Patti's cool beauty

[imomus]

You know Patti Smith. She's the meeting point between Rimbaud and Keith Richards, the high priestess of Rock Romanticism, the mother of PJ Harvey and Justine Frischmann, the sister of Kathy Acker, follower of Ginsberg and Burroughs, stick insect with surprisingly good breasts, Jane Birkin crossed with a Jersey waitress, the coolest girl in art school, the dream groupie, the girl who lights a candle, reads you poetry and feeds you drugs.



To be honest, Patti Smith's music is complete anathema to me. Caterwauling pretentiously over bluesy thrashes about a world in which artists = "niggers" = outsiders = freedom = Rimbaud = the Noble Savage and "there's a million membranes to break through"... Quite frankly, for me, there's more wisdom in an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. MTM also never incited anyone to do atrociously rousing 20-minute cover versions of Gloria, or taught U2 and Sinead O'Connor politics.

Here's a clip of Patti's philosophy at her mid-70s peak:

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I think it's easy to see how this kind of faith in unfettered individualism -- with its derision for, for instance, the discipline of communism -- leads fairly smoothly into the conservatism in which "there's no such thing as society" and the self (the consumer) becomes all-important. Smith's 70s self is the self-actualising bratty hippy Adam Curtis shows morphing, in the 80s, into a Reagan-supporting entrepreneur (not that Smith ever did that, bless her; she's done her fair share of protest against the likes of Bush).



One of the things Adam Curtis' documentary The Century of the Self shows is precisely how the experiments -- via drugs, encounter groups and EST -- of the 70s counter-culture did indeed break through the million membranes of the self, only to find nothing at the centre of the self's onion. This "nothing" became, in the era of Thatcher and Reagan, the void from which consumers pulled their need, and entrepreneurs their business plans.



What I'd endorse wholeheartedly, though, is Patti Smith's choice of t-shirts, and that's what today's entry is really about. I think it clicked when I saw some of Patti's t-shirts in a vitrine in the Punk: No One Is Innocent show in Vienna in May. (By the way, that "no one is innocent" line shows that Patti was never quite nihilistic enough to be the Queen of Punk some claim her to be; on her third album she proclaimed "At heart I am an American artist, and I have no guilt!")



Patti's favourite 70s t-shirts (they appear in photo after photo) are the Keith Richards one -- he's obviously the inspiration for her dishevelled hair -- Ethiopia First (the one with the pyramid and eye, printed backwards in one of the most famous photos, in which Patti stands next to a urinal), and a shirt that says Rastafari (she was clearly into the reggae-rebel style thing the Clash also picked up on).



Patti also wore t-shirts depicting Native American tribesmen and a Union Jack. Even when she wore no shirt at all, she accessorized her nakedness with ethnic thongs and beads, and just a soupcon of bondage.



If Patti Smith's 70s t-shirts are so cool because of their outsider subjects and anti-rationalist attitudes ("Fuck the clock"!), they're also cool because of how she wore them: with holes snipped in them, or tugged taut down a pair of jeans with an open fly, or saggy at the neck, with a shoulder jutting through. She was obviously proud of her unconventional, tomboyish sexuality -- in the Stockholm interview above she peels off her shirt knowingly, and in her Alan Bangs interview for Rock Palast she confesses she can't concentrate on anything else when she sees herself in the monitor:

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"I'm just attracted to myself, I really can't help it, I'm telling you the truth, I'm admitting it, I know it seems like it's a very vain thing, but I like to look in TV monitors, so as long as you put one in front of me I'm going to peek at it."

And that's pretty much how I feel about 70s Patti myself. No matter how I feel about her philosophy and her music, I have to peek at her cool beauty.

Comments

[eptified.livejournal.com]

I love this entry because it involves an effortless separation of the aesthetic and rational responses, which is something that not enough people are able to do; and also because of course you like looking at her, you skinny-chaser. (Although I will say those are indeed nice breasts.)

[(Anonymous)]

bloody hell she looks like the lou diollin (mentioned on june 26th) bird only not as attractive who coincidently is not a patch on her mum birkin who incidentally is my fav bird of all time who .....etc

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

Sexiness. Not enough people realize that.

I just personally think this illustrates your entire problem about philosophy--you're strangely afraid of "the self". Strangely apt to call other people pretentious even as they could just as well call you that, and strangely disgusted by the major elements of personal freedom.

maybe the whole point of "the self" is to be an unpeelable onion. And entertainingly so.

