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CBGB, the bowery bar where Patti Smith returned to her first series of concerts since she tumbled from a Tampa stage last January 23rd, is best known as the focal point for New York's rock underworld. It's also a bit of a dump--hot, smoky and fetid.
For the people who packed the joint to capacity every night of Smith's nine-day stint in early June, though, the sheer unpleasantness of the place is part of its attraction. It breeds the us-against-the-world, fraternity-of-the-damned undercurrent of hostility that vitalizes the punk bands and their audiences.
Smith knows this and exploits it well. Onstage for her seventh show in as many days, her pale face and white neck brace set off by her usual black T-shirt and jacket, she drew cheers with her opening denunciation of the banning of hard rock from the Central Park summer concerts: "It sucks. They can't keep me from playing in my own city, and they can't keep you from hearing rock & roll." With that, the band slammed into "My Generation." Over the high-decibel, raveup ending, she shouted out a defiant "Don't fuck with me!"
Her punk chops reaffirmed, Smith and her band charged through 15 more songs in the next hour and 45 minutes, turning out a strong, surprisingly tight performance. The group's sound is more unified than it has been, capably handling modulations that go beyond the usual fast-slow, loud-soft contrasts that pass for dynamics in most punk outfits. Smith evenly mixed familiar tunes like "Redondo Beach" and "Radio Ethiopia" with unrecorded material. "Space Monkey," an early Stones-style riff rocker, was later echoed by guitarist/bassist Ivan Kral's version of "Parachute Woman," while "Seven Ways of Going" (an incantatory poem-with-musical-effects) blended nicely with the similar "Birdland."
Guitarist Lenny Kaye's light-hearted singing of the Brooklyn Bridge's schmaltzy "The Worst that Could Happen" ("Girl, I hear you're getting married ?") pointed up the conceptual condescension that limits the band, though. Performing a bad song poorly doesn't make for "basic" rock & roll; it's just smart people trying to pretend they're dumb. Patti Smith, unwittingly perhaps, phrased the band's problem when she told the audience after the last song: "Unless we keep it going, in another decade rock & roll will be art. What a shame."