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"Smith Uncovered: A Reinterpretation of the Songs of Patti Smith"
TAP Milwaukee (August 25th 2014): "On Oct. 18, Alverno Presents will present "Smith Uncovered: A Reinterpretation of the Songs of Patti Smith," the latest in its series (Stephen Foster, Marvin Gaye) of taking apart the music of greats and putting it back together. Betty Strigens of Testa Rosa will curate the concert, whose announced performers include members of Die Kreuzen, Hello Death and Nineteen Thirteen. Strigens and her collaborators have given themselves no small challenge: Smith's music -- both her songs and her style of performance -- is so personal and idiosyncratic. It will be fun to see what they come up with. The Alverno concert has given me the pe rfect opportunity -- or excuse -- to revisit Smith's music in a new series."

"Smith was born in Chicago in 1946, then grew up in Philadelphia and New Jersey. Her parents were working class (her mom a waitress) and raised Smith as a Jehovah's Witness. She reflected on the latter experience in a 2005 interview with the New York Times about her roots: " 'The song that most touches on my upbringing is "Gloria," ' she said, referring to the Van Morrison classic first recorded by Them and the opening track of 'Horses,' 'because it reflects my struggles with organized religion.' '' 'Religious education as a Jehovah's Witness is very scripturally centered -- we read the Bible quite a bit,' she said. 'I got a good education, but I didn't like the shackles.' " After graduating from high school, Smith attended Glassboro State Teachers College (now Rowan University) in New Jersey, but dropped out after she became pregnant. After giving birth in 1967, Smith placed her daughter for adoption. She worked on a factory assembly line (an experience that showed up in her early song "Piss Factory") to save up money to move to New York in 1967, where she met Robert Mapplethorpe, who became her roommate and lover and remained her friend until his death. Their relationship is the subject of her remarkable memoir, "Just Kids".

Just Kids available also an audio book read by Patti Smith herself
HarperCollins has released the book Just Kids also as an audio book with 10 hours / 9 CDs. The book is read by Patti Smith herself.

The publisher: "Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame."

Patti Smith receives IAH Medal at Penn State
Onwardstate.com: "The Institute for the Arts and Humanities awarded its eighth annual "Medal for Distinguished Achievement" award to punk rock pioneer Patti Smith. The medal presentation was followed by with an eclectic Q&A session and, of course, a highly-anticipated acoustic performance by Smith and long-time guitarist Lenny Kaye."

(--) "Smith expressed her feelings about the current state of the world, calling out the "bullshit" of environmental destruction and political corruption. She also adopted unexpected optimism in regard to the potential of the rising generations, likening the digital age to the "new frontier," a "Wild West." "We're living in a time that never existed before. This is the era where everybody creates," she said."

'CBGB' movie features 65 songs
Rollingstone.com: "The famed downtown New York City music venue CBGB has been closed for seven years now, but its legacy lives on through the many iconic and enduring punk and New Wave acts who got their start there in the 1970s, among them the Ramones, Blondie, the Talking Heads, the Dead Boys, Television and Patti Smith."

(--) "Now the story of the Lower East Side club and its founder is being told in a new movie dramatization, CBGB, directed and co-written by Randall Miller. Among the actors are Alan Rickman (Hilly Kristal), Malin Akerman (Debbie Harry), Taylor Hawkins (Iggy Pop), Mickey Sumner (Patti Smith) and Rupert Grint (the Dead Boys' Cheetah Chrome). The movie will premiere in New York City at the CBGB Festival on October 8th before opening nationwide on the 11th."

(--) "Actress Mickey Sumner portrays punk poet Patti Smith. Sumner is the daughter of singer-bassist Gordon Sumner, better known as Sting, whose younger self, played by actor Keene McRae, is depicted in the movie with the Police. "We were having a hard time figuring out who can play Patti Smith, because it's a very specific look and a very iconic person," says Miller. "It turns out Mickey is a tremendous Patti Smith fan, loves her writing. She actually asked permission from Patti to play her. She looks amazing in it. She really got it down."

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
NME.com: The official soundtrack will be released on November 19. A song titled Capital Letter by Patti Smith will be featured on the soundtrack.

Also, the Huffington Post tells us that Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of "Inside Llewyn Davis" features music by Patti Smith.

Patti Smith contributes The Mermaid Song to Son of Rogue's Gallery
Read about the recording of pirate songs and listen to The Mermaid Song at the New Yorker website.

