No Land But The Land

[rhythmaning]

I’ve just got a batch of CDs. One of them is a compilation of Patti Smith tracks, Land. (Curiously, it omits the track “Land”, but then I have the original CD.) I bought it because I recently heard something off Easter on the radio, and I only have Easter on vinyl. Though I still have a record player, it serves more as a CD and minidisk table than an actual means of playing music.

(I dug out an old Sonny Rollins LP to play last night, but the prospect of sorting out the piles of CDs and minidisks that live on my record player just put me off; I found a minidisk of Rollins’ Live at the Village Vanguard, which though it didn’t have the track I was looking for, was very good; plus, I had also put Dexter Gordon’s Our Man in Paris on the same disk, which meant I got two version of “A Night in Tunisia” instead of just one. Which was really good, because the day before I played a really irritating, no-swinging cubano-bop version by Diz. Which is kind of by the way.)

I first heard Horses in – well, somewhere around thirty years ago. I had heard the Clash, the Pistols and the Ramones before; and I had laughed – that wasn’t music.

Then I heard Horses, and from the very opening of “Gloria”, I was hooked.

For those of you that don’t know this, “Gloria” is by far and away the very best song ever written and recorded. The original by Them is a good, a great pop song; the Hotrods version is a fast and frenetic hymn to teenage lust; but they are all capped by Patti Smith’s recording, from the spoken introduction through to the chainsaw guitars and flailing drums and the maniac chorus, it is six minutes of brilliance.

True I didn’t buy the CD for “Gloria” – like I say, I’ve got Horses. I got it because I was going to get Easter after hearing “Space Monkey” on Mark Radcliffe the other night; and I thought, if Easter, why not Radio Ethiopia – the second LP, a radically different record which is largely unlistenable to but has some remarkable tracks (“Pissing in the River”, “Radio Ethiopia/Abyssinia”, “Ain’t It Strange”) – and “Pissing in the River” and “Ain’t It Strange” are both on this compilation.

“Pissing in the River” is a strangled cry; “Ain’t It Strange” – it is playing now – a light, choppy riff backed by mordant drums - transcend, transcend. (And what drums: thundering behind the tracks is Jay Dee Daugherty*.)

Even the newer tracks (she broke off recording for most of the eighties and nineties whilst she raised her family) – none of which I know – sound good (though obviously don’t make me feel like a teenager!).

Plus there is an extra CD of other material, singles and live tracks. I haven’t played that yet.

This is the music that informed my teenage years, and it stills sounds exiting and fresh – though perhaps it just elicits feelings that go back to when everything was exiting and fresh – but it is wonderful, physical and energetic.

And if you haven’t heard “Gloria”, you really must!

*unblinkered - since you’ve played with someone who was in the Waterboys, you played with someone who played with someone who played with Patti Smith. Now, that really is exciting!!!