a belief that renewal can rise out of abject wreckage.