By Todd Lavoie
Patti in the raw, back in the day. Photo by Robert Mapplethorpe.
Oh, twitch-twitchy fingers, still trembling and stumbling over the keys, 24 hours after spinning out of the Fillmore, poster in hand and blazes in my heart! That’s right, my little shit-starters – Wednesday’s spilling into Thursday, and I’m still racing to find the words for Tuesday! Tuesday night, Aug. 14, to get right to it. For good reason. I mean, this doesn’t just happen every day, now, does it? It, of course, being Patti Smith. The Fillmore. Church.
Well, I’ll call it church, anyway. What with me being an eye-rolling skeptic-of-everything atheist and all, the sheer unstoppable deliverance of a quasi-orgasmic rock ‘n’ roll experience is the closest my scripture-wary ass ever comes to ecstasy, and who better to carry me over to the Promised Land for a few hours than the one for whose sins Jesus never died in the first place? Rapture, you say? Rupture, more like it.
Once again, thanks to a much-needed throttling of Mind and Spirit doled out from the righteous grip of a mic and a choke of feedback, I’m torn to pieces, forced to redefine. Ain’t nothin’ like putting all your tissue back together again while shaking the loose sweat free from the 6-inch square you’ve been boxed into by all the other bright-eyed believers, the final squalls of “Rock & Roll Nigger” still careening against the usual drone-loop you’ve assembled for yourself to get through the day-to-day naggings of things. A good shake-up in the bone-frame ain’t bad when it’s coming to you in fits and sparks from the High Priestess of Hippie-Punk know-how – feel me?