Awake From Your Slumber - 19 June 2005

[Andrew F Wilson <andrewfwilson>]

Awake From Your Slumber
Steve Earle & Patti Smith
Royal Festival Hall, Meltdown 2005, 19th June 2005

By Ken Yau

A roll call is played over the PA. The audience listen intently.
Within seconds it becomes clear: this is a roll call for the dead, the
casualties on both sides of the American coalition's invasion and
occupation of Iraq.

There was, apparently, a time when rock and politics was a potent
cocktail, the petrol that drove the revolutionary spirit; when rock
stars used something more powerful than their transient fame to get
the messages across: they used their songs. Nowadays? Songs don't
matter, it's all about hooks, choruses, catchy choons. Campaigning
rock stars are mocked, they bitch about each other, they're met with
pockets of enthusiasm and swathes of apathy. Such is the tired nature
of our cynical capitalist democratic system.

The Royal Festival Hall, a vast air-conditioned seated auditorium is
the unlikeliest place for the old revolutionary spirit to be
revisited, but revisited it was in some style. Steve Earle, in
acoustic mode with guitar and harmonica, starts off the night by
getting something off his chest:

Fuck the FCC
Fuck the FBI
Fuck the CIA
Livin' in the motherfuckin' USA

That's swiftly followed up by a song that used to be about 19th
Century juvenile deliquency but has ended up being about gun control
(the beauty, and danger, of art is that interpretation is everything);
anti-war songs; songs of personal demons; and a song about the Civil
War and all the complex issues of race, slavery, North v South, that
that entails.

The lyrics may be sledgehammer, the music certainly isn't. And that's
the beauty of using music as a Trojan Horse into closed minds. As
Earle delightfully informs us: "It's amazing the pinko shit you can
sneak into a bluegrass record." If Bob Dylan still carried a fire in
his belly and made new records, he'd sound like this. Thankfully, we
have Steve Earle.

Speaking of Dylan, Patti Smith opens her set with a beautifully-judged
version of the classic 'Like A Rolling Stone' before introducing us to
Gumby, the unofficial clayman mascot of Meltdown 2005. The pattern of
firey song delivery followed by, well, momsy [sic] chats is a little
disconcerting at first but it turns out to be the best way to engage
with the well-behaved middle-aged audience. They stand, yes, but only
in between songs, never during, and they listen with reverence as
Smith delivers her soliloquies.

The silence allows one besotted old soul to holler, "My God, you're
sexy!" At which point, the audience laugh and Smith acts coy. But
actually, he's absolutely right. She may have grey hair nowadays, she
may not be one of the over-stylised, over-preened divas, but she has a
sharp mind and That Voice.

That Voice is ably backed-up by a band that strides across the musical
styles with consummate ease: the thumping and primal rhythm section of
Beneath The Southern Cross is juxtaposed with guitar-effects
acrobatics; Ain't It Strange goes for a reggae vibe; and, of course,
the classic rock of myriad songs from the set, such as Peaceable
Kingdom, Pissing In A River and Not Fade Away.

Not Fade Away marked the point at which the audience raced out of
their seats to the front of the stage, and set this gig on fire.
Smith, delighted at finally getting the audience to overcome their
inhibitions, jumped off the stage, into the awestruck 'moshpit'
spending what would have seemed like hours to the security team,
dancing with her fans. By the time Smith's wheeled out Steve Earle and
other guests for a rousing encore of Earle's Copperhead Road and the
Stones' Salt of the Earth, people of all ages are in tears.

You don't get to have a decent career in music without knowing how to
work a crowd. You certainly don't get to have a long career like Smith
without knowing how to make a genuine connection on an emotional
level. We're so used to reviewing the new bands on Londonist, it's a
privilege to be able to see the (ahem) maturer artists like Smith and
Earle in action and turn the clock back to a time when rock'n'roll
truly believed songs could be an agent for change. This is how it
feels when your world means something after all.

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