"At 66 Patti Smith shows no sign of mellowing"
The Guardian: "By 1978, she was heading towards mainstream stardom: Because The Night reached the top five in the UK and her Easter album the top 20. Then she gave it all up. Why? Three reasons, she says. In 1977, she fell off the stage, fractured her back in four places and broke her skull (she needed 42 stitches in her head). She was never as mobile again. Then she fell in love with Fred "Sonic" Smith and married him. Finally, she says, she found fame too corrosive. "I didn't have time to read, I wasn't studying, wasn't writing. I was basically promoting, going to radio stations, performing, battling bronchitis because there was so much smoke in venues. I thought, I see a lot of potential fame and fortune, but I don't see a lot of human evolution. Nothing will stifle your human evolution more than fame and fortune." How? "It doesn't do a whole lot for making you a better person. I found myself being more demanding, or spoilt." Was she horrible? She balks at the suggestion. "No, just impatient, agitated. The main thing was I didn't think I was producing anything of extraordinary worth."

"Patti Smith in Bronte tribute gig"
BBC News: "The US artist was in Howarth, Yorkshire, to play a fundraising concert for the Bronte society, which runs a museum dedicated to Charlotte and Emily's books."

The Coral Sea performance on May 18th 2013
"To celebrate the exhibition opening of Patti Smith: The Coral Sea, the Contemporary Arts Center is excited to present an intimate, one-night-only performance by the artist. For this special engagement, Smith will be accompanied by her bassist and on piano by her daughter, Jesse Smith, on piano for a rare performance of The Coral Sea, as well as various songs from her extensive and celebrated repertoire." The events take place at The Contemporary Arts Center in Ohio.

Cowboy Mouth produced in the UK in November 2012
Press info: "Patti Smith, legendary punk-poet. Sam Shepard, revered playwright. Their brief relationship in the 1970s was fraught, a passionate yet all-too brief meeting of minds. 'Cowboy Mouth' is the result. Composed on one typewriter in their room at the Hotel Chelsea, the play offers an eccentric glimpse of these artists at the very start of their career, through the eyes of their projected characters, Slim and Cavale, holed up together in a room. They fight, tell each other stories, and are surrounded by rock'n'roll, French poetry and the potential of separation at every verbal turn. They wait daily for the Lobster Man, who brings them food, and perhaps for something more, for 'un cavale': an escape."

Cavale, played by Jessica O'Driscoll
Breen Slim, played by Tom Russell
Directed by Jack Parlett
Produced by Stephanie Aspin

Corpus Playroom, 10 St Edward's Passage, Cambridge, Britain

Patti Smith and the Band live in Stockholm, Sweden
My photos from the amazing gig.

Touring Banga
Patti shares her thoughs about the album and tour in a website diary: "The worse part, besides saying goodbye to my daughter Jesse, is picking out what books to take. I decide this will be essentially a Haruki Murakami tour. So I will take several of his books including the three volume IQ84 to reread." The diary will also include the Banga lyrics.

New album "Banga" out in june 2012
Consequence of Sound: "Entitled Banga, the 12-track effort was recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York City and produced by Smith and her band of Tony Shanahan, Jay Dee Daugherty, and long-time collaborator Lenny Kaye. In addition, Television frontman Tom Verlaine, Jack Petruzzelli, Smith’s son Jackson and daughter Jesse Paris appear as featured guests. According to a press release, Banga was “inspired by Smith’s unique dreams and observations” and its “poetic lyrics are a reflection of our complex world – a world that is rife with chaos and beauty.” Appropriately, the album’s lead single, “April Fool”, is now available through digital retailers. Other tracks include a ballad in memory of Amy Winehouse (“This Is The Girl”), a rock song for the people of Japan in the wake of last year’s earthquake (“Fuji-san”), and a birthday song written for her friend Johnny Depp (“Nine”)."

Tracklist:

01. Amerigo
02. Fuji-san
03. April Fool
04. This is the Girl
05. Banga
06. Maria
07. Tarkovsky (The Second Stop is Jupiter)
08. Mosaic
09. Nine
10. Seneca
11. Constantine’s Dream
12. After the Gold Rush

Occupy This Album
From press release: "Legendary and emerging artists inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement have come together to lend their voices on Occupy This Album: a compilation of music by, for and inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement and the 99% (CD/Digital). Released by Music For Occupy through Razor & Tie distribution, the four-disc physical and 99-track digital compilation is due out May 15th. Proceeds received will go directly to the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began in the financial district of New York on Sept. 17, 2011. The movement can now be found in 951 cities in 83 countries on five continents. On May 8th The City Winery in New York will host a special night of performances by participating artists and surprise guests.