To suggest this led to conservatism is to completely miss the fact that hardly any properly self-analytical, "weird", artistic people became the types in the 80s that you hate(d) so much.

oh Momus. You confuse me so. Yet I keep coming back. That's my problem.

apocryphyl

[robinsonner.livejournal.com]

I remember an article from the late 70s which mentioned that Alex Harvey was trying to impress her after one of her concerts. Harvey was going on about how sometimes when he was performing he thought he would have an orgasm. Smith is said to have asked if he ever did. When he said no she grabbed his hand and placed it in her crotch and Harvey's hand came back soaking wet.
As a 15 year old I don't know if I was more interested in the love juice or the fact that Alex Harvey was involved.

[tropigalia.livejournal.com]

wow she's pretty obnoxious. she looked a lot like charlotte gainsbourg but the latter is much easier to listen to.

[(Anonymous)]

I see no 'unfettered individualism' in Patti Smith. If individualism is having sex, abandon, dancing, a kind of poetry - why on earth would these be excluded from any modern form of Communism? She didn't have an "80s phase" - neo-classical synthesizers, dry ice drifting round Olympian columns, padded shoulders, credit cards and swimming pools. She disappeared, only to resurface with an unfashionable-sounding left anthem "People Have The Power".

Thousands of miles away, Soviet labs perfected their discipline:

[fluorophoric.livejournal.com]

Some of her music is great, that's why I try to avoid watching interviews with her as the subject... she's totally aware of herself.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

The way Patty claims to be a "nigger of the universe" in a way that has nothing to do with the GayNiggers From Outer Space (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC-rZzieXCQ) is really grating, but I love Redondo Beach.

Morrissey does too, at least enough to have covered it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfi1o0vT23I). I find his cover really entertaining because I know he gets a little thrill in the pit of his stomach when he calls the beach dismal.

[hahawhat.livejournal.com]

Haha, I wore my "FUCK THE CLOCK" shirt all day today.

I'm surprised (although am I really?) at your derision of Patti Smith's celebration the singular as if that's where her vision stops. You always seem a little miffed by identity politics, but that wild, half-postured yet all-sincere beauty you're admiring has everything to do with an understanding of oneself in relation to the larger whole.

A quote from Levinas:

“Justice would not be possible without the singularity, the unicity of subjectivity. In this justice subjectivity does not figure as a formal reason but as individuality: formal reason is incarnate in being only in the measure that losses its election and its equivalent to all others. Formal reason is incarnate only in a being who does not have the strength to suppose that, under the visible that is history, there is the invisible that is judgment.”

Same/difference.

[mrobot.livejournal.com]

god she sounds like a caricature. fear of fear itself? like whoa man thats some deep shit. it's hard to believe this was a real period in history. "it's like that doors song..."

also, while i love adam curtis' style, i think his arguments, especially in century of the self, can be spurious. it's just so reductive to think that the failure of 60s counter-culture was the cause of thatcherism. eh.

[roybelmont.livejournal.com]

While it's true enough that
"faith in unfettered individualism -- with its derision for, for instance, the discipline of communism -- leads fairly smoothly into the conservatism in which 'there's no such thing as society' and the self (the consumer) becomes all-important' "
and true enough as well that, for some,
"the experiments -- via drugs, encounter groups and EST -- of the 70s counter-culture did indeed break through the million membranes of the self, only to find nothing at the centre of the self's onion"
many of those who lived those times will insist that any accounting that lists only hedonistic and childishly self-indulgent factors, glaring and offensive as they may well be, yet elides entirely the viciousness and violent repression the larger culture dealt out to the vanguard of whatever that really was, not so much punk as what came before it, which never bloomed, only promised to, because it was never allowed to, is lacking much of what should be its substance.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think I do accept that Smith's beauty isn't ultimately separable from her philosophy.

But as for being miffed by identity politics, Smith's as miffed as I am: did you hear her listing feminism alongside Catholicism and communism in that first video clip? As soon as order begins to establish itself -- as soon as Dionysus starts giving way to Apollo -- she wants out. She doesn't seem to realise "the tyranny of structurelessness". And the tyranny of structurelessness is exactly why I find her song Gloria so boring.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think his argument is more that Thatcherism is caused by the success of 60s counterculture. But there's a sense in which the success of any alternative is always its undoing.

