From: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org (idealcopy-digest) To: idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Subject: idealcopy-digest V8 #172 Reply-To: idealcopy@smoe.org Sender: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk idealcopy-digest Monday, June 27 2005 Volume 08 : Number 172 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [idealcopy] RE:I am helium raven and this movie is mine ["Keith Knight" <] [idealcopy] OT: Television , London QEH ["David McKenzie" ] Re: [idealcopy] RE:I am helium raven and this movie is mine [Tim Subject: [idealcopy] RE:I am helium raven and this movie is mine - -----Original Message----- From: owner-idealcopy@smoe.org [mailto:owner-idealcopy@smoe.org] On Behalf Of PaulRabjohn@aol.com looking forward to a report on the "horses" gig , that could be special. P - ------------------------------------------------- Ask, Paul, and you shall receive. Aside from the performance of Horses straight through it was a bit unclear what to expect tonight so it was a pleasant surprise to find John Cale in support for an hour, with a band of up to 8 people, playing stuff from the early Cale solo catalogue. At least, as far as I could tell - this performance exposed that there are albums there - Paris 1919, Vintage Violence - that I'm not at all familiar with. Most of the time I find I like the idea of Cale - an uncompromising figure with a secure place in rock mythology - more than the reality. He's not, I think, a great songwriter or user of noise - too much of his oeuvre doesn't latch on to my attention while listening to it. But I have great memories of the 1975 pre-punk tour with a tight leather-clad four piece including Chris Spedding and it's good to hear some of those songs in a live context again. 'Fear' is great and the set ends with a thrilling segue of 'Me and My Gun' and 'Pablo Picasso'. After the break it's Patti. I saw her last year for the first time in two decades and had been impressed with her continuing energy and commitment. Tonight, way up in the balcony, she looks iconographic wearing the same clothes - white shirt, black jacket and tie and black trousers - as on the Horses cover. Her hair's pretty unchanged too. The band look in reasonable shape too - Lenny Kaye, Jay Dee Daugherty, is that Tom Verlaine sat at the back throughout? There is a real air of expectancy in the audience - lots of heckling and calling - and one feels that a number has tapped into most of the earlier Meltdown gigs over the past few weeks, when Patti has put on a host of stuff. My relationship with Horses is ancient. Bought soon after release on the back of the NME review I was so taken with it that not only was it my favourite album of 1975 (an accolade now given to The Hissing of Summer Lawns) but I travelled by coach from Lancaster to London to see her perform in late 76, staying in some Paddington flophouse in student penury. I know every note of this album intimately. Tonight does not disappoint. The opening of 'Gloria' is still electrifying after all these years - what a great opening statement of intent. This is still a regular in the set-list so the band eat it up, Patti playing the audience's need to sing (and it is very difficult not to yell, 'Gloria' when the time comes). 'Redondo Beach' is taken slower than the album with some hesitancy. I suspect 'Birdland' hasn't had an outing for a while but it's handled brilliantly, Patti using a lyric book to assist in the poetic stretches. What a weird song this is and one wonders if even Patti knows what it's about now. But the levels of emotion in the scenes of ecstatic abduction ('Like a fist that's gonna shoot them up, Like light, Like Mohammed Boxer') are intact. After this, 'Free Money' is a rock romp, like on the record. 'Side Two' announces Patti laconically and it's 'Kimberley'. I've had a slight problem with this song ever since I saw Patti yelling at her sister who was performing with her at a gig in Bremen in the late 70s, but it's still a hell of a song to write about a family member. 'Break it Up' asserts its authority and then it's time for 'Land'. Out comes the lyric book again unsurprisingly. The 'Horses, horses, coming in in all directions, white shining silver studs with their nose in flames' section is still utterly thrilling. As the song progresses it's freeform nature leads to it breaking down a little but than it becomes clear that this is because Patti is bringing the song back to Gloria for a crowning finale. Which is not how the album ends, but so what? Patti pitches her jacket over her shoulder in an unconscious imitation of the album cover and off they. Encores are taken from the early era too - Piss Factory, Pissing in the River, My Generation (where the 'special guest' disappointingly turns out to be Flea rather than Pete Townsend) and something else I didn't recognise. Patti joins in mid-song banter, urging us all to regularly get out teeth cleaned and getting political, dissing Bush and exhorting the young generation to rise up - although there's some young people here tonight I feel she's addressing the wrong audience though. At the end of My Generation Jay Dee Daugherty impressively falls into his drum kit demolishing most of it. Patti has been saying that she had accidentally missed a song off the album but it's difficult to believe that she hasn't saved 'Elegie' to last and as she sings 'but I think it's sad, it's much too bad, That our friends can't be with us today' she name checks Robert Mapplethorpe, Todd Smith, Fred 'Sonic' Smith and Richard Sohl. And that's it. It's been a real pleasure. Right now Patti Smith is a performer at the top of her game, with an energy level and commitment fired up (if anything) since the 70s. There's every indication she can go on like this for years yet. Another tick in the box for the Old Farts. Another the Keith ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 08:13:58 -0500 From: "David McKenzie" Subject: [idealcopy] OT: Television , London QEH The reviewer seems to have missed a fundamental aspect of Television: Improvisation: Not the save 12 bar blues, mix 'n' match of the two guitarist Lloyd was placed with (Vaughn and Beck), but the bi-polar variety of a Jerry Garcia. Indeed, Television has far more in common with the Dead than The Jeff Beck Group To bring it back to focus, this made me think of where wire falls in the impro dichotomy. I think they tend towards the right, but remain more focused and consistent because their improvisational excursions generally center around one chord - a construct which lends at least the appearance of focus Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 10:22:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Derek White Subject: [idealcopy] OT: Television , London QEH Here's another reveiw, from Thursday's Independent:- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 00:21:55 +0100 From: "Keith Knight" Subject: RE: [idealcopy] quiet list I think Andrew has hit the nail here and it potentially poses a long-term issue if Wire are to lie fallow for some time (for good?). We will only have the solo work, retrospectives and memories to sustain us. Hence the regular forays into off-piste (although rarely wooded off-piste) subjects. For what it's worth I enjoy being in this group of people which is by far the best online community I'm a member of. I'm in some fora, but they're nowhere near as interesting. Some have posts days or weeks apart and a dispiriting amount of spam. I'm reasonably happy as is, but if the majority - or Miles - want differently... Another the Keith - -----Original Message----- From: owner-idealcopy@smoe.org [mailto:owner-idealcopy@smoe.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Walkingshaw (If IC moves to a forum, that'd be a shame, but that doesn't mean a forum's a bad idea per-se. Mostly there's just a limit about how much you can talk about one band when they aren't active, though.) Andrew ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 00:55:40 +0100 From: Tim Subject: Re: [idealcopy] RE:I am helium raven and this movie is mine > Right now Patti Smith is a performer at the top of her game, with an > energy level and commitment fired up (if anything) since the 70s. > There's every indication she can go on like this for years yet. Another > tick in the box for the Old Farts. > > Another the Keith > Did anyone catch her reading 'The Coral Sea' with Kevin (My Bloody Valentine) Shields on guitar? Apparently, kev sat on a sofa surrounded by guitars and fx pedals while PS read. A friend of mine went and said it moved her to tears (of joy I hasten to add!) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 04:32:29 +0100 (BST) From: Monochromatic Man Subject: [idealcopy] Another time waster... No Wire content http://www.albartus.com/motas Visit my sites for music downloads: http://home.earthlink.net/~xj23/ http://home.earthlink.net/~2signs/ http://home.netcom.com/~keepleft/ ------------------------------ End of idealcopy-digest V8 #172 *******************************