Album features never before released tracks From Ani DiFranco, UNKLE, David Amram, Joan Baez, Tom Chapin, Willie Nelson, Rain Phoenix, Patti Smith, Anti Flag, Girls Against Boys, Garland Jeffreys, New Party Systems Featuring Kyp Malone, Yoko Ono, Amanda Palmer, Dar Williams, The Mammals Featuring Pete Seeger, David Crosby & Graham Nash, George Martinez & The Global Block Collective, Jackson Browne, and Yo La Tengo."

Patti Smith: Camera Solo
An exhibition of photographs by Patti Smith at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, CT, from October 21st 2011 - February 19th 2012.

A new publication of Woolgathering
Publisher information: "In this small, luminous memoir, the National Book Award–winner Patti Smith revisits the most sacred experiences of her early years, with truths so vivid they border on the surreal. The author entwines her childhood self—and its "clear, unspeakable joy"—with memories both real and envisioned from her twenties on New York's MacDougal Street, the street of cafés. Woolgathering was completed, in Michigan, on Patti Smith's 45th birthday and originally published in a slim volume from Raymond Foye's Hanuman Books. Twenty years later, New Directions is proud to present it in an augmented edition, featuring writing that was omitted from the book's first printing, along with new photographs and illustrations."

Outside Society - a compilation album out now
Release information: "Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductee, Patti Smith's first career-spanning single CD collection, OUTSIDE SOCIETY, contains 18 signature songs, remastered from all ten of Smith's studio albums. The chronologically arranged tracks move from her 1975 debut album, Horses ("Gloria", "Free Money"), through her last release in 2007, Twelve ("Smells Like Teen Spirit"). The liner notes features brief recollections of each song written by Patti, who personally supervised the song choices."

Patti Smith and Kronos Quartet win Polar Music Prize
BBC News (May 3rd 2011): "King Carl XVI Gustaf will present each act with their one million kronor (£100,000) prize at a gala ceremony in Stockholm on 30 August. Previous winners include Sir Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder and composer Ennio Morricone.The Royal Swedish Academy of Music praised musician and poet Smith, 64, for "devoting her life to art in all its forms". "Patti Smith has demonstrated how much rock'n'roll there is in poetry and how much poetry there is in rock'n'roll. "She has transformed the way an entire generation looks, thinks and dreams," the academy added.

Rundgren Radio with Lenny Kaye on April 26th 2011
"Lenny Kaye is an American guitarist, composer and writer who is best known as a member of the Patti Smith Group. He will be a camp counselor at Todd Rundgren's upcoming "TR's Musical Survival Camp" this June."

Patti Smith at Archives of American Art on May 17th 2011
"In a special evening benefiting the Archives of American Art, artist, poet, and musician Patti Smith will give a performance featuring artists’ love letters from the Archives’ collections."

To Japan with Love. Benefit for Japan March 29th 2011

Michael Stipe & Patti Smith’s “walk-in performance” at MoMA
Consequence of Sound: "While you were watching the Giants’ 4th quarter collapse to the Eagles, Patti Smith and R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe made a trip to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where they honored the 100th birthday of French writer/political activist Jean Genet with a “walk-in” performance in the middle of the museum. Stipe opened with a cover of David Bowie’s song about Genet, “The Jean Genie”, before Smith dropped a 20-minute improvisation of Genet’s biography. "

Patti Smith's Just Kids is the 2010 National Book Award Winner for nonfiction
National Book Foundation has awarded Patti Smith's Just Kids with the 2010 National Book Award. "In Just Kids, Patti Smith’s first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work—from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry. "

The New York Times about the award: "Accepting the award to applause and cheers, Ms. Smith — clearly the favorite of the night — choked up as she recalled her days as a clerk in the Scribner’s bookstore in Manhattan. “I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf,” she said. “Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.”

New album due out in 2011
Spinner: "Between promotional duties for her memoir 'Just Kids,' rock icon Patti Smith found time to record her 11th studio album, which is due out in 2011. Sessions took place in Italy and France, with a bulk of the recordings done at New York's famed Electric Lady Studio. (--) The new batch of material does have a title, but Smith's mum on that. "It's a secret," she says. "I'm old fashioned. Everyone says people don't do that anymore, but for me, that's still part of the excitement: to keep some things secret and wait for when it's time."