[bonsai-human.livejournal.com]

Whenever I see photos of Patti Smith I remember that she supposedly smells vile, and any kind of raw sexiness that she may exude pretty much dies then and there.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The Slits -- working at the same time as Patti in the 70s -- were, I think, light years ahead aesthetically. Patti seems like a 19th century figure compared to them. (http://imomus.livejournal.com/403645.html)

[girfan.livejournal.com]

She used to live with a friend of mine (early 70s NYC-some of her poems are dedicated to him and she co-wrote a song with his band) and I got to meet her-pre Horses/SNL fame).

I was most surpised to meet a slight, sort of shy woman, who exuded an air of charisma. It was rather fascinating to then see her rise to fame.

I last saw her at her Meltdown Festival at RFH, and was still mesmerised by her whenever she was onstage (this was the night she and many other musicians performed songs by Brecht).

philosophy by defiation is bullshit

[(Anonymous)]

shit comes out a horses arse and becomes bullshit
artist and there art is not to be scruntised and judged
you like or you dont
jesus was cruified by the jews or the catholics or the philosphers
who cares you like or you love or or what
some one wrote a scone called piss factory
anything else they did is forgiven cause is great art
your an artist or your not make art
you are to blame for the death of my neighbours or was that me
lets dicuss this with big words and congratulate ourseleves
because we are so fucking clever or just lonely and scared of the street

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

You put me off being a musician so much. Imagine if I did do what I wanted, and sang and sang... the slew of people judging my breasts, my looks and everything is enough to scare me away. No matter what I do. Even if I trolled everyone irl about it like Patti does, people would still judge me. And it would be taken seriously.

What am I going to do?

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"derision for, for instance, the discipline of communism -- leads fairly smoothly into the conservatism in which "there's no such thing as society" and the self (the consumer) becomes all-important."

You could also argue that unwavering belief in the governance ultimately leads to the repression of otherness where otherness is seen as being counterproductive to the ideology of the establishment. It's a thin line both sides are in danger of crossing.

You also need to stop using the word conservatism to tar everyone who isn't a fan of Communism. That word is too loaded and It's also not that simple.

"Liberals" come in two flavors -- Socialist and Libertarian. They share many political stances, except one believes we need a government to push the cause forward "for the greater good", and the other is extremely wary and dubious of any type of government ruling the masses. Patti Smith is the latter.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

[gemima-obrien.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed reading this. Patti was an inspiration for my final project at art college three years ago so it's brought back some memories.

[barnacle.livejournal.com]

It's a cliche along the lines of dancing about architecture, or maybe fishing about bicycles, but musicians---certainly those for whom much of their power rests in a combination of lyrics and an uncooperative attitude---should almost never be interviewed.

Morrissey, Joe Strummer, Patti Smith: they've all come across appallingly badly, even in favourable environments (e.g. Moz on Jools Holland).

[(Anonymous)]

Also, why would any future attempt at classless self-management and common ownership go back to a Puritan/Islamic/Communist/Military state (as opposed to society) that can only see structure in the atrophy of desires?

Have we learnt nothing from the 20th century?

[(Anonymous)]

You don't like Rimbaud?

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

It was either a review of some Patti Smith thing, or a review of some Larkin thing I read ages back that said that rock lyrics are bad because most rock poets only ever read Rimbaud, and they should read more Larkin. I'd agree.

[(Anonymous)]

"surprisingly good breasts" Are you joking? What makes you think you have the right to judge female bodies, to reduce a poet whose work and life far outstrips anything you've ever produced to her breasts. Funny little girl, or is it a boy, let's say an 'it' - some strange ideas there but hey, got to hand it to her, nice breasts, wouldn't mind a little suck on them myself! Any claims you make to progressiveness seem constantly undercut by your lingering misogyny, your fetish of 'oriental' women, or young girls with ideologically correct bodies. You should have the guts to get fucked hard in the ass by a male instead of just flirting with the idea. Maybe that would expand your middle aged jaundiced outlook? And before judging patti's or other women's bodies, take a look in the mirror.

