In as short a time as forty years it has become impossible to peg Patti Smith with a label. After writing several books, lecturing on Blake and Rimbaud, making love and art with legends (Sam Shepard, Bruce Springsteen, Fred "Sonic" Smith, Michael Stipe, Robert Mapplethorpe), hosting innumerable gallery openings of her paintings and photography, raising a family, collecting a long list of international honors, and recording some of the most timely and distinctive rock music in history the point is pretty mute. Now we have a new album, Banga (CBS/Sony Records) and a sold out two night stand at The Vic as this year's offerings.
Those looking for Smith as a "punk goddess" may be put off by Banga's maturity (Smith is sixty six), but the album focuses on her observations of our current times and her recent world travels and communicates them with quiet, articulation, and (gasp!!!) wistfulness. "Banga" and "Fuji-san" bring the noise but the meditative "Maria," "April Fool," and especially "This Is the Girl (a rumination on Amy Winehouse)" and "Amerigo" steal the album with lyricism and subtlety.
Naturally "This Is the Girl" is steeped in irony with one icon acknowledging someone who was destined to be viewed in the same light had she stuck around long enough. "This is the girl who crossed the line/this is the blood that turned into wine...," Smith sings without a hint of melancholy, remorse, or anger. If that song is the closest to pop that Smith has ever recorded, "Ameriga" is far trickier, more obtuse, and takes some effort to get into. Starting as a spoken word piece the song quietly and adroitly blooms unexpectedly into a melodious current that literally pulls you out of your socks and into it's universe.
If Banga has an abundance of lyricism and may feel like heady art, Smith's blow out last week was full of joy, comedy, blunt fury, and outrage. On the first night the audience was well over forty and had obviously been with her since her debut in 1975. When Smith greeted them with, "Hello Chicago...the city of my birth!!!," it was a clear indication that this was not just any show.
She was playful on the openers "Ain't It Strange" and "Redondo Beach" but on "April Fool" and "Dancing Barefoot" Smith literally drugged the audience with her disarming allure. Pop historians and music critics may cherish her as a punk bard but the reality is that Smith can conjure an aural spell every bit as overpowering and karmic as anything Billie Holiday ever recorded.
Neil Young's "It's A Dream" was a lovely set up for "Pissing in a River" but "Because the Night," one of the most compelling recordings ever had an unexpected measured softness to it. If that classic disappointed it hardly mattered; "Gloria"—all eight minutes of it—was where the lid came off and Smith and her band exploded with savage fury.
At the close of the song Smith launched into a fiery declaration of solidarity for Pussy Riot, the female punk collective that was arrested for subversion and hooliganism by the Soviets. For her encore she made subversion the holy word. "Rock and Roll Nigger" came charging out like the white heat of Hiroshima and Smith took the ugly 'n' word, owned it, and turned it into a badge of honor. "Outside of Society—that's where I wanna be!!!," she raged with spit spraying in all directions and guitarist Lenny Kaye ripping through the riff as if the fate of the western hemisphere depended on it. The irony of hearing the song now when we have an African American president in office is a little hard to miss. The inclusion of "Rock and Roll Nigger" was hardly a slice of punk rage or merely confrontational, this was political reality writ large.
If Smith's observations on Banga seem to be occupied with the state of the here and now, Rondi Charleston's perspective has often been toward the past. To be sure this is a woman who always seemed to know exactly where she was going and what she wanted (full disclosure; Charleston's younger brother was my best friend in elementary school). After studying at Julliard for drama then switching to voice and collecting her BM and MM, Charleston switched her focus to journalism and nabbed a position with Diane Sawyer on ABC's Primetime Live. After snatching a couple of Emmys for her investigative work she married, started a family, and went back to one of her first loves, jazz. Now we have a new album, Signs of Life (Motema Records) and a recent homecoming at the Mayne Stage that felt like a slice of heaven.
If the company that Charleston surrounds herself on Signs of Life and onstage seemed almost overpowering in there talent (her band members have played with Celia Cruz, Wynton Marsalis, Shirley Horn, Tito Puente, and Pat Metheny at one time or another) the real head scratcher is the focus of some of her music. Rather than sing about some man that got away or the lush life, Charleston keeps coming back to the unknowable; the mechanics of time, history, memory, space, and destiny. I can't think of another musician who could make these concepts the thread of four albums without sounding flaky but Charleston is hardly a flaky woman. Through her writing and vocals and the compelling craft of her band she takes what could be construed as abstract and makes it concrete, engaging, and playful.
"DNA" the album opener is the kind of tricky wordy delight that is so much fun to listen and sing to that you forget what its really about (think of "Beyond Belief" by Elvis Costello and you get the picture). The music swings with a rollicking and swank rhythm then Charleston opens her mouth and throws a loop by singing, "Sink my feet into the soil/Soak my skin in ancient oil..." and you get caught trying to figure out just where she is headed. "DNA" is like tumbling gently into an endless canyon of billowing silk and it's so good that you have to go back and listen to it three or four times to appreciate the concepts and images behind the words. And that's only the beginning for Signs of Life.
Charleston mentioned in her show that she is at heart an investigative journalist who not only wants the answers but to fully understand them. Of course she won't get the answers to the questions that she asks on Signs of Life or even it's predecessor Who Knows Where the Time Goes (Motema Records) but the real joy is in hearing her ask (sing). At the Mayne Stage, "Telescope" pirouetted between cold hard science and fluid mythology with Charleston wondering where exactly she fit in the universe. If HAL 2000 or Steve Jobs could not answer her question her rationale is that Copernicus or The Lady in the Lake very well could.
Her rip through Charlie Parker's "Anthropology" gave her the opportunity to burn through the authors' trademark bebop and chord changes with a chiffon draped elegance; in short she made it look easy. It was not only her finest moment onstage but her band's as well with them stacking up a pile of breathtaking solos that were precise and economical. Her closer for the show, a cover of Bobby McFerrin's "Freedom Is A Voice" translated from Zulu nearly upended the show. Charleston just couldn't do a nice, tidy, polite version—that seems beyond her—instead turning it into an elegant rhythmic, chanting jam session.
