On the way down to see Shonen Knife in DC, my stomach suffered an unfortunate turn of contents while Patti Smith's Easter blared from the car stereo. With the aftertaste still fresh in my mind a month later, I shared with Patrick my hunch that our ride down to see Patti Smith in DC should not be accompanied by a Shonen Knife record, lest peristalsis occur yet again. Perpetual bud nippers, we opted for The Hot Rock by Sleater Kinney.
It was a pissy rainy Friday when 'Trick's sleek black Honda left the driveway around 7:30 for the familiar trek to the 9:30 Club. Anyone who's read a few of my DC concert reviews knows that the path to any venue in our nation's capital as laid by the J & P Show runs down Georgia Avenue, and that the closer we get to our destination, the more urban the surrounding area becomes.
You might think that after innumerable times passing by illuminated, haphazardly decorated chunks of buildings, my passenger seat wistfulness would have ebbed into nothingness. Yet every time my eyes catch hold of a multi-tasking eatery, I smile in wonder. You know 'em--those overreaching establishments that offer up any combination of the following foods while almost never boasting any as a specialty: "seafood, soul food, Chinese, chicken, pizza, subs, burgers, wings". I adore these joints for their desire to be so much to many, sacrificing quality for quantity because they can.
Not like I'd ever eat at any of those places. Or would I?
And it was just as we passed the illustrious Wonder Chicken that I was struck. What if...I gathered a group of friends for a weekend in DC spent bouncing place to place, each of us tackling different food types and giving grades? (And no one would try the same food twice, i.e., if you had Chinese grub in one place, you couldn't have it anywhere else.) The end results would make a fun survey for the blog and gnarly greasy chow for the clog.
Yeah, on my way to see the grand poetess of punk and that is what's gripping my imagination.
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The steady rain unearthed the 9:30 Club's scarcely-seen compassionate side. Right as Patrick and I exited the parking lot at the rear of the venue, we saw folks being granted early access via the "Back Bar" at the side of the club. So there we stood, in our non-B boy stance, umbrella-less, waiting. My brand new black jacket with the thick buttons was heavy enough to provide significant warmth but it increasingly made me feel like a boll weevil as I gazed around at all these petite broads in my mist. Eventually, the bar filled, and us sundry unluckies were ordered back to the club facade. The precipitation continued, and I found myself having to frequently remove my glasses and wipe them down.
"They should make windshield wipers for glasses."
"They did...do," Patrick said. "I've seen them."
"Yeah, but those are novelty right? I mean like wipers for prescription glasses."
"Ah, yes. Not yet."
The oldest crowd we have ever been a part of, that much was certain even before they let us in. There was a strong presence of people I don't hesitate to call "hippies", but not in the way a surface-satiated mass would identify the members of said group. These were "mental hippies".
One was in front of us yakking with some friends, and wouldn't hush whether you called his name or not. He saw Patti 30 years ago in Central Park! She was way drunk and wayer determined to methodically strum her guitar until every string snapped clean off. She succeeded!
His best story had to do with the 9:30, though. I missed how long ago it was, and the acts performing that night, but here's the gist.
He and some good friends were in the crowd, waiting around for the headlining act to take stage. Things were wine and candy till one of the guys had to head off to the toilet. He asked a pal to hold his beer. Fine; except this woman clutching the non-bubbly had forgotten her ID and thus did not have a hand stamp permitting her to enjoy alcohol in any way. She was swamped down upon by eerily vigilant security, who informed her that she had violated club policy and would have to vacate the briar patch posthaste. Her friends protested, and the subsequent stink was so foul that club management was summoned. Thankfully, a compromise was reached.
Just when we thought the story had served its purpose of revealing the inflexibility of the average rock club, dude delivered the punchline. The woman of the story, the one at threat of being kicked out because she dared hold a beer in a hand that lacked a stamp? She was 60 years old.
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Front row was out of the question. I staked out a spot on the floor while Patrick sought relief. I stood off to the left, clocking no more than 30-40 peeps gathered 'round the front. No one very tall, either. I exhaled and reminded myself of Concert Rule 283. What's that?
283: If you decide to claim a spot on the floor--the most crammed and thus amorphous area of a typical club gig--do not definitively place yourself anywhere until you have subjected it to the following test: from wherever you are, imagine yourself six feet in front of, behind, and on either side of. Would any of these spots still be adequate by your standards? Would sight lines suffer? Would acoustics suffer? This is not a "what-if" scenario, friends; this is an inevitability. As people pour in and mull around, as they brusquely maneuver through the breathing forest before them, you will be relocated. Resolving to stand firm is unnecessary and fruitless, albeit still rather cute.
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Patti Smith--aided and abetted by a whip lash band consisting of Lenny Kaye, Jay Dee Daugherty, Tony Shanahan and son Jackson--put on a show approaching 2 hours and 20 minutes in length, the longest I have ever seen for one performer.
