I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THURSTON MOORE-“Patti Smith Math Scratch” (1995).

I couldn’t find any archives of Patti and Thurston playing together, so the next best thing is this song named after her.

For a band as dissonant as Sonic Youth and a guy who plays as chaotically as Thurston Moore, it’s amazing how he/they are able to recreate their studio noise live.  There are dozens of versions of this song available on YouTube and while they don’t sound identical, they all sound reasonably close to each other.  And they sound reasonably close to the original studio version.

This is a pretty straightforward song: a simple riff repeated.  It doesn’t have too many crazy guitar pyrotechnics although the solo is pretty awesome.  Especially live.  No idea what the lyrics are about–much like with Patti Smith.

[READ: July 3, 2012] “Patti Smith”

This article just solidified the coolness of my job.  I’ve always enjoyed the JSTOR articles that get passed around here.  Mostly they’re esoteric studies of unexpected topics.  But this one, from BOMB magazine–who even knew JSTOR saved BOMB magazine?–has just boosted JSTOR’s coolness cred by a magnum.

This is an interview with Patti Smith conducted by Thurston Moore.  Already that’s pretty awesome.  What’s even more awesome is that the interview is done in the car while they are driving back from a show in Massachusetts–it’s just Thurston and Patti talking (although obviously edited).

The opening of the article is an introduction by Thurston, which is interesting in and of itself.  He talks about how he got to know Patti’s music (he grabbed her ankle at a concert when he was a teenager) and then how he got to know her .  I didn’t know she was from South Jersey or that she was Robert Mapplethorpe’s lover.  I also never really put together that she married someone with the same last name as her.

First off, it’s very cool to be reading an interview from fifteen years ago in which both musicians are still alive and producing great work.

But it’s the details that are so interesting here.  She describes the first time Bob Dylan came to one of her shows.  She had adored him for years, but when they met she played super cool and almost blew him off.  It’s a funny story.  There’s also a great anecdote about William S. Burroughs coming to one of her shows (I love Burroughs and can’t imagine him at a night club).

But there was also some really surprising revelations from the interview.

Patti takes the parents’ side in the debate over pornographic lyrics: “Some of the stuff pawned off as freedom of expression is just trash” (this coming from the woman who wrote “Pissing in a River,” mind you).

The first time Patti Saw the Rolling Stones was when they played in a high school auditorium in South Jersey!  (with Patti Labelle opening!).  She says Mick Jagger looked nervous and Keith Richards was pimply.  She got forced to the stage by the screaming girls and managed to grab Brain Jones’ ankle.

But the biggest surprise is how “out” of the music scene she is.  She hadn’t heard about Riot Grrls, which I find very surprising since they all looked up to her.  She also had no idea what No Wave was, which although it was a minor musical movement was still pretty important in the NY scene.

There’s also some interesting stuff about her religious upbringing–of which I knew nothing.  She grew up Catholic, became a Jehovah’s Witness at a very young age (“When I was a child, Jehovah’s Witness was a completely misunderstood religion.  We used to go door to door and people would throw buckets of water on us and curse at us.”   And then she began following the Dalai Lama.

Patti is a pretty out their characters (notice she doesn’t finish any comments on the JW religion).  She also has a crazy nonsequitrs.  Like this one that comes after the religious discussion:

Wait a minute… do you have this thing where you start thinking something and your mind takes it over and it’s not in a language that you can translate yet, so you’re sitting and waiting but you’re mind’s like… it’s like in those movies where  the computer starts talking to itself and locks the guy out.  Sometimes I sit here and feel like  a shell harboring my brain and my brain is faxing different thoughts to other parts.

How do you respond to that?  Thurston Moore, consummate professional, replies:

“Look, a Dunkin’ Donuts”

You can read this on JSTOR.  You can also read old issues of BOMB from their site (and maybe drop them a few bucks)