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CBGB_SECOND_AVE
December 3, 2005
In many respects I feel like I didn't
make much use of my proximity to New
York City when I was a teenager...
But one thing that I did right was that
I saw Patti Smith play many times, on a
half-dozen occasions in just the space of
a few years.
Perhaps the best:
New Year's Eve at
CBGB's Second Avenue, ("Second Avenue" was CBGB's
at the end of 1977. attempt at expansion: a
large old theater complete
with balcony.)
"Richard Hell and the Voidoids" played first,
a band I was glad to see, since I was almost
as big a fan of Richard Hell as of Patti Smith.
Robert Quine's guitar
playing on that first
Voidoids album completely I asked an older
blew me away. I'd never friend if he had INWOOD_ANGEL
heard anything like it knew of anything
before. like it...
And Richard Hell's He said "Some
lyrics were amazing... Beefhart is like
heavy and funny at that."
same time. "Love
Comes in Spurts" Years later,
was notable for not I sort of know
being just a dirty what he meant...
joke... but I don't think
that Beefhart
A dream of a love ever did anything
"insane with to equal it.
devotion", changes
with the knowledge:
"Love comes in spurts,
in dangerous flirts,
and it murders your heart,
they didn't tell you that part!"
But the really seminal track
was "Blank Generation", a
defining "anthem" for the (Essentially ripped off
first punks. by the Sex Pistols:
"Pretty Vacant").
Seeing Hell on stage was excellent--
he seemed under-mic'ed, but then
I don't think you could ever make
him out without a lyric sheet under
any circumstances.
He had a remarkable piece of
stage schtick, where he would
look disoriented, and begin
stumbling around the stage, then
suddenly lurch back toward the Jagger has his swagger,
mic just in time to grab it and But Hell has the stagger.
go into the next verse.
But the rest of the
audience seemed cold
to him...
Then Patti Smith hit the stage dancing
(the entire crowd surged to their feet)
and she didn't stop once through out the A grey herringbone
entire set (and neither did the crowd). suit jacket flared
around her as she
ponied and pirouetted
She was doing a brilliant with the mic in her hand.
job throughout this show,
but I was continually (She *did* take
distracted by the problem the jacket off
of trying to find an unobstructed after awhile.)
view, shuffling around to different
parts of the balcony without being
too obnoxious about it.
We were packed elbow to elbow with
barely any room to breath -- except
perhaps the extreme back rows of the
balcony where people were going down on
each other.
And (can you believe it?) the New York
Fire Marshalls decided to shut this
scene down (What, overcrowded? Really?).
The band bargained for "one more song"
and they slid into the 20 minute long
"Radio Ethiopia".
And after that they tried to sneak
in still another song, kicking into
something hard and fast -- Patti Smith
signalling the band with the hammer
sign, pounding the air with her fist --
but the Fire Marshalls cut the power
out from under them (and *still* the
band kept going, playing acoustic-only
for a minute or so...).
The Toadkeeper later
admitted "that was
And that was it for the noble the best concert I'd
experiment of CBGB's Second Avenue. ever been to."
TOADKEEPER
I couldn't remember the year
of this myself, but from this
I gather it was the close of 1977:
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