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Hey now man's own kin
we commend into the wind
Patti Smith, Gone Again
 Peace and noise
The title of Patti Smith's last Album is a message - that's how the music sounds: Peace and Noise. Adversarial as these two concepts are, they have one thing in common. They are monotone, unstructured and - boring. You think it is misanthropic and cynical to say so? Think it over: Did you ever want to live a life without experiences? That would be a life in perfect peace - and boring. Or: When did you listen for the last time to a radio-set tuned to a dead channel? That's noise and again - boring, if not disturbing.
In other words: Peace is maybe the supreme objective of mankind. But as a quality of a piece of art it's kitsch or resignation. I wonder whether Patti's peace is the peace of a graveyard, of "dead city" (song #5), "death singing" (song #7) and "memento mori" (song #8). I would respect that as the way she feels after she experienced what happened to her. But public mourning as the leitmotiv for an album...? Same with her last album "Gone Again", (1996) it sounds very sad and very personal. I don't want to say much about it. She couldn't or didn't want to sublimate her grieve into something that communicates into the world of rock music.
At least "Peace and Noise" doesn't speak to me as a fan of rock music. I listened very closely and quite often because I like "Horses" (1975). There was a very clear and communicative voice, that wanted to be listened to and understood. She sang with an exciting breathlessness, with the energy for a better world. Same with her second album: "Radio Ethiopia" (1976). And I love her poems from that time (they had the same wild rock'n'roll rhtythm), I regarded her pictures (strong lines aimed at something not yet conceived), collected the posters, I met her in Cologne at Veith Turske's Gallery, interviewed her, adored her. But already on "Easter" (1978), her third album, including the only top twenty hit she ever had ("Here comes the night"), the root of peace and noise began to sprout. There she lost her rock'n'roll spirit.
I don't speak about the words. Lyrics never have been the agitating thing about music. It is always the sound, the rhythm. For example Jimi Hendrix. Do you think somebody ever loved him for the lyrics of "Hey Joe". They even weren't his. They were a traditonal. But his guitar talked. It told stories about love, peace and freedom. And The Beatles ("Tomorrow Never Knows"), Jim Morrison ("When the Music's over"), Eric "Slowhand" Clapton ("Strange Brew"), Brian Eno's experiments ("Fat Lady of Limburg"). And however you feel about techno, drum&bass, djungle or triphop. It's not the words why people like it. It's the emotion and the energy.
But why do I argue so much about "boring music"? Yes, you are right, it's not. In one miraculous way or another Patti makes a "noise" that makes me listen to it because it communicates something in a strange and atavistic language. It's spelled in an analogue code. Her music is not sampled, processed, edited and remixed in the current style. Maybe Patti is no longer "Pissing in the River" (1976), no longer "Rock'n'Roll Nigger" (1978), she's "Waiting Underground" (song #1), working on a new language, that even she doesn't understand right now. It's more an attitude. A sensibility. Not yet more than faint background noise of very personal emotions and poetic visions. A disturbing noise. But isn't that exactly where music comes from. I can't help it: Listen to it yourself.
Peace and Noise
BMG Ariola 1997
Ulrich Leschak
Published for the first time in Fishdrum #13
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