Patti Smith: Samla Ull / Woolgathering
A new beautiful hardcover edition of Smith's Woolgathering, bilingual in Swedish and English by Bakhåll. Order it directly from the publisher.

Just Kids, a 2010 National Book Award Finalist
"In Just Kids, Patti Smith’s first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work—from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry."

John Lennon 70th tribute concert to be held in NYC
Reuters (September 14th 2010): "Among the musicians slated to pay tribute to the former Beatle at the November 12 concert at New York's Beacon Theater are Jackson Browne, Patti Smith, Cyndi Lauper, Aimee Mann and Shelby Lynne. The concert is one of several events and parties being held in New York and around the world to honor what would have been Lennon's 70th birthday on October 9."

Read about other events to mark Lennon's 70th birthday

Art exhibition: Patti Smith & Christoph Schlingensief
"Like Christoph Schlingensief in his expressionistic and experimental photographs, Patti Smith consciously employs the out-of-focus effect and suggestive details. The lyrical photographs of Patti Smith and Christoph Schlingensief complement each other, their work is about the archaeology of seeing." Until September 18th 2010 at Galerie Sonja Junkers in Munich, Germany.

Miami Book Fair
Patti Smith will be appearing at the Miami Book Fair on November 19th 2010.

Steven Sebring's documentary Patti Smith: Dream of Life up for primetime Emmy
Tonic: "Smith is an important fixture in American culture. She is a singer, poet, activist and mother. Yet Sebring felt documenting her life, as the woman who encompasses all of these aspects, was important enough to spend years creating. "Life is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate in a series of lucky and unlucky accidents," Smith says in the film. "I had in mind to become an artist, poet, and through that pursuit I found the root of my voice."

Patti Smith confesses love of Lorca's poetry
ThinkSpain: “I have always enjoyed reading him and I've learnt a lot about improvisation and on-scene presence, thanks to him.” Patti Smith, who currently works as 'advisor' to Johnny Depp in his production of a film about Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, has been performing tracks from her most recent studio album, Twelve, released in 2007."

Letter From Paris: Patti Smith and Just Kids
Huffington Post: "It's important for them to read this record of your and Robert's life as artists growing up together and of this transforming crack of time in New York when young women and men came to our greatest American city and soared like eagles in the sky before flying too close to the sun, burning their wings, and falling to the earth dying or dead. A generation of genius lost...not forgotten."

Documentary: "Patti Smith: Long for the City"
"Patti Smith and her poetry wind their way through the streets of New York City, as she voices her thoughts on her neighbourhood and her life." Duration nine minutes. Included in the programme of Melbourne International Film Festival in July 22nd - August 8th 2010.

Patti Smith by Joseph O'Connor: "My hero"
The Guardian: "She has been a poet, an acclaimed photographer, a memoirist, a mother, perhaps the last truly uncompromised artist in rock music"

"How Peter Pan inspired Patti Smith to write a children's classic"
Evening Standard: "Her thoughts have turned to writing her own story for posterity after the success of her memoir, Just Kids. "It has inspired me to keep writing," she said. She has a sequel planned and a book of travels but her ambition is to write a children’s classic. "I want to write a book like Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland or Pinocchio, a classic like the books I loved. That’s my life goal.""

Anniversary of accident marked at rock festival
New York Times: "The annual Roskilde music festival began in Denmark on Thursday with a memorial to mark the 10th anniversary of an accident in which nine people were killed during a concert performance, The Associated Press reported. Patti Smith threw nine roses to the crowd as Lenny Kaye, her longtime bandmate, read the names of the concertgoers who were killed."

"Patti Smith’s Punk Screams Shatter Peace in Hyde Park"
Bloomberg: "It was meant to be a lazy evening of thoughtful folk music in a London park. That was until Patti Smith and her band delivered 90 electric minutes of taut punk rock, incisive anger and guitar- driven beat poetry."

"Patti Smith knows how to walk into a room"
Mike Hoolboom / Ryeberg Curated Video about Patti Smith on “Kids are People Too” (circa 1979): "Patti makes her way to the piano massacre without missing a beat. The keyboard player is in one time signature, while Patti is in another. I want to say that she’s singing from her heart, but she’s not. She’s singing from her whole body. The whole body at once is the teacher. Still that little girl from New Jersey playing in the patch. She forgets the words, she skips a verse. She holds the lines too long, she can’t hit the notes, and in her mistakes, in her necessary fragility and failures, she makes the song human again. She makes me human again."

Oscilloscope to lunch with “Burroughs” this fall
IndieWire: "Oscilloscope has picked up North American rights to Yony Leyser’s doc “William S. Burroughs: A Man Within.” The 2010 Slamdance Film Festival debut is a portrait of the Beat figure featuring never-before-seen archival footage of the author of Naked Lunch. Oscilloscope will release the film theatrically in the Autumn of 2010 followed by a DVD and digital release."

"Featuring interviews with colleagues and confidants including John Waters, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Gus Van Sant, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Sonic Youth, Laurie Anderson, Amiri Baraka, Jello Biafra, and David Cronenberg, the feature is described as a “probing, yet loving look at the man whose works at once savaged conservative ideals, spawned countercultural movements, and reconfigured 20th century culture.” Peter Weller narrates the film, with a soundtrack by Patti Smith & Sonic Youth."

Patti Smith asks fans to keep their cell phones off
Spinner: "A lot of people spend a lot of time taping, taking pictures, talking on the phone and sometimes, for me as a performer, I'd like us all to be more engaged in the moment," she told Spinner at the ASCAP Pop Music Awards on Wednesday night. "Usually that happens along the line."

"My number one job is to communicate and whether there's 20 people or 20,000 people, I try to get a sense of each person as an individual and of the collective energy," she said. "It's not necessarily to be perfect or to please every minute, but to feel that we're all living in the moment. We're just an old-fashioned rock 'n' roll band and it's a collective exchange. It's like alchemy."

Patti Smith Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from ASCAP
Crawdaddy: "Just yesterday, Patti Smith received a lifetime achievement award from the songwriting royalties groups ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers), a group that collects royalties on behalf of its member songwriters and copyright holders from public performances like radio, TV, in bars, restaurants, and concert halls. Songwriters especially benefit if others cover their songs. During her acceptance speech in Hollywood, Smith talked about how ASCAP checks helped her out of some really hard times, especially after the death of her husband, punk rocker Fred “Sonic” Smith, who left her a widowed mother of two. Which goes to show that not every musician, even iconic ones, are rolling in the dough. “I was actually down on my luck,” Smith said. “And what helped bail me out and helped me get back on my feet were the ASCAP checks that I got for ‘Because the Night.’”

Patti Smith: A Donation to NOMA
Press release by NOMA: "On Thursday, April 22nd, the night before JazzFest opens in New Orleans , artist and musician Patti Smith will present a talk at NOMA entitled "On Photography" at 6:00 pm in the Museum's Stern Auditorium. Her talk will accompany the opening of an exhibition of forty-five photographs by Smith, donated by the artist to the museum in 2009 and 2010. After receiving these two major gifts to NOMA's permanent collection, I invited Smith to come to NOMA to publicly address her relationship to photography, both in terms of her own photographic work and the history of the medium itself. "Patti Smith: A Donation to NOMA," consists of forty-five silver prints made from negatives produced by the artist's antique Polaroid Land 250 camera. These prints will be augmented by a few original, but unique, Polaroid photographs, which are also part of Smith's generous donation to our museum.".

Just Kids is getting great reviews
One of them by The Sunday Times: "They first met in 1967: she, an awkward Catholic girl from New Jersey, he an awkward Catholic boy from Queens. Both were 20. Smith, tall, thin and dreamy, had just recovered from an unwanted pregnancy, in which the nurses had been “very cruel and uncaring…[they] left me on a table for several hours, ridiculed me for my beatnik appearance and immoral behaviour, calling me ‘Dracula’s daughter’  ”. Giving the child up for adoption and jacking in her job at a text-book factory, she arrived in New York on a stolen fare with a raincoat, a suitcase and a copy of Baudelaire. Sleeping rough in parks and graveyards among junkies and hustlers, she finally secured a job; a series of chance encounters brought her together with Mapplethorpe, then a student at the Pratt Institute. Within days, they became inseparable, two downtown urchins “irrevocably intertwined, like Paul and Elisabeth, the sister and brother in Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles”."

"By day she scraped a living at Scribner’s, the bookstore, by night she painted, drew and wrote poetry with Mapplethorpe. To supplement their income, she stole half-eaten lobster claws from the restaurant next door for him to spray and sell as jewellery; he, in turn, took to, er, hustling “to make money for us”, she says, admitting a few pages later that he sometimes failed to take payment."

