Re: West coast tour: Notes and photos

[David Schaechtel <davesbuster>]

BTW, the Santa Cruz "documentary" comment was made
AFTER she finished the song as an apology for
interrupting the song.  My fravorite comment from her
was later when she asked the same woman if she was
from New Jersey.  "You must be from New Jersey because
people from New Jersey never shut the fuck up!"  But
other than the one or two peole at the front, the
crowd were very warm and loving Patti fans, some of
whom had been at the Fillmore the night before.  Since
Santa Cruz is so close to San Francisco, Patti had
most of the day to relax and enjoy the ocean and Santa
Cruz's great bookstores.  She enjoyed it and had some
great tales to tell as song intros and did "Perfect
Day" to commemorate her experience, which is probably
why she didn't do it in Santa Monica the next night. 
The Santa Cruz show was even better than I expected it
to be and she opened with "Dancing Barefoot", which I
hadn't seen in any of the setlists from previous shows
on this tour.  Meeting Patti and Lenny after the show
was an extra bonus!


--- L French <lrfrench> wrote:

> Thank Dean for the correction and the nice photos of
> Patti in Santa Monica. Did you take any shots of the
> Ferris Wheel?  It look's like it was "A Perfect Day"
> in LA, so I'm surprised Patti didn't play that
> song...  
>    
>   Beside those photos, there are some other great
> shots from the tour on Flickr here: 
>    
>   Music Box photos: 
>  
>
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8216923/tags/pattismiththeshowbox/
> 
>    
>   Portland Photos:
>  
>
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackiebutler/tags/patti/
> 
>    
>    
>   Fillmore photos:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/artolog/ 
>    
>    
>   Also the current issue of AMERICAN PHOTO is a
> special featuring photos by Rock Stars. Patti gets a
> two page layout featuring four of her Polaroids,
> along with a one page piece about the Sam Wagstaff
> documentary film, BLACK, WHITE and GRAY. There's a
> nice shot of Patti taken by Wagstaff around 1975 I'd
> never seen before.  
>    
>    
>   NOTES ON THE FILLMORE AND SANTA CRUZ SHOWS   PART
> II 
>    
>   Patti Smiths two concerts in northern California
> at the Fillmore on Tuesday and at the Catalyst
> nightclub the next night in Santa Cruz were both
> sensational, but offered quite an intriguing
> contrast in the presentation of Pattis art. At the
> Fillmore Patti was literally word perfect "all night
> long," with no mistakes, false starts, flubs, or
> distractions from the audience. Thats no small
> achievement, since Patti has always been extremely
> loose and willing to take chances on stage. As Patti
> so memorably put it back in 1995 when she returned
> to San Francisco after an absence of 16 years for
> her wildly improvised second show at Slims: "This is
> the fucked-up second set!" During that memorable
> show Patti, sang off-key, interrupted poems and
> songs, sometimes ranted incoherently and at one
> point practically threw some poor girl who kept
> distracting her out of the club. 
>    
>   Of course, as Patti notes, obtaining that kind of
> extreme control is largely dependent on the
> audience, and because it only takes one idiot taking
> pictures to make Patti interrupt a song, its
> something of a miracle that Patti maintained such
> perfection throughout the concert. Its also a
> tribute to the collective spirit of the audience at
> the Fillmore that such a rare state of rapt
> attention was achieved, allowing Patti to focus
> solely on her performance. In fact, the closest
> thing to a mistake Patti made was ceding the mic to
> Lenny Kaye to sing "Pushing To Hard" before it was
> scheduled on the set list. 
>    
>   However this rarefied level was not to be repeated
> the next night in Santa Cruz, where the audience was
> quite talkative, and some woman insisted on filming
> Patti with her cell phone, causing Patti to
> interrupt a high point of "Aint It Strange" to tell
> her to "get that fucking camera out of my face! If
> you want to take a picture, take a picture, but
> dont make a fucking documentary." Incredibly
> enough, the same woman later resumed her
> surreptitious filming activities and to the great
> relief of everyone around her was removed from the
> front of the stage. Patti later took note of the
> same group of people talking and pushing each other,
> to reprimand them, saying "Hey, no fighting," and
> then recalled the scene in GIMME SHELTER when Jerry
> Garcia gets off a helicopter to be told about the
> violence that has occurred. Imitating Garcia, Patti
> said Jerry had said, "What a bummer, man" and then
> asked the crowd, "Dont you miss Jerry?" to be
> answered with a loud cheers of "Yes!" So
>  naturally Patti obligingly treated the crowd to an
> encore of "Not Fade Away," after playing "A Perfect
> Day," saying she really had a perfect day in Santa
> Cruz, going to the beach and wading into the Pacific
> ocean. 
>    
>   The contrast between the shows was ably
> demonstrated during Pattis final encore at the
> Fillmore of "Rock and Roll Nigger" when the audience
> was in a state of controlled abandon. Patti brought
> the song to a lull, and a remarkable stillness
> filled the air, causing an amazed Patti to comment,
> "It suddenly got real quiet in here," before
> wrapping up the tune by singing, "You light up my
> life, you give me hope, to carry on."  Then, after
> ending the song, she returned to the summer of love
> theme that permeated the evening by saying "Maybe we
> should shoot an arrow of love into the heart of the
> Bush administration, to bring it down." 
>  
>   During the Fillmore show, Patti seemed to be
> channeling not only the 40th anniversary of the
> summer of love, but also memories of her Mother, and
> rather surprisingly, Christina Aguilera, who she
> reffered to so often, I thought she might start to
> sing a cover of "Beautiful." Patti said she had
> watched Christina on the Grammy awards, saying, "I
> know, she came out in a white Satin thing, but she
> did the best version of James Browns "Its a Mans
> World,"  Ive ever seen. She went on to say she was
> amazed by some of the mic moves Aguilera made, and
> wanted to show us some of them, to which the crowd
> yelled in unison,"Show us!" Patti laughingly replied
> she couldnt, but if by accident she made one, she
> would point it out. Interestingly enough, looking at
> the clips of Christina Aguilera doing "Ita a Mans
> World on You Tube, I must say it was quite a
> sensational performace, which ironically seemed to
> me like Aguilera was more or less copying moves from
> the Patti of the
>  seventies, especially when she ended up kneeling of
> the stage floor. Patti ended up by saying, the
> reason she brought Christina's performance up, "is
> that it makes me want to do better."  
>   
> Prophetically, Patti did do better, seeming to build
> on each succeeding song and the positive energy that
> was flowing to her from the sold-out crowd. Before
> the show, around 6 p.m. Patti made an appearance in
> front of the Fillmore, and I talked to her briefly,
> reminding her that San Francisco has always loved
> RADIO ETHIOPIA, and how it would be great if she
> could play "Aint It Strange" and "Pissing In a
> River." To my great delight, Patti sang both songs,
> giving "Strange" its debut on the American half of
> the tour. While not turning like a dervish, Patti
> still did some great moves, grabbing the flag off
> her amp, and using it like a Matadors cape to
> entice Lenny towards her during the feverish climax
> of the song. 
>    
>    
> 
>        
> ---------------------------------
> Shape Yahoo! in your own image.  Join our Network
> Research Panel today!
> 



       
____________________________________________________________________________________
Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games.
http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow