Dark Angel: Patti Smith
Shamanistic poet rocker, proto-punk icon, Patti Smith bridged art and pop culture in the 1970s to help give birth to a new dark aesthetic of music. Perhaps best known for her performance of Because the Night , co-penned with Bruce Springsteen, on her 1978 album Easter, Smith has been much more than her hit single.In her new memoir, Just Kids, she writes a beautiful, celebratory account of her first years away from home and her deep love affair with Robert Mapplethorpe, artist and photographer of the forbidden. Her life with Mapplethorpe in the late 1960s and early 70s cuts across the crumbling ruins of the Warhol art scene, the new royalty of rock and roll, classic American characters like magician and folk icon Harry Smith, and the romanticized realism of punk rock’s early years. It is a stunning account, beautifully written, sometimes darkly comic, and constantly evocative of the author’s dedication to the memory of her first love.
Smith’s body of work since those early years has maintained a steady stream of challenging words and music. Accompanied by guitarist Lenny Kaye and other musicians, she has produced albums that dazzle with lyrical power and celebrate timeless themes of death and rebirth. Her performances onstage are nearly magical, evoking rock and roll as the music of an urban religion that encompasses art, literature, dance, and the joy that sustains us even in the face of aching loss.
Dark angel, celebrant of the things that make us human and challenge our will to survive, muse and lover of the man who merged art and BDSM, Patti Smith reminds us of the power of art and music to transcend the night.
Patti Smith - Summer Cannibals (Official Music Video) - A funny movie is a click away
Posted by Angela Caperton at 5/26/2010 5:48 PM 
Categories: Music, Books, Dark Angels
Tags: Music Robert Maplethorpe Just Kids Patti Smith Dark Angels
Categories: Music, Books, Dark Angels
Tags: Music Robert Maplethorpe Just Kids Patti Smith Dark Angels
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