The 36th annual New Year's Day Poetry Reading features Patti Smith, Philip Glass
The Independent: "For the 36th year of the event, the 2010 New Year's Day Marathon Poetry Reading will occur at St. Mark's in New York City's East Village. More than 140 writers, poets and performers will read and perform, including Patti Smith, composer Philip Glass, and singer-songwriter Steve Earle. The event draws over 1,000 through the day, beginning at 2 pm on January 1, 2010."

Objects of Life
An exhibition by Patti Smith and Steven Sebring in Robert Miller Gallery, New York City: January 6th - February 6th 2010.

"Objects of Life is a fascinating exhibition of photographs, objects and video inspired by Steven Sebring's time with Patti Smith during the filming of their extraordinary documentary Dream of Life. During the 11 years of filming, Sebring became increasingly interested in the history and mythology behind the possessions and personal treasures that Smith shared in the film's most intimate moments. It resulted in the desire to return to his roots as photographer and to recontextualise the sacred and the commonplace through his camera lens. Objects of Life consists of 14 large-scale photographs taken by Sebring. This collection ranges from Smith's childhood dress to an ancient urn containing the remains of Smith's close friend and collaborator Robert Mapplethorpe, to black leather boots that have stomped around the world and a video installation of Smith in the course of creating an art piece. The exhibition also includes a rare oil painting by Smith, her largest and most recent work to date. Also featured is a private collection of personal belongings from both artists whose collaboration is grounded by their relationship to the film and to their individual personal experiences."

Who Shot Rock and Roll
A photographic exhibition at Brooklyn Museum until January 31st 2010.

"The New York City rock and roll scene figures prominently, featuring photos of bands from the Talking Heads and the Ramones, to Patti Smith and the Velvet Underground. "Very important what we were doing. For me, photographing in the streets, the Ramones being photographed on the streets, Talking Heads writing about Psycho Killer, everything was very of the moment and of New York and we were working to transform New York into an art form," said photographer Godlis. The exhibit shows the importance of photography to a musical movement as a silent window into the world of sound."

The New York City 400
"In celebration of New York's 400th birthday, the Museum of the City of New York recently compiled a list of the 400 most influential New Yorkers from the last four centuries. Of these great figures, one of them was Patti Smith, and along with this honorable title, she was also awarded a lifetime membership to the museum."

Pratt Institute honors Patti Smith
Interiordesign.net: "For her part, Smith accepted her award with recollections of her time spent living near the school. "Even though I never attended Pratt, I was touched by the world of Pratt, by the campus, by the students, by the professors, and I'm very happy to be part of a night that builds resources for scholarships."

"Smith wrapped the ceremony up with a four-song performance that included her classic "Because the Night," which she dedicated to Robert Mapplethorpe. "

Patti Smith – Simply a concert
An Italian photographic book of Patti Smith performing has been published.

"Patti Smith fans storm Mapplethorpe opening"
Artinfo (October 14th 2009): "The Alison Jacques Gallery could have found no better way to drum up interest for its exhibition of photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe than to host a performance by Patti Smith: songstress, poet, onetime Mapplethorpe muse, and all-around cultural icon. The problem was, the event last night generated a little too much interest. By 5:45, 15 minutes before Smith was to go on, a line of her fans stretched a full block from the gallery’s Berners Street address, and no sooner had the gallery thrown open its doors than more of them arrived, and streamed in, until the two rooms were packed and stifling, becoming an inadvertent play on the exhibition’s Rimbaud-derived title, “A Season in Hell.” One gallery-goer was seen fleeing, tossing over her shoulder the remark, “If you want to get hot, definitely go in there.”

Patti Smith performs 'Because The Night' at the opening (Youtube)

In Perfect Harmony: Music Legends and their Animals
A calendar, whose proceeds benefit Rational Animal, a nonprofit organization specializing in awareness for at-risk animals, includes Patti Smith: "Photographer Frank Stefanko’s portrait of Patti Smith and her kitty, titled “The Lookout,” successfully smashes the stereotype of the unhip “cat lady.”

Remembering Jim Carroll
Los Angeles Times: "A guardian angel for Jim then was Patti Smith, who worked at Scribner's bookshop on Fifth Avenue. One day I was there when Jim OD'd. Patti kept him awake, walking him around until he came to. "

Sam Shepard and Patti Smith in January 2010
Event information: "Sam Shepard and Patti Smith have been close friends since the early 1970s, when they co-wrote and co-starred in the play Cowboy Mouth. Upon the publication of their new books—Shepard's Day Out of Days, a collection of stories; and Smith's memoir Just Kids—they read together at the Poetry Center for the first time."

