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"I am the first Messiah without balls, the Christ of the decade is me!"
"I am the general of rock'n'roll!"
Patti Smith is the quintessential female rockstar. Not beautiful but charismatic, intelligent and brilliant, she revealed herself from a very young age as a very committed and versatile artist. She writes poetry (her love for Rimbaud is well known), some published in a collection in '73 ("Seventh Heaven and Witt"), writes lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult, a play with Sam Sheperd ("Cowboy Mouth"), acts, dabbles in photography, paints; she is an active and sensitive girl, very attentive and involved regarding the radical social and cultural upheavals between the 60s and 70s. A friend of Bob Dylan and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, with whom she lived when she was a student, the Smith soon became one of the most influential and inspired characters from the American underground music scene, in New York, a theater of sound revolutions mainly thanks to Iggy Pop's Stooges and Lou Reed's Velvet Underground.
These were years of great counter-cultural ferment, of which art and rock music in particular were the main supporters and inspirers. To stand out, it was necessary to frequent the right circle, that of Andy Warhol, first and foremost. Patti, of that counter-culture, became a regular habitué, embarking on the path that would lead her to be an icon of the New Wave. Equipped with a spirituality considered blasphemous by many and a bold and exhibitionistic feminine grit, enough to influence many artists and riot girls, Patti Smith perfectly combined the poetry of her lyrics with tense and neurotic rock. Her voice is painfully anguished and delirious, often brazen and hysterical, with such harsh peaks that they are almost unpleasant, emotional and compelling. In it, you can almost glimpse the last rivulet of that immense river of sick, dark, and painful existentialism, of which the Velvet Underground were the standard-bearers in the previous decade, with an extra dose of anger. After releasing a single with an independent label and produced by Mapplethorpe, the cover of Hey Joe, collaborating with Television's guitarist Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith made a brilliant debut with her group in Horses, followed by the excellent Radio Ethiopia, and Easter, which marked her exit from the niche circuit and granted her a certain notoriety. "Wave", from 1979, definitively consecrates her to the general public.
The album opens, without particular bite, with Frederick, a ballad dedicated to her husband Fred "Sonic" Smith, with background choirs, a marked and compelling rhythm, and a gentle keyboard while the following Dancing Barefoot is quite dark with Smith's low and unusually calm voice, a pleasant and captivating track always marked by a good rhythm section and a guitar, unfortunately, too much in the background. Finally, the old Patti returns with So You Want To Be, from the pleasant initial riff marked by determined drums, with it, Lenny Kaye's guitar dominates the whole track. And she, Patti, who howls words, almost reciting them at the end. Her voice becomes lamenting and aching in the short track Hymn, a sort of pleading litany, while Revenge is a fine blues with an introduction of a bass and guitar loop that vaguely recalls I Want You (She's So Heavy) of beatlesque memory; a crescendo track characterized by majestic keyboard performances and a hysterical and acid guitar. Very interesting and, in my opinion, the best songs on the album, are Citizen Ship and Seven Ways Of Going: the former is a track whose rhythmic structure changes abruptly with a splendid hypnotic organ background and sudden electric guitar bursts. The second piece has a dark and solemn atmosphere and an obsessive rhythmic cadence, superb psych-jazz arrangements, and the Smith's vocal performance is exceptional, inspired.
Definitely inferior to the previous works, the album has the merit of being quite likeable and fairly varied and homogeneous. It represents, if you will, the terminus of the Patti Smith Group's creativity, which, unfortunately, never reached the excellent levels of the first three works again. Her creative vein that had contributed to the big bang of the New Wave was now running out. In "Wave" the unconventional spirituality of Patti is always present, who even included a photo of Pope Luciani on the cover, writing the phrase: "music is the reconciliation with God".
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Frederick (03:05)
hi hello wake from thy sleep
god has given your soul to keep
all of the power that burns in the flame
ignites the light in a single name
frederick name of care
fast asleep in a room somewhere
guardian angels [line a bed]
shed their light on my sleepy head
I am a threshold yearning to sing
down with the the dancers having one last fling
here's to the moment when you said hello
come on my spirit are you ready let's go
hi hi hey hey
maybe I will come back some day now
but tonight on the wings of a dove
up above to the land of love
now I lay me down to sleep
pray the lord my soul to keep
kiss to kiss breath to breath
my soul surrenders astonished to death
night of wonder for us to keep
set our sails channel [out] deep
after the rapture two hearts meet
mine entwined in a single beat
frederick you're the one
as we journey from sun to sun
all the dreams I waited so long for
fly tonight so long so long
bye bye hey hey
maybe we will come back some day now
but tonight on the wings of a dove
up above to the land of love
frederick name of care
high above in sky that's clear
all the things I've been dreamin' of
are expressed in this name of love
bye bye hey hey
maybe we will come back some day now
but tonight on the wings of a dove
05 Revenge (05:07)
I feel upset.
Let's do some celebrating.
Come on honey, don't hesitate now.
Needed you, you withdrew, I was so forsaken.
Ah, but now the tables have turned, my move.
I believe I'll be taking my revenge.
Sweet revenge.
I thought you were some perfect read-out.
Some d-digital delay had obscured
and phased my view of the wicked hand you played.
Ah, the sands and hands of time have run out, run out, ah you better face it.
Ah, this thing's run amok, this luck
I do know how to replace it with revenge.
Oh, sweet revenge.
I gave you a wristwatch, baby.
You wouldn't even give me the time of day.
You want to know what makes me tick.
Now it's me that's got precious little to say.
For the ghosts of our love have dried have died.
There's no use faking it.
Ah, the spirits gonna close in on you tonight.
High time I was taking my revenge.
Sweet revenge.
Revenge. Revenge.
all the gold and silver couldn't measure up my love for you. it's so immaterial.
i don't wait around for you. [ ] [ ] nobody gets anything. nobody gets nothing. no [ ] don't leave me no space in your little boat
you ain't gonna need no you ain't gonna need no little boat you are living on my time my dear.
Revenge. Sweet revenge. Sweet sweet revenge. . .
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More from this album
Patti Smith - Frederick lyrics
Patti Smith - Dancing Barefoot lyrics
Patti Smith - So You Want To Be (A Rock 'n' Roll Star) lyrics
Patti Smith - Hymn lyrics
Patti Smith - Revenge lyrics
Patti Smith - Citizen Ship lyrics
Patti Smith - Seven Ways Of Going lyrics
Patti Smith - Broken Flag lyrics
Patti Smith - Wave lyrics
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09 Wave (04:40)
hi hello wake from thy sleep
God has given your soul to keep
all of the power that burns in the flame
ignites the light in a single name
Frederick name of care
fast asleep in a room somewhere
guardian angels [line a bed]
shed their light on my sleepy head
I am a threshold yearning to sing
down with the the dancers having one last fling
here's to the moment when you said hello
come on my spirit are you ready let's go
hi hi hey hey
maybe I will come back some day now
but tonight on the wings of a dove
up above to the land of love
..........
now I lay me down to sleep
pray the Lord my soul to keep
kiss to kiss breath to breath
my soul surrenders astonished to death
night of wonder for us to keep
set our sails channel [out] deep
after the rapture two hearts meet
mine entwined in a single beat
Frederick you're the one
as we journey from sun to sun
all the dreams I waited so long for
fly tonight so long so long
bye bye hey hey
maybe we will come back some day now
but tonight on the wings of a dove
up above to the land of love
Frederick name of care
high above in sky that's clear
all the things I've been dreamin' of
are expressed in this name of love
bye bye hey hey
maybe we will come back some day now
but tonight on the wings of a dove
up above . . .
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