The setlist was a mix of originals and covers (clearly Patti is still in the "redo" state o' mind evoked last April with the release of her all-remakes collection Twelve). It was Smith's own anthemic treats that most galvanized the gathered, songs like "Redondo Beach", "Because the Night"' and "People Have the Power" (last song of the eve, dotted with exhortations to use the vote), inspiring middle-aged concertgoers who knew better to scream themselves hoarse as they propelled their careworn bodies into the air.
For me, though, the covers stole the show. "Are You Experienced?" was exotically intoxicating, buoyed by fucking clarinet, of all instruments (not necessarily stoned...but classical); "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was slowed to a strut, an ideal platform for a woman aged 60 to take wrought lyrics penned by a grimey geek in his early twenties and loft them back up into the air with hoarse grace, seeing if they can float with all the added weight. As she is wont to do, Smith added her own spoken word, referencing tiger maulings at one point. I don't think that had anything to do with the recent San Francisco zoo tragedy, but it made me proud of the DC Zoo, for sure.
"White Rabbit" was hilarious, Patti waxing rapturous over a recent Italian production of Tristan and Isolde that included a recapping of the plot ("King Mark?") and a fuzzy yarnball wherein she approached the set after the play was done, partook of the prop potions and began eating the Jello-seeming setting. The director reproached her until he realized: "Oh--Patti Smiths!" After a few more minutes of devouring the planks, she noticed his head turn white and fuzzy, with long ears hanging down the side and, well--"Aren't you late?" Then straight into the song, Patti and crowd exhorting "Feed your head!" until one imagines even Ian MacKaye was converted. (Yes, he was there.)
The only cover that didn't surpass the source material was "Perfect Day". Don't mistake me, it was wonderful in the way you would expect one poet laureate covering another would be. But it came up short due to two factors, the first being the utter sublimity of Lou Reed's original, and the second being Smith's admittedly amusing inability to remember some of the lyrics ("It's such a perfect day/This is the part of the song where I can never remember the words/So I always make something up/Isn't it fun").
Not only was the whole band in near-peak form, Patti's stage banter was a veritable clinic in audience engagement. Not like she had to win anyone over, but she was clearly thrilled to be in DC, making her a rare bird indeed. When she wasn't dissing Romper Room or detailing her flirtations with Tom Verlaine ("'Why don't we go to the bathroom and poop in the toilet at the same time?' That's how I got him"), she was owning some super-tall redheaded shoulda-been-a-stepchild near us who kept yelling what he thought was witty stuff in between songs. He finally stopped over his "oh-isn't-that delightfully-funny!" exhortations to "play something with some heart!" first caused Patti to wonder if he was yelling about a "hard on" and then ended with her making fun of him. "Har har har! I can't understand this guy." Humbled, he moved from in front of me, and scurried to some other remote area of the venue, where, hopefully, he was able to enjoy the show now that he could not successfully interject himself into it.
Lenny Kaye got a solo turn with "Pushin' Too Hard", under the pretext of Patti going to the bathroom. Upon her return, she admitted that she actually used the time out to "check out boys".
"I'm lookin' for a man. I need someone to build me bookcases." Which is probably the hardest I've ever laughed at a concert. Wonder why they call you Goddess!
Mostly the people around me were all right, even the 40-ish dude in the backwards white Navy ball cap who kept guzzling beer after beer, and responding to every high energy song by loudly asking his wife and daughter (?) if they were "feeling it". I was feeling it for awhile, certainly. "It" being the desire to grab one of them in the Von Erich claw, push them up against the speaker stack and increase the pressure till all the blood vessels in their head popped and they started shrieking like a Redead.
Midway through the set I was briefly joined to my left (and in front of Patrick) by a couple that looked about our age. The dude looked perfectly Pitchfork with his short cut and glasses, while his girlfriend had even shorter hair and wobbled back and forth with a red cup. They only stayed around for one song, during which time the drunk bitch decided to talk to the older woman and her daughter in front of us. "My mom died yesterday", she slurred, met with a response of clinking cups in sympathy and the words of semi-concern that only a complete fucking stranger you just met at a concert can muster. I was fortunate, I suppose, that no one caught my smirk. Your mom died, big fuck deal. My dad died this year, too, day before my birthday in fact. Who gives a shit. It's a goddamn concert I paid for, not your life story.
Some of the crowd reaction was good. I loved the girl in the way back who yelled "Eat my pussy!" But some of them were trying too hard, slightest provocation and they're off: "We're not Republicans!" Or, "It's not all about the money!" Which, you could put those two statements together and they'd fit, huh? Heh.
Throughout the night, Patti apologized for her "rough" voice, which was hilarious for a couple reasons. First off, she has never been known for dulcet vocals, and second, she did a shocking, heckler-proof version of "O Holy Night", probably the Christmas song that proves once and for all if a singer has chops or not. Does Patti have chops, then? Straight barbecued pork! As weird as it may have sounded for the woman who wrote "Jesus died for somebodys sins/But not mine" crooning an ode to the birth of the babe Christ, it was also captivating and even comforting. No fear guides this woman. None whatsoever.
Somehow, the guy with the Navy cap and his wife slow-dancing and lipsynching in front of me throughout certified those minutes as perfect. I'll never forget it.
Patti Smith 9:30 Club
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