Land and Gung Ho reviews (old)

["Dennis Moore" <clayboy56>]

Here is a site I hadn't seen before. It seems kind a caotic and
searching is a bit tricky, but here are the two reviews they have:

http://www.exclaim.ca/index.asp
 - obsessive listening, compulsive reading

Land (1975-2002)
By Mike Thompson
May 08, 2002

For almost any other artist, asking fans to suggest the song list for
a greatest hits collection would seem hopelessly contrived. But such a
gesture from Patti Smith is perfectly in keeping with someone who can
sing a song as idealistic as "People Have the Power" and not only keep
a straight face, but make you believe she's telling the truth. This
double-CD release (greatest hits on one disc, demos, outtakes and live
tracks on the other) is welcome because it's high time after eight
records and a quarter century that her remarkable career was put into
perspective. The mere fact that her unfailing idealism has withstood
personal tragedies, the music industry and the uncompromising eye she
turns to the world is itself worth acknowledging. Add to that the fact
that you'd be hard pressed to find more than a couple of throwaway
tracks, let alone a weak album, in her entire oeuvre and you begin to
realise just how rare a performer she is. The second disc is the
treasure, of course. Listening to the handful of live cuts (especially
the punishing versions of "25th Floor" and "Dead City," and a
performance of the poem "Notes to the Future"), you can't help but
wonder why she, of all people, has never released a full-length live
record. Until she does, just look for the legendary Teenage Perversity
bootleg if you're ever in Greenwich Village, and hope that one day
she'll give us the real thing.

Gung Ho
By Michael Barclay
June 07, 2000

Although everyone had reasons to be excited about the comeback of
pre-punk pioneer Patti Smith, it was hard to fawn over her first two
post-retirement records, Gone Again and Peace And Noise. It's
heartening to find Smith find her focus on Gung Ho, with an album's
worth of inspiring performances, if not necessarily great songs. "Lo
and Beholden" and "Glitter In Their Eyes" are perhaps two of her
finest moments, while "Libbie's Song" is an uncharacteristically
straightforward country-folk love song. The 11-minute title track dips
into the pretentiousness of one of her idols, Jim Morrison, while the
lyrics to the equally epic "Strange Messengers" occasionally delve
into bland preaching, Smith's delivery and the power of her band make
the time fly like nobody's business. It's wrong to expect the youthful
abandon of Smith's earlier work, but Gung Ho is a fine example of how
we'd always hoped she'd age. It probably kicks proper ass live.