1984 - PATTI SMITH - Banga (2012)

PATTI SMITH
''BANGA''
JUN 2012
58:34
COLUMBIA

1/Amerigo
Tony Shanahan / Patti Smith/4:36
2/April Fool
Tony Shanahan / Patti Smith/3:46
3/Fuji-San
Lenny Kaye / Patti Smith/4:12
4/This Is the Girl
Stewart Lerman / Tony Shanahan / Patti Smith/3:49
5/Banga
Patti Smith/2:51
6/Maria
Tony Shanahan / Patti Smith/5:05
7/Mosaic
Jay Dee Daugherty / Patti Smith/4:12
8/Tarkovsky (The Second Stop Is Jupiter)
Sun Ra / Patti Smith/4:50
9/Nine
Patti Smith/5:02
10/Seneca
Lenny Kaye / Patti Smith/5:39
11/Constantine's Dream
Lenny Kaye / Patti Smith/10:19
12/After the Gold Rush
Neil Young/4:13

Louis Appel /Drums
Tadhg Brady /Vocals
Jay Dee Daugherty /Drums, Mandocello, Producer
Riccardo Dellocchio /Guitar (Steel)
Johnny Depp /Drums, Guitar
Dave Eggar /Cello
Clea Fynn /Vocals
Massimiliano Gregorio /Bass
Lenny Kaye /Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Electric), Producer, Vocals
Luca Lanzi /Guitar (Acoustic)
Sauro Lanzi /Accordion
Fabrizio Morganti /Percussion
Rob Morsberger /Arranger, Conductor, Piano
Maxim Moston /Violin
Kobyn Payer /Vocals
Andreas Petermann /Violin
Jack Petruzzelli /Guitar, Hammond B3, Soloist, Vocals
Tony Shanahan /Bass, Keyboards, Producer, Vocals
Jackson Smith /Guitar, Soloist
Jesse Smith /Piano
Patti Smith /Producer, Vocals
Hiroko Taguchi /Viola
Tom Verlaine /Guitar, Soloist

REVIEW
by Thom Jurek
In the eight years since Patti Smith's last studio effort of new, original material, Trampin', she's toured, assembled art installations, had her photographs collected for global exhibition, and written Just Kids, a National Book Award-winning memoir. On Banga, Smith marries together her various forms of literary expression with rock and pop in an iconic assemblage. Her collaborators are (mostly) familiar: guitarist Lenny Kaye, drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, bassist Tony Shanahan, guitarist Tom Verlaine, her children Jackson and Jessi, and guitarist Jack Petruzzelli. Italian band Casa del Vento and Johnny Depp also appear. The album is saturated with poetry, sung or spoken -- sometimes both. Its themes range from a non-didactic reflection on environmental crisis, the dominion of art as man's greatest gift to the divine -- as well as its own species -- homages, elegies, and love songs, all offered with authority and tenderness. Musically, the album is absent the dynamic, free-form chaos that marks her earlier recordings, but is better for it. This is true even when the band stretches to improvise forcefully on a theme by Sun Ra in the glorious "Tarkovsky (The Second Stop Is Jupiter)." This is not to say that Banga doesn't rock; it does, all over the place: in the aforementioned cut, in the dramatic "Fuji-San," and in the blistering title track (named for a dog in Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita). But there are the pop songs, too: the hooky "April's Fool" (a song about nomadic lovers that echoes the themes in Just Kids), the sweet ballad "This Is the Girl," for Amy Winehouse, and the elegant waltz "Maria" (for Maria Schneider). "Mosaic," driven by Daugherty's mandocello riff, is a lush, sensual rocker that spiritually counters the rebellion and betrayal in the album's title cut. "Amerigo," with a lilting backdrop of strings, explores Amerigo Vespucci's vision after discovering the New World. Smith imagines that after encountering its indigenous people, his colonial ideology was turned inside-out. At over ten minutes, "Contantine's Dream," offers a feverish juxtaposition of painter Piero Della Francesca's death, his painting (the title of the cut), a dream she had of Saint Francis weeping at the current state of the environment in the 21st century, and the ecstatic vision of Columbus as he saw the New World for the first time-- on the same day De Francisca died. Smith's poetic skill -- she improvised the lyrics on the spot -- is astonishing. She pulls it all together with visionary social and spiritual context. The set closes with a lilting cover of Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush," underscoring the previous tune's apocalyptic meaning albeit more gently with a children's chorus on the refrain. Banga is an event; it's not only provocative and expansive lyrically, but abundantly enjoyable musically. As an artist, Smith embodies the highest calling of her vocation: she completely absorbs everything she encounters, then gives it back to the culture in a manner that holistically edifies it.