PLOT & Messages in a Bottle
"PLOT is a new public art quadrennial, produced and presented by Creative Time. This World & Nearer Ones is the first edition of PLOT, and will be held this summer on Governors Island. 19 artworks by international contemporary artists will be presented. The exhibition is free and open to the public Friday-Sunday. "

"Patti and Jesse Smith's spoken word poetry and musical composition Messages in a Bottle takes the form of an elegiac meditation upon the history, present, and future of Governors Island. Experienced intimately through headphones, it provides companionship, a whisper and melody in the ear as one wanders the island. Artist and musician Patti Smith collaborated with her daughter Jesse, an accomplished pianist, to make this audio work-Jesse created a soundscape to accompany the words and thoughts of her mother. An alternative to the typical didactic tour, this work offers a poetic approach to the consideration of history, drawing upon a very personal perspective. "

Download Messages in a Bottle from the project website

Patti Smith at Meltdown Festival 2009
The Telegraph about her apperance: "Coleman, who was also billed for a contribution, appeared merely to give a hushed verbal blessing before an exploratory encore of P***ing in a River. Thereafter, Smith was exhausted. “What can I say?” she gasped, “It’s been heaven and hell.” Within a few minutes, she was skipping through the aisles, leading the crowd through the refrain to Ghost Dance: “We shall live again”. It had been a challenging, thought-provoking night, a rare privilege, which ended with glorious transcendence."

Another review by the Guardian (five stars)

A video on YouTube: Patti Smith & Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra

Another video clip on YouTube, and another

Patti Smith about Ornette Coleman
The Guardian: "I've been obsessed with Ornette ever since my friends and I formed a jazz club at school in the 1960s to play our records to each other. Listening to him taught me a lot about improvisation, about music as a form of spiritual commune. I carry his work everywhere, in particular his soundtrack to The Naked Lunch. This is music that conjures up words, poetry, portals to another dimension. A couple of years back, I met him for the first time in Bologna in Italy, in a pizzeria. He was playing at an opera house and invited me along. In the middle of his set, I was beckoned on to the stage. I went up and improvised a poem. There was no fear: he opens the door and he's completely compassionate. As you enter his world, you feel his confidence, enthusiasm and sense of wonder. Ornette is like a genius - and a child - in the way he approaches music. Part of his appeal to people in the world of rock and punk is that he doesn't require you to be a complex musician. He just requires that you listen, communicate and play with feeling."

Meg White marries boyfriend Jackson Smith
May 2009: "It wasn’t a traditional wedding by any means but no one really wanted that. “It was a great day with lots of friends and happiness.”

New York in the '70s
A book and exhibition (The Not Fade Away Gallery, 12 E. 20th St., NYC, through June 25th) of Allan Tannenbaum's great photographs includes images of Patti Smith.

View images of Patti Smith and the band in the 70s at Tannenbaum's website

Patti date a coup for Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight County Press: "Patti Smith’s visit will be on Thursday, June 11, when she will perform a solo show of poetry and music at the Farringford Hotel. The date was chosen by Patti, as it is the date of pioneering Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron’s birthday. The day before, an exhibition of her photographs will open at Dimbola Lodge, Freshwater, which is particularly apt as Patti’s work was influenced by Julia Margaret Cameron, whose home it was. Patti will be performing at Farringford in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s bi-centennial year."

Punk icon Patti Smith waxes poetic at Robert Miller Gallery
The New York Observer: "The fans who filled the Robert Miller Gallery in Chelsea on Thursday night, April 2, to hear punk icon Patti Smith perform songs and original poetry inspired by the 19th century French writer Arthur Rimbaud bowed their heads as Ms. Smith intoned the literary rebel's last words: ''I am completely paralyzed, and so I wish to embark in good time."

Patti Smith performs at EXIT Festival (Serbia)
She will perform on the festival Main Stage on July 11th 2009, according to Blic Online.

Two tales recall long bygone era of East Village edge
Downtown Express: "The East Village had edge then — so it’s not surprising that two new documentaries, set to world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, take on the punk subculture of the late 70s/early 80s East Village arts scene. The era had a mythic allure for two filmmakers who were in diapers at the time. “Burning Down the House: The Story of CBGB,” directed by 34-year-old Mandy Stein, follows of the history of the club that launched the careers of Blondie, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, and Patti Smith. “Blank City,” directed by 30-year-old Celine Danhier, looks at the underground moviemakers of the period such as Jim Jarmusch, John Waters, Amos Poe, and Eric Mitchell (as well as the performers in their milieu)."

