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Patti Smith, "Gone Again"
Arista records, released: June, 1996
When I was a teenager I hung out with a guy who played the banjo. We were into this kind of bluegrass and folk country music. Always hit me in my brain as being real important, all sort of raw and unkempt. Then Punk rock hit and I got swept away. I cut my shoulder length hair and sold all of my Elton John records. A few years later someone mentioned to me that rock and roll was actually folk music. Untrained musicians creatin' music and stringing words together for songs. Punk rock all sort of raw and unkempt.
 
Patti Smith was around for a while when punk rock hit and the tag got hung on her. She made up her own rules and made some great music in the mean time. Timeless shit that can't be ever going out of style. Not just a disposable icon of an era. The latest album is a mind blower to me. I was holding out to be skeptical but then I saw her on the Roseanne show and she blew me away. Rocking out like she never missed a beat. She played a song with her band, Tom Verlaine laying low and adding in the finest noodley, ethereal guitar licks you ever heard. Perfectly mixed into the rock. She also spoke a poem alone that sent chills up and down my spine saying that the people got the power. A few weeks later she was on Letterman and I caught by accident the second half of "Summer Cannibals". "This is some fine rock'n'roll" I thought to myself. The next day on the car radio I heard the same song and I had to have it.
 
"Gone Again" is filled with all sorts of stuff. A variety of songs from across the possiblities, the sea of possibilities. But the influences that stick out to me are the folk influences. "Dead to the World" comes across so fresh and full of caterpiller-to-butterfly enthusiasm that I want to take off flying. Intense songs that hit the soul hard. Slow tunes and then out of the park numbers like "Summer Cannibals". The album really comes off like a whole work constructed. A beautiful piece of art, like Patti.
[BdeV 7/1/96]