Flying Saucers, Rock 'n' Roll and Sal Mineo

[L French <lrfrench>]

  Thanks J for providing copies for another great Patti show...  
   
  As Steve Martin would say when he played the Boarding House: 
   
  We're live at the fabulous Boarding House, in San Francisco, California.  
  Hey, you guys are going to be on a record... Not my record, but a record...  
   
  Anyway, here is Patti's rather prophetic rap/poem on Sal Mineo, who as Patti might say, died in an alleyway in West LA, on the way home from a play rehearsal, from a knife wound that was plunged deep into his heart...  
   
  Strangely, Sal Mineo had just recently finished the run of the play, FORTUNES AND MEN'S EYES in San Francisco, and was returning home from a rehearsal for the LA debut of the play the night he met his death.   
   
  Initially, the LAPD seemed to think a gay hustler may have killed Mineo, so hearing Patti's rap, only three days after his death, is quite interesting. 
   
  To preface Patti's reading, here is her rare piece from KODAK, "as close as the killer and the one he's killing." 
   
  ________________ 
     
   
       as close as the killer and the one hes killing. 
   
   
  Intimacy 
  Murderer 
  Victim 
   
   
  M.  he had your picture in his wallet didnt he? 
   
  V.  so what. a lotta guys carry my picture. 
   
  M.  you must spend an awful lotta time in 
        those quarter photo booths! 
   
  V.  OK! so I like light flashing in my eyes. 
       it makes me feel popular.     
   
   
   
  ____________ 
   
   
  FLYING SAUCERS, ROCK 'N' ROLL AND SAL MINEO 
   
  ____________ 
   
   
  
  Destiny plagued me. I never slept, I laid, and watched the night unravel like the future. Music crystallized like snowflakes; gradually the entire storm. Guitar necks sticking out of the ground like bayonets. The war between sounds. Alexander coming to conquer with a fender and a saucer. I knew it was coming and I wanted to be in on it. I knew it came and went and I wasn't in on it. 
   
  I was at this party. All I knew was James Brown and somebody put on "Third Stone from the Sun." Everybody was looking at me, so I pulled out my whistle, the one shaped like a cigar with black pick-ups. By the end of "Foxy Lady" it was pure amp damage. They were banging their pates into the plaster but I was laughing hysterically. The ones who ripped their wigs fascinated me the most, to watch these bald and slick comet shapes rushing the walls. It reminded me of something, but I was too giddy to get my mind shining. I zeroed in on the last of the flesh. The way he came on like a human light bulb. The wire choker was twisting like steel. I wasn't in on it, I wasn't in on it, I couldn't stand it. I wasn't born to be a spectator. 
   
  It was 1966 '67 '68. Every place I went it was somebody else. I could-not-live-today. Too plugged into sanguine rhythms past and the silver video we call future. Here I come future, coming to get ya. I see it all moving on an immense yellow highway. They come on like trumpets and violins -- cars, armies of cars that move off the ground, glowing cigar shapes, and the radio just pumps like a fist. Brick roads, turnpikes, they drive me insane. The lights beckon like Blake. I can see what's coming. ELP, ELO, nothing real 'cept UFO. Got to be royal rock warfare cause it's sitting in limbo. Not what was and not what will be. Rock got to move out of its stagnant moment. Pray for something bubbling under the sky's canopy to rip open and rush like gas.  
   
  I was the same old party. I put the whistle on the tray -- it went reeling. It was happening again. I was overcome but it didn't matter. I just did what the rest of my gggg-generation did  we didnt bend, we didn't duck heads up and get creamed by the '60s. Everything that happened it was somebody else. 
   
  "This your wristwatch?" 
   
  "No." 
   
  "You an artist by any chance?" 
   
  "No." 
   
  "Freelance?"  
   
  "No." 
   
  No-no-no-no-monotonous bells long bong. I looked at Jimi Hendrix's hands. They were so immense they could push a face thru wax, etch and spear spinal stars in the noir crayola field we call sky. 'Scuse me! I tripped and dropped my hand in his. It la la la landed like an insect nest and all the red wire spiders jabbed in his flesh like g-strings. It was easy to transform everything into guitar strings -- hair, grass, fingers, illuminated calligraphy. Everything was something else. A sound was a room, a spongy layer of flesh, a trampoline of tissue, rubberish tissue, a laugh, a kiss... 
   
  You see his medal was gleaming. He was standing in the alleyway and everything was turning into something else. He was standing in the alleyway and he felt someone. Someone was coming toward him. In the alleyway he looked like the inside of a Saint Swithins medal. The medal was gleaming. The light, the lamppost, it was night, it was dawn, and the light was hitting his medal, shining lights in his eyes. He saw the medal. He put his hands over his eyes. This would be his last movie. He was coming down in slow, slow motion. His body was covered with a film, little oily droplets in his hair, like water, transformed everything into guitar strings, everything into a film around his body, microfilm. He was falling in slow motion on the ground. The boy picked up the knife. He put the knife in. He jabbed it again. The way the light shone on the blade of the knife, he thought it was the medal. He thought he was in church. He was going down. He was going off the tower. Faster
 buddy, faster buddy. No, no, no, no. Look, what do you see there? I was a drummer once. All the film around me, all the microfilm, all the celluloid, all the black droplets, everything was black and shiny. It was hard, hard, hard. He felt it harden in his hand. He put his hand around it and it was hardening in his hand. It started spurting a little white milky pus. He was going down in slow motion. I, I, ah, ah, Saturday, Monday night, midnight, midnight, midnight, King Curtis got stabbed in the heart. Sal Mineo was stabbed while he was going down as the light reflected in the medal like a coin. Oh, oh, whats the number? Tell me your phone number. You aint getting nothing but the blade in your smooth throat. Slow motion, go down shining, fall down shining, who, who, what reason? Why am I here? Was it worth it? Yes, it was worth it. Every compacted moment is worth it. Any sensation, even the pain of it, is worth it. It is all worth it. Do not sit in limbo. No, royal rock
 warfare is coming. Get your guitar moving fast or far, its our bayonet and it is war. 
   
   
   
  --Patti Smith - Wed. February 15, 1976 -  San Francisco, California  
   
   

       
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