A new exhibition: Patti Smith - Veil
Robert Miller Gallery, New York City: March 19th - April 18th 2009

A free screening of Patti Smith: Dream Of Life in Los Angeles
Amoeba Music: Amoeba will be holding free screenings of music-related films every Monday in the Month of March. The next screening takes place March 16th at 8 pm, in the courtyard of Space15Twenty, just up the street from Amoeba at 1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd, Los Angeles, CA.

Patti Smith on BBC Radio 2 on March 2nd
Info from Gordon Comstock: "Patti Smith - BBC Radio 2 (UK) - Radcliffe and Maconie Show on Monday 2nd March 2009 at 20:00. The show is streamed and usually there's a 7 day listen-again feature."

Patti Smith: Legacy, death and how to survive it
Northwestern (Feb. 2009): "Mortality is hard to ignore for a woman who has lost so many near her. During the post-screening discussion she mentions that she’s been working from 12 hours a day on a memoir chronicling her and Mapplethorpe’s early years. He’d asked her 20 years ago to write it shortly before he died."

Patti Smith to pay tribute to Buddy Holly at Tibet House Benefit
Rolling Stone: "Fifty years ago, the day the music died, I was a kid living in Brooklyn,” said Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye, before launching into an energetic medley of of the Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace,” Holly’s “Words of Love” and Valens’ “Come On, Let’s Go.” “Now we’re here to celebrate that music.”

"Patti Smith vs Jeff Koons"
The Independent (Feb. 2009): "Speaking in next month's edition of 'The Art Newspaper', she branded him "litter upon the earth", adding: "I find Koons' work especially vile... I look at his stuff and I'm appalled." She also revealed that her artistic sensibility as a young girl from a home of modest means was initially inspired by glossy magazines dug out of people's waste-bins. "I can really trace my affinity with visual arts from finding discarded fashion magazines as a young girl, not my mother's, because those magazines were too expensive for her. I was looking through other people's trash for things to cut out, and coming across issues of 'Harper's Bazaar' and 'Vogue' from the 1950s. I started digging them out of the trash every month."

The Rock-It Science Festival
Brooklyn Vegan: "The Rock-It Science Festival will bring together eight outstanding--and noted--scientists and academics who share a second career as musicians, along with six additional performers with international exposure and a great appreciation for science."

"The Rock-It Science Festival will start rockin' at 6:30 p.m. on March 3 at the Highline Ballroom, 431 W. 16th Street in New York. Rufus Wainwright will highlight an evening that will also include musician, writer and record producer Lenny Kaye, who is the long-time collaborator of poet-rocker Patti Smith."

Patti Smith Speaks from the Soul
The Santa Barbara Independent: Q: "Your name comes up as a point of reference and inspiration for so many artists. Is that recognition a blessing or a burden for you? That I’m an inspiration?"

Patti Smith: "Oh! That’s a real compliment. I mean, I have spent my whole life citing the people who have inspired me—from Bob Dylan to Maria Callas—so if people are inspired by my band or the work we do, or inspired by anything I am involved with, that’s a good thing. I have always tried to do good work, or never tried to steer people into a bad place. So if I can be of some avail, I’m very happy."

Legends Perform Ginsberg Tribute
Daily Nexus: "Just as with her singing, Smith spoke from her gut, and she even managed to speak with a wavering vibrato at times, breathing life into the words. Poetry recitation is an art form in its own right, and unlike lesser readers, Smith never resorts to yelling to get the point across. Her performance of “Footnote to Howl,” was especially charged due to her reading skills and to the rhythmic intensity of the prose itself (“The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!”). But none of the Ginsberg readings could be accurately described as entertaining. Each set demanded intense concentration from the listener. "

Another review by Los Angeles Times: "This tribute was inspired from a few appearances together by Glass and Smith, beginning at a Ginsberg memorial in New York a year after he died. The performers put it together in London two years ago, and repeated a version of it in Australia last year. There are no further plans for performances from two busy artists."

The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church on January 1st
Poets and performers include Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye.

"Overview of Artist Patti Smith's Creative Complexity on View at Artium"
Artdaily.org: "One of the main features of the 2008 art programme of ARTIUM, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art, includes an exhibition dedicated to North American artist Patti Smith, with a presentation illustrative of her work in the fields of art, literature and music." The exhibition opened on December 4th 2008.

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