West coast tour: Notes and photos

[L French <lrfrench>]

Thank Dean for the correction and the nice photos of Patti in Santa Monica. Did you take any shots of the Ferris Wheel?  It look's like it was "A Perfect Day" in LA, so I'm surprised Patti didn't play that song...  
   
  Beside those photos, there are some other great shots from the tour on Flickr here: 
   
  Music Box photos: 
  http://www.flickr.com/photos/8216923/tags/pattismiththeshowbox/ 
   
  Portland Photos:
  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackiebutler/tags/patti/ 
   
   
  Fillmore photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/artolog/ 
   
   
  Also the current issue of AMERICAN PHOTO is a special featuring photos by Rock Stars. Patti gets a two page layout featuring four of her Polaroids, along with a one page piece about the Sam Wagstaff documentary film, BLACK, WHITE and GRAY. There's a nice shot of Patti taken by Wagstaff around 1975 I'd never seen before.  
   
   
  NOTES ON THE FILLMORE AND SANTA CRUZ SHOWS   PART II 
   
  Patti Smiths two concerts in northern California at the Fillmore on Tuesday and at the Catalyst nightclub the next night in Santa Cruz were both sensational, but offered quite an intriguing contrast in the presentation of Pattis art. At the Fillmore Patti was literally word perfect "all night long," with no mistakes, false starts, flubs, or distractions from the audience. Thats no small achievement, since Patti has always been extremely loose and willing to take chances on stage. As Patti so memorably put it back in 1995 when she returned to San Francisco after an absence of 16 years for her wildly improvised second show at Slims: "This is the fucked-up second set!" During that memorable show Patti, sang off-key, interrupted poems and songs, sometimes ranted incoherently and at one point practically threw some poor girl who kept distracting her out of the club. 
   
  Of course, as Patti notes, obtaining that kind of extreme control is largely dependent on the audience, and because it only takes one idiot taking pictures to make Patti interrupt a song, its something of a miracle that Patti maintained such perfection throughout the concert. Its also a tribute to the collective spirit of the audience at the Fillmore that such a rare state of rapt attention was achieved, allowing Patti to focus solely on her performance. In fact, the closest thing to a mistake Patti made was ceding the mic to Lenny Kaye to sing "Pushing To Hard" before it was scheduled on the set list. 
   
  However this rarefied level was not to be repeated the next night in Santa Cruz, where the audience was quite talkative, and some woman insisted on filming Patti with her cell phone, causing Patti to interrupt a high point of "Aint It Strange" to tell her to "get that fucking camera out of my face! If you want to take a picture, take a picture, but dont make a fucking documentary." Incredibly enough, the same woman later resumed her surreptitious filming activities and to the great relief of everyone around her was removed from the front of the stage. Patti later took note of the same group of people talking and pushing each other, to reprimand them, saying "Hey, no fighting," and then recalled the scene in GIMME SHELTER when Jerry Garcia gets off a helicopter to be told about the violence that has occurred. Imitating Garcia, Patti said Jerry had said, "What a bummer, man" and then asked the crowd, "Dont you miss Jerry?" to be answered with a loud cheers of "Yes!" So
 naturally Patti obligingly treated the crowd to an encore of "Not Fade Away," after playing "A Perfect Day," saying she really had a perfect day in Santa Cruz, going to the beach and wading into the Pacific ocean. 
   
  The contrast between the shows was ably demonstrated during Pattis final encore at the Fillmore of "Rock and Roll Nigger" when the audience was in a state of controlled abandon. Patti brought the song to a lull, and a remarkable stillness filled the air, causing an amazed Patti to comment, "It suddenly got real quiet in here," before wrapping up the tune by singing, "You light up my life, you give me hope, to carry on."  Then, after ending the song, she returned to the summer of love theme that permeated the evening by saying "Maybe we should shoot an arrow of love into the heart of the Bush administration, to bring it down." 
 
  During the Fillmore show, Patti seemed to be channeling not only the 40th anniversary of the summer of love, but also memories of her Mother, and rather surprisingly, Christina Aguilera, who she reffered to so often, I thought she might start to sing a cover of "Beautiful." Patti said she had watched Christina on the Grammy awards, saying, "I know, she came out in a white Satin thing, but she did the best version of James Browns "Its a Mans World,"  Ive ever seen. She went on to say she was amazed by some of the mic moves Aguilera made, and wanted to show us some of them, to which the crowd yelled in unison,"Show us!" Patti laughingly replied she couldnt, but if by accident she made one, she would point it out. Interestingly enough, looking at the clips of Christina Aguilera doing "Ita a Mans World on You Tube, I must say it was quite a sensational performace, which ironically seemed to me like Aguilera was more or less copying moves from the Patti of the
 seventies, especially when she ended up kneeling of the stage floor. Patti ended up by saying, the reason she brought Christina's performance up, "is that it makes me want to do better."  
  
Prophetically, Patti did do better, seeming to build on each succeeding song and the positive energy that was flowing to her from the sold-out crowd. Before the show, around 6 p.m. Patti made an appearance in front of the Fillmore, and I talked to her briefly, reminding her that San Francisco has always loved RADIO ETHIOPIA, and how it would be great if she could play "Aint It Strange" and "Pissing In a River." To my great delight, Patti sang both songs, giving "Strange" its debut on the American half of the tour. While not turning like a dervish, Patti still did some great moves, grabbing the flag off her amp, and using it like a Matadors cape to entice Lenny towards her during the feverish climax of the song. 
   
   

       
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