 PATTI
SMITH >> TRAMPIN'.
COLUMBIA 2004 So you
think you're a punk rocker? You buy your T-shirts at Hot Topic and go
to all-ages shows looking for that special emo chick or shoe-gazing
doofus. Face it, Patti Smith has toe jam older than your suburban
punk ass. She's more rotten than Johnny Rotten, dirtier than C-Love,
and smarter than Weezer. She's also 50-something years old and doesn't
care what you think. Hell, in the 1970's she freaked everyone out by
sporting armpit hair on an album cover. Too bad it wasn't scratch-and-sniff.
She's the high priestess, the interior designer, the poet laureate of
the punk movement. And when Patti preaches politics, she does
so from the heart, not the pocketbook. Her struggles are your struggles.
The South Jersey-bred Smith has seen hate, disease, and destruction
firsthand and it's revealed through her work. Trampin' is a collection
of haunting songs dealing with loss, and linear songs of recovery and
redemption that don't pontificate her practices to the listener. A devout
Buddhist, she leaves it to the imagination of what the afterlife has
in store--it's mystical and comforting.
Smith
has not gone soft in her latter years, as evidenced on "Jubilee" and
"Stride Of The Mind," two songs that could've easily been recorded in
the genre's infancy in the mid '70s. They're left-leaning, as is her
pacifist's plea on "Gandhi." She encourages the listener to get off
the couch and declare themselves something. Though her spoken word approach
has been duplicated, she's still the O.G. of the style. And it's good
to have her back on the scene at a juncture where somebody needs to
make a stand.
In addition
to this, her seminal and timeless works Horses (1975), Easter
(1978), Wave (1979), and Gung Ho (2000) are required
listening for anyone who wants to learn and rock at the same time. Smith's
a national treasure--an artist whose canvas is never blank, and whose
song is yet to be sung. By Tim Donnelly
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