DJ PsychoMike presents the poet as rocker: Patti Smith
There are a few musicians who transcend the music genre they are in: Bruce Springsteen, Jim Morrison, Taylor Swift and Patti Smith.
I had read Patti Smith's poetry, so when I heard she was going to sing with BLUE OYSTER CULT (!) I was excited. I loved BOC and this was icing on the cake. However, I couldn't get one girl from the Art Institute to go with me to the concert. No one had heard of her and BOC were metal and metal wasn't cool.
I ended up going with a guy pal and sure enough, during the encore she came out and sang the songs she had written for the band.
I was blown away. In those days there was no WAX TRAX Record store so I went to Rose records downtown on Wabash to pre- order the record. The day it came in, I was there. I took the album to the Art Institute library and played it for a bunch of people- including many girls, over the next few days.
None of the girls who then went out and bought the album remembered that a few months earlier I asked them to come see her!
I had this bitch you see, she made lies to me
Her deceit, oh, it gave me a chill
But I found out now, that baby that baby ice dog
She said, we would wed in Mongolian country
Lilies shoot free, but she was snowing me
In the mountains, oh, her intent was all too clear
It was quite a sin, how the ice caved in
I was numb, I could not assist
Baby ice went down through cold cold cold ground
I said baby, that’s the breaks
Written by Patti Smith, Albert Bouchard, and Eric Bloom
I plot your rubric scarab, I steal your satellite
I want your wife to be my baby tonight
I choose to steal what you chose to show
And you know I will not apologize
Your mine for the taking
I’m making a career of evil
I’m making a career of evil
I’m making a career of evil
Pay me I’ll be your surgeon, I’d like to pick your brains
Capture you, Inject you, leave you kneeling in the rain
I choose to steal what you chose to show
And you know I will not apologize
Your mine for the taking
I’m making a career of evil
I’m making a career of evil
I’m making a career of evil
Written by Patti Smith
You’re the kind of girl (kind of girl)
I’d like to find
Face like an angel (in my mirror)
But you’re boned like the devil
Your eyes have shifted from me (have shifted)
Everyone saw what you did (your eyes)
You have slipped from beneath me (from me)
Like a false and nervous squid
Oh, no more horses, horses
We’re going to swim like a fish (we’re gonna swim like a fish)
Into the hole in which you planned to ditch me
My lovely
Vera Marie
Written by Albert Bouchard and Patti Smith
She kept the light open, all night long
For me to come home, and sing her my song
Oh, Debbie Denise, was true to me
She’d wait by the window, so patiently
And I’d come on home with my hair hanging down
She’d pin it up, and softly smile
But I was out rolling with my band
I was out rolling with my band
Written by Albert Bouchard and Patti Smith
Death comes sweeping through the hallway, like a lady’s dress
Death comes driving down the highway, in its Sunday best
A fire of unknown origin took my baby away
A fire of unknown origin took my baby away
Swept to ruin off my wavelength, swallowed her up
Like the ocean in a fire, so thick and gray
Written by Patti Smith, Albert Bouchard, Eric Bloom, Joe Bouchard, Donald Roeser
Well I’m up there beside the magic man
And he laid some tricks for me
He said you do need help my friend
I whispered, obviously
He laid a spread of Jacks and Queens
And he begged me take my pick
But every face that had your face
I cried out, I am sick
Sick of hauling your love around
Want to run my train alone
But the engine tracks straight through your heart
And weighs me like a stone
Oh it’s a hard love to love you it takes up all my time
Written by Patti Smith and Donald Roeser
Seeing Patti Smith live which I did many times was a burst of spontaneity that was different each show. No 2 shows were really the same as bootlegs can attest. This remains one of my favorite shows and I wasn’t there:
Maya Deren wrote a book and made a film called THE DIVINE HORSEMEN describing voudon (voodoo) possession when one turns oneself over to an energy. This would describe Patti onstage. It was sexual, it was chaos, it was poetry coming from somewhere. Else.
Many people don’t know that pop star Dua Lipa has a book club that she encourages her fans to, wait for it, read. Here she interviews Patti about her book JUST KIDS.
Quote: From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train, Patti Smith’s Year of the Monkey is a profound, beautifully realized memoir in which dreams and reality are vividly woven into a tapestry of one transformative year. Following a three-night run of concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, she finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz on New Year’s Day, 2016, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger’s words, “Anything is possible: after all, it’s the Year of the Monkey.” For Smith — inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing — the year evolves as one of reckoning: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Unquote:
Behind the paywall: Divine Horsemen The Living Gods of Haiti by Maya Deren
From 1947 to 1951 Maya filmed voodoo rituals and became the only white woman ever allowed to become a high priestess in the religion.
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The Chicago Psychotronic Film Society which begat The Global Psychotronic Film Society is quite a party. From it's earliest days with guests JOHN CLEESE, ROBERT DeNIRO, BILL MURRAY (our first dues paid member), DAN AYKROYD, SYDNEY POLLACK, RUSS MEYER, CLIVE BARKER, JOHN DUGAN, PENN AND TELLER, KENNETH ANGER, DARIO ARGENTO and many more there was nothing like it on earth. People travelled from all over the world to attend our parties or host them and none of the celebrities were paid to be at the events.
We did shows at bars and clubs LIMELIGHT, KABOOM, THE LYRIC OPERA (!), THE BIOGRAPH THEATER, THE LIAR'S CLUB and many more places. This meant you had to be 21 to attend and there were no dealer tables.
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