This was the second of three sold out shows Patti Smith played in London last week and the second of two at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, a venue she has played more than anywhere else in London since her re-emergence in 1996.
I arrived shortly before she came on at 8.30 which was pretty much as soon as everyone queuing outside had got in. She was welcomed as ever as a returning hero and opened with a very good version of Ask The Angels which got the whole place going. It seemed like it was played with an almost dubby, bass-heavy sound that was present throughout the show as the guitars never seemed to be as loud as the bass or the keyboards.
Privilege (Set Me Free) was even more dubby and that worked just fine for me. Also Patti was in fine voice, sounding great. By the time they did Break It Up it was clear this was going to be a no nonsense greatest hits set.
Even recent single April Fool already sounds like a greatest hit and went down very well with both Patti and the band being playful with the song. As with most of the evening's set, pretty much everyone sang along. Kimberley was played nice and slow and by this time Patti was revelling in-between songs in playing up to her reputation for being a slightly dotty older ladies who is becoming one of those mad cat women.
She gave a nice dedication to Amy Winehouse before singing This Is The Girl about her all too short life. Then, as if to celebrate that it was the hottest day of the year so far, they ripped thorough Summertime Blues at quite a pace. Lenny Kaye seemed to be racing to keep up with Tony Shanahan and Jackson Smith as they ran away with it. Damn, Jackson has aged far more than anyone else who was on that stage in 1996. In fact his mother looks and sounds younger than back then.
Ain't It Strange saw some strange dancing from Patti and sounded just perfect. She then introduced Beneath the Southern Cross as being about the prisoners stuck in Gitmo and it was the centerpiece of the set: a towering version of the song that seems to grow in stature and has become a real live, stirring and evocative classic.
At the end of it, Patti disappeared off the stage and we got the garage band section of the show that opened with a rampage through Talk Talk by The Music Machine and was followed by two real obscure Nuggets that Lenny Kaye has dug up: Open Up Your Door (apparently by Richard and the Young Lions) and that went straight into Open My Eyes by The Nazz. They finished this section with a good version of The Count Five's Psychotic Reaction that wasn't a patch on the first time I heard Jay Dee Daugherty play it in the Tom Verlaine band in the mid 80's though it was still pretty decent. Thanks to Bucketful Of Brains' Nick for the added song info.
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Patti came back out invigorated and gave us a full on version of Dancing Barefoot that saw her dancing like crazy all over the stage before she calmed things down a bit for a Pissing in a River that really worked well.
We then got the most bizarre interlude of the evening when Patti asked if it was anyone's birthday before singing Happy Birthday for no apparent reason whatsoever. A bit odd for sure but Patti can get away with more than most. She had also brought out her daughter Jesse to play piano by this point. She launched into a great run through Because The Night that had the entire Empire singing and dancing to it before we got a nice, slowly building version of Land that eventually broke free and became a rampant rampaging version of Gloria. After a false ending or two, it brought a great set to close and the place went nuts for an encore, making easily three times the noise the Neil Young Fans had a couple of nights earlier.
Patti and the band came back and started barking and acting like dogs and then got the whole crowd to do the same for the marvelously odd Banga that just seems to work as a strange audience participation number.
Patti then gave us another one of her speeches that border on tirades against corporations. It's entirely valid as she makes some good points until you realize she has been on major corporate labels her entire career, moving from Arista to Sony Columbia and the fact that this show is at the very corporate indeed 02 Shepherds Bush Empire, so there is a hint of hypocrisy in her pronouncements. I'd rather her hypocrisy than the government variety, though, and the speech led us into a wonderful version of People Have The Power which is a fine rallying call of a song.
This just left time for Babelogue to lead into an incendiary closer of Rock & Roll Nigger that left the Empire screaming for more and acted as the perfect conclusion to another great Patti Smith show. She is on tour across Europe for the rest of the summer and is in unmissable form.
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