Was Patti Smith sanctimonious as she played the last show at CBGB? I don't know. She also said: "This is not a fucking temple -- it is what it is."
"It is what it is"? Is that a punk saying? Or has Patti been watching "Top Chef"?
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7 comments:
"Was Patti Smith sanctimonious as she played the last show at CBGB?"
Was Patti Smith ever NOT sanctimonious?
I've gotten a good chuckle over all the silly sentimentality and wistfulness about CBGB's and its closing. In the footage I saw of the farewell show, the crowd looked pretty tame and respectable to me. Not that there's anything wrong with tame and respectable, but I can't help but smirk at the irony of it; isn't CBGB's (and punk) supposed to be all about "danger" and "rage" and "raucousness" and "rebellion"? Bohemianism turned into a lifestyle.
George:
So your panties are in a know because the New York Times covers subjects that their readers are going interested in and doesn't cover subjects that they're not going to be interested in. Why did you think we wanted to know that?
Ross:
I'm not sure that CBGBs was supposed to be about any of those things-- there's certainly not much rage in say Blondie or the Ramones. Would you have preferred that everybody just ODed? CBGB's (like the bands that made it famous) was a fantastic success on its own terms. What's wrong or strange about celebrating that?
Also, does anyone remember back in the 80's and 90's when Patti Smith was a retired legend who'd nobody had heard from since the 70's? Did anybody miss those days?
a) Jesus: "Into your hands, I commend my spirit."
CBGBs "G-L-O-R-I-A"
Someone needs to tell Patty that not being a teenager isn't the same as being dead.
b) William Safire describes it as a 'tautophrase': "The phrase, racing through the language, shows no sign of tiring. The first use I can find is in the Newspaper Archive, from a column by J.E. Lawrence in the Nebraska State Journal in 1949 about the way that pioneer life molded character: "New land is harsh, and vigorous, and sturdy. It scorns evidence of weakness. There is nothing of sham or hypocrisy in it. It is what it is, without apology."
"It is what it is"
Voted by USA Today as the #1 cliche of 2004
Movie, 2001, directed by Billy Frolick
Song by Usher
I can get why the closing is noteworthy and got some play: it's just nostalgia. If you think of the age of a lot of the people in their primes who work in media and overlap the timing of their teen years, college years and earlier adult years with the advent of heyday of CBGB, I think it's reasonable to diagnose the "salad days" effect.
I have to say that when I saw the story, I felt a twinge. The club opened when I was 12, but really started to hit its stride right at the height of my teens. If you lived on the East Coast, especially within roadtrip distance of NYC and you were into certain kinds of music, you heard about it all the time and did your best to make the trek to NYC, if you could.
Not sure I'd give its closing real large play myself, but I can understand it.
Sandi Patty? Why not go for Patty Smythe? C'mon! "Shootin' down the walls of heartache. Bang Bang. I am the warrior." Can "Birdland" really beat that?
Patti Smith is what she is: a faux Rimbaud who hasn't done a single interesting thing since "Horses". I saw her live about 6 years ago and was amused at how much she looked and sounded like a homeless schizophrenic drug addict, an image I couldn't maintain once I thought about the size of her bank account. I do still pull "Horses" out and give it a listen, though.
I honestly had no idea that Patti Smith had ever done anything besides cover Bruce Springsteen's "Because the Night". I'd figured she was just some one-hit-wonder Heart knockoff.
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