Patti Smith and Her Band
Bowery Ballroom, NYC
December 30, 2006
Article & Photos By Wayne
(SugarBuzz NYC)
SugarBuzz Magazine
In this town there’s no more perfect way to celebrate the passing of one year and to welcome in the new than with Patti Smith’s now traditional year-end run at the Bowery Ballroom. Usually occurring over three nights on December 29, the 30th which is Patti’s birthday (Lenny Kaye’s is two days earlier on the 28th) and on New Year’s Eve, these shows are never less than special with this year’s run marking Patti’s first official NYC performances since providng the final sets of live music at CBGB’s back in October.
Of course none of us could anticipate that these shows would also precede Patti’s long overdue induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame but there was nevertheless an energy and celebratory vibe to this performance on the 30th as I chose the night of her birthday to attend, the second of three Sold-Out performances in what is one of the finest venues New York City has left, imperfect as it is.
Having missed Richard Lloyd’s recent performances with Patti and Her Band I was hoping and anticipating he would play with her this night as he had several week’s earlier at both CB’s and at Glen Burtnick/Tony Shanahan’s Xmas Bash, yet as the band took the stage it was Television’s other guitarist and Patti’s former paramour Tom Verlaine in the lead guitar role which he filled for the entire show, always a treat even as TV worked his magic playing while sitting on a folding chair. The band was of course rounded out by longtime PSG cohorts Lenny Kaye and J.D. Daugherty along with bassist/keyboardist Tony Shanahan who‘s been on board nearly 15 years himself at this point and is an equally integral and irreplaceable member of this band.
Never receiving less than a deserved heroes hometown welcome when Patti appears in NYC, she began by describing how she’d woken that morning to an answering machine message left by Ralph Nader singing Happy Birthday to her before urging Patti to never forget that people have the power which is exactly what happened as Patti and Her Band along with the entire room exploded into an anthemic “People Have The Power” to open the show. This was quickly followed by “Privelege (Set Me Free)” and a too long unheard (by me) “Ask The Angels” and this show had rapidly reached high altitude.
After the audience sang Happy Birthday to Patti for the first of two times that night another batch of new and old favorites followed with “1959”, “Dancing Barefoot”, “Pissing In The River”, “Space Monkey” and “Didn’t Say Nothing” before Patti welcomed Jackson Smith to the stage, the son she conceived with the MC5’s Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, Jackson has become a terrific player himself and with a lineage like that how could he not? First up was a long, unwinding and building “Beneath The Southern Cross” and Jackson too would remain for the duration of the show with frequent displays of the obvious joy this mother and her son had playing together on her birthday.
Patti and Her Band are currently working on her next album project which will be a collection of covers and the first of the new covers performed which I’m guessing might be on the album was a tight, slinky version of The Doors’ “Soul Kitchen”. With Jackson at her side she next spoke of Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith before playing “Frederick” the hit love song to her departed husband following this with a cover of “Everybody Hurts” which in hindsight seems almost a premonition of her imminent induction into the Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame concurrently with R.E.M. and her friend Michael Stipe.
A gorgeous “Peaceable Kingdom” followed before it was time to ‘kick out the jams’ with a long, pounding medley that began with “Bo Diddley” the namesake tune of the legend Patti shares her December 30th birthday with, leading into “Gonna Have A Funky Good Time” and “Living In America” in obvious tribute to the great recently departed James Brown, eventually turning into Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” coming full circle to the beginning with the Bo Diddley beat that inspired it.
The ensemble fully charged they followed with an improvisational number as Patti improvised poetry and spoken word over the band‘s groove before a cake with candles was wheeled out as once again the audience sang Happy Birthday to Patti. Time for one last tribute as Lenny Kaye sang a sweet “Sixteen Candles” by The Crests directly to his friend and creative partner.
“What’s next?” asked Patti and an audience request for “Because The Night” prompted “good idea!” and a high energy performance of the song following to end the set proper. This was after all still the night before New Year’s Eve so a quick encore gave us another possible peek at the impending covers album as the band closed with a heroic, defiant and fist-pumping version of the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” and it was all over.
Over for the Bowery Ballroom anyway, since this being NYC at 1am the night was just heating up and there was plenty of time left before the curse of daylight. Before the sunrise, this night would go on to feature finding myself in the middle of a bar brawl at Manitobas, getting slammed up against the jukebox as it played The Stooges and watching Handsome Dick break it all up . . . Punk As Fuck!!