[(Anonymous)]

I'll venture to guess here that Momus's problem with "the self" and its employment in debates such as this one is the same problem that I have with it: "Selfness" or whatever is not a value system, it's an absence of one. I mean, Patti Smith, exhibit A. In that interview, because she confused narcissism with philosophical inquest, she actually believed all that twaddle she was spouting to have been a statement of principles. "I can yell, I can put my fist in the air, I'm not down with your ism, I'm about head heart and hands." These are not tenets, they're poses for a mirror. But then, to her, once you've put tenets in place you're over there with the Catholics, the Communists, and various other squares. Strip a generation of values, and once they get tired of babbling like high-school dropouts from Fresno, their real impulses come out to play, and this is what leads to conservatism. Because conservatism is of course the political philosophy of SELF-interest. (Or more commonly, perceived self-interest but that's another story.)

Now, that doesn't mean that Patti Smith herself pulled a Dennis Hopper. It wouldn't have been in her interests to reformulate the Patti Smith brand of warmed over 60's nostalgia, anyway.

[hunchentoot.livejournal.com]

Some friends and I attended a concert featuring Patti Smith some years back and it was my first exposure to her music. Her concert was pretty obnoxious. After the show we were waiting by the stage to try to meet Philip Glass and while walking over to him she crossed in front of us with her hand out thinking that we were trying to meet her. We didn't even realize at first who she was and that she just performed music to us for 45 minutes and she saw this in our eyes during brief small talk and kind of stopped smiling and walked away. Then I felt like a jerk, but still didn't like her concert any better. Then I talked to Philip Glass.

[thomascott.livejournal.com]

Are the two mutually exclusive, Kuma?

http://www.spiked-online.com/
sp!ked: Humanity is underrated

[thomascott.livejournal.com]

Contrary to what some posters seem to believe I think seperating the aesthetic from the rational is the standard human-default setting.
To be honest I cannot help finding people attractive for what they have between the ears, the rational loans something fairly substantial to the aesthetic?
Fortunately Patti registers on neither personal scale so no conflict ensues!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Are the two mutually exclusive, Kuma?

Socialism and Libertarianism?

Theoretically it would be possible to have a libertarian society where people created institutions that distributed wealth equally. But it would depend entirely on the charity of the fortunate.

Socialists want to ensure that distribution of wealth isn't reliant on the whims of the rich, but that means having governments controlling people.

[orangefriendly.livejournal.com]

Separating the "rational and aesthetic", or maybe just the physical from the psychological, is quite easy when looking at a photograph of a topless woman. 80s Patti Smiths' music is obnoxious and dull, like most all of the just-discovered-sex-drugs-rock-n-roll genre. However, her tomboyishness, ill-fitting t-shirts, open fly jeans, scuffy hair; these things serve to make her pretty damn sexy. I wouldn't buy her record, but I wouldn't kick her out of bed either.

[st-ranger.livejournal.com]

No, we haven't.

[st-ranger.livejournal.com]

attack of the puritans again!

[st-ranger.livejournal.com]

I love you Momus but I still can't help but laugh when you call other people pretentious.

straw woman

[(Anonymous)]

straw woman argumentation

Vast oversimplification of diverse field of events in that time period.

Having said that, valuable insights there.

At the end though, especially in NA, the indie feeds the commune and vice versa, in a dynamic.
You are conflating(irresponsibly) 'unfettered individualism' with delirious poseur vapidity, trademark NYC idiocy, and yes that fed straight into the trap. If I introduce an iterative critique it's constant criticism, but the big poseurs on the scene (encouraged by offstage interests) will distract from far more important and meaningful developments of minority status and elusive manifestation, so you may be less aware of it.
This is unfinished and probably just confusing but times up. ..

I haven't bought Joemus yet, but the song I heard was wicked good. Nice harmonics in the choral modes. Likey.

!#2

[(Anonymous)]

Fucking jezus people!

Serious semantic rigour issues here.

try to distinguish things: ie, the difference between community configurations of economic or social or industrial activities which are mandated by central authority and those (perhaps identical structures) which are merely allowed to develop naturally, as it were, under an overall rubric which tolerates and encourages real diversity in these organizational configurations (in ecological and market terms, diversifying the gene/meme org pool).
There is no mutual exclusion, unless you choose to restrict outrageously the semantic content of certain terms.
Ie etc... There are many as yet unmanifested forms of capital and community, or only manifested in fringes maybe. My own sense is that the social organizational features of the USA for instance are rather artificially maintained and highly contingent; it's just sad and funny that people will spew out these hideous little deterministic formulae and put some label on it, like 'capitalist'. (so, in pragmatic perspective I think nothing good can happen until we improve the collective intelligence; my own evangelism)
...etc
-Libertarian leftist individualist communeialist- maybe a bit of a syndicalist too

[wringham.livejournal.com]

"stick insect with surprisingly good breasts"

Bloody hell, Momus. ALL breasts are good!