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1983 - PATTI SMITH - Twelve (2007)

PATTI SMITH
''TWELVE''
APR 2007
62:44
COLUMBIA

1/Are You Experienced?
Jimi Hendrix/4:46
2/Everybody Wants to Rule the World
Chris Hughes / Roland Orzabal / Ian Stanley/4:07
3/Helpless
Neil Young/4:02
4/Gimme Shelter
Mick Jagger / Keith Richards/5:00
5/Within You Without You
George Harrison/4:51
6/White Rabbit
Grace Slick/3:54
7/Changing of the Guards
Bob Dylan/5:47
8/The Boy in the Bubble
Paul Simon/4:30
9/Soul Kitchen
John Densmore / Ray Manzarek / Jim Morrison/3:45
10/Smells Like Teen Spirit
Kurt Cobain / Dave Grohl / Krist Novoselic/6:31
11/Midnight Rider
Gregg Allman/4:02
12/Pastime Paradise
Stevie Wonder/5:26
13/Everybody Hurts
Bill Berry / Peter Buck / Mike Mills / Michael Stipe/6:15

Jay Dee Daugherty/Drums, Percussion
Lenny Kaye/Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Electric)
Tony Shanahan/Bass, Bass (Upright), Keyboards, Producer, Vocals
Sam Shepard/Guest Artist
Patti Smith/Clavinet, Vocals
Tom Verlaine/Guest Artist

REVIEW
by Thom Jurek According to her brief liner notes, Patti Smith indulged the idea of a covers album, considering songs as far back as 1978 on the back pages of Jean Genet's Thief's Journal when she was still assembling her groundbreaking early catalog; it's evident she feels that covers have been part and parcel of her recording experience from the outset. Her debut, Horses, has her own apocalyptic version of Van Morrison's "Gloria" as well as a healthy portion of Chris Kenner's "Land of a Thousand Dances" inside "Land." On 1979's Wave she covered the Byrds "So You Want to Be (A Rock and Roll Star)," and scored with the single. Her intuitive reading of Bob Dylan's "Wicked Messenger" was a beautiful aspect of Gone Again in 1996, and she paid tribute to Allen Ginsberg by using one of his poems in "Spell," on 1997's Peace and Noise. And who can forget her reading of Pete Townshend's "My Generation" issued on the 30th Anniversary edition of Horses?
While it's a popular notion these days to consider a covers album a stop-gap between albums, the truth is that Smith has never been in a hurry when it comes to recording, though she has been very productive over the last decade. She has always paid tribute in one form or another to her heroes, however disparate. This collection is a wondrous sampling of pop hits, hard rock, ballads, and soul done in Smith's inimitable way of interpreting songs -- by getting inside them and breathing their meaning, and often uncovering new shades of meaning -- from within. She begins with a newer, more spiritual reading of Jimi Hendrix's "Are You Experienced?" letting her fine band -- Jay Dee Daugherty, Lenny Kaye and Tony Shanahan -- pulse the tune's changes and vibe while she comes across as a shaman leading the way down into the underworld. Her taking on Tears for Fears' smash hit "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" may come as a surprise, but in her open-throated take, the tune brims with the wisdom of a prophetess proclaiming the folly of humankind's need for power and greed. And while her version of Neil Young's "Helpless" may come across as a bit too reverent, the seed of memory is what infuses her take on this beautiful ballad. Loss and remembrance become a memento mori, an effigy to those who who've traveled on from this plane of existence. "Gimme Shelter" is a natural, and it carries all the foreboding of an apocalypse out the original nearly 40 years later as if to say that Jagger and Richard were right all along. The tune becomes a plea for shelter, rather than a demand. George Harrison's "Within You Without You" is the complete blending of spiritual longing, with droning acoustic guitars, skittering snares and open chord drones from Kaye's electric and fleshly experience. Smith's read of Dylan's "Changing of the Guard" is ambitious. Where the original was drenched in mariachi horns and a female backing chorus, she overturns those trappings and accents Dylan's last expressionistic lyric. She sings as if everything is at stake in this clash between the forces of light and darkness, where Melville, Dumas, Joan of Arc, the myth of Orpheus and the tales of Ovid are informed by both biblical prophecy and the tarot. The meld of acoustic guitars, brushed drums and muted kickdrum wind around her. The piano and Kaye's muted electric guitars fill the space where most of the backing vocals and horns once were -- except where Smith's daughter Jesse Paris Smith harmonizes -- and seduce the emotion out of the nearly surreal narrative of renunciation.
Perhaps no tune moves here like Smith's reading of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," with help from Sam Shepherd and John Cohen on banjo, Peter Stampfel on fiddle, and Kaye and Duncan Webster on guitar in a strange dreamscape driven by a standup bass. Smith digs into the lyric and then offers a poem that is as much an early American folk song elegy to the environment Kurt Cobain grew up in as it is to what's happening to America itself, but with current touches. Her poet's heart not only complements the original but makes the song timeless and brings Cobain's mature spirit to flesh once more. It is the most moving track on the set and the most visionary. Smith closes her set with a true outlaws campfire song in Gregg Allman's "Midnight Rider," and a darker than written, sparsely textured, elegiac cover of Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise," with a truly haunting piano by Luis Resto. Her small notes annotating each track are welcome and revealing in and of themselves. If this is truly the covers album Smith has always wanted to record, she's succeeded on a level with the best of her studio recordings and a welcome addition to her catalog. Each song has her imprint without sacrificing the intent or spirit of the original. Full of slow burning passion and emotion, Twelve is magnificent.

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