[hahawhat.livejournal.com]

That's true, and some are spectacular.

[hahawhat.livejournal.com]

I didn't watch the above clip, but I'm not surprised. She was no great lover or liver of "femininity," and in truth, how far off was that era of cultural feminism from the hyper-rigidity of Catholicism and totalitarian communism? Feminism still struggles with its legacy, and I’m constantly amazed to what extent. Thirty years later, I have the impulse to tell anyone who explicitly rejects the label "feminist" as not "human enough" they can get fucked, but back then, it seems very of the time. I'd be interested to know what her perspective is today, although truthfully I'm not sure how much I care; I tend to be more interested in the myth than the man, since the myth is what lives on.


In saying that, I have to appreciate your point more, because I actually kind of hate everything she’s ever SAID post her historical moment when I’m listening for anything other than aesthetic value; in her lyrics, in performance, in interviews. Her poetry sort of makes my insides curdle with its humorlessness and self-grandiosity. That is the part of her that kills me personally, so I tend to leave it out of my experience of her art and persona. But those are not the the things that I think she leaves behind.

Maybe I’m more curious as to why you’re able to appreciate her aesthetic away from her music, or where those things depart for you. I don’t really understand/hear music as a text and respond to it on a pretty reptilian level, so maybe you have a better insight on this. I’m not really sure I know what structurelessness sounds like, aside from maybe grotesque overly-indulgent noise music (I do live in Providence, RI however, and know the pain of that intimately), or else things that set out to be “structureless,” which in itself is structure enough. It sounds like you’re referring to something beyond that?

I suppose I just don’t see her as so indulgent, or where her consumption of counter/culture would avail itself to anomic exploitation. Self-aggrandizing, certainly, but the way she plucked from the signs and signals of the moment and would then rearrange them with (as you pointed out) such a great deal of care—that very same quality was the best part of her music. It was a labor of love and reverence. She borrowed from the objects of her obsession and created something completely her own, and it wasn’t derivative, and it wasn’t posturing in a cloak of impossible nihilism like punk had been before, and yet it was still punk. I’d argue fiercely so, more punk than punk knew how to be yet.

After watching the clip, I've got a million more things to say, but I'm sure I've said enough.

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

"Socialists want to ensure that distribution of wealth isn't reliant on the whims of the rich, but that means having governments controlling people."

Horror of horrors! Governments controlling people?
what on earth do you think is happening right now under the existing market system?

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

Quite. Smith comes across as a self important, emotionally immature teenager. it's actually pinful to me to hear her spouting this adolescent psycho-babble. 'Rebel without a clue'

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Governments controlling people? Why? Do you think I think we currently live in a society free of government rule?

It's all a matter of how much you allow the government to dictate the rules you can live by. I don't have a fixed opinion on how much that should be, or what those rules we should live by should be...

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Well, available breasts are damned fantastic, that's for certain.

Smith's boring, scuzzy, roachlike appearance always prevented any further interest in her.

[subalpine.livejournal.com]

it's funny, i've been trying to figure out the appeal of Patti Smith for a while now.. i've never really understood why she seemed to be such an important figure for Th Moore, for ex.

i just realized that Hidros 3 by Mats Gustafsson/S Youth is dedicated to Patti Smith - and that's a recording i've been listening to a lot the last couple months, though a little selectively; mostly the instrumental parts, like this:
http://www.fina-music.com/catalog/preview.html?id=100004170

i don't know Patti's music very well myself (though i'm honestly having a hard time coming up, off the top of my head, with a song i hold in derision more than Because the Night... and I'm still trying to erase the memory from my mind of ever hearing UA cover that song, UA who I normally enjoy listening to...)

i do have to say, though, that i did enjoy the recent recording of the Coral Sea when i heard it. to the extent that i'm glad you didn't post this until after i heard it -- now i'm wondering if i will enjoy it a little less the next time i hear it, after watching most of that interview in the first clip (which i had a little trouble making it through, esp. after around 'i can put my fist up in the air'...)

[st-ranger.livejournal.com]

Aww I think she's cute. But I've always been attracted to the scuzzy.

[mandyrose.livejournal.com]

Finally... I often feel like Patti Smith, when I'm dating men like Momus :)

My lover is a girlish boy, etc.