The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame may be the farthest thing from punk these days, but it was good to see Patti Smith, she of the canonical Horses, recently inducted. Along with REM -- the post-punk innovators that brought you productions as diverse as Murmur and Being John Malkovich -- and of course the mighty Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, hip-hop truthspeakers and sonic tweakers.
All of the aforementioned artists were revolutionary in their own territories, and of course they all had crossovers that would make Jason Kidd jealous. But it is Smith's continuing optimism about a future governed by the hardwired and wetwireless that gives me hope for the our own particularly depressing teenage wasteland. Her hopes for that future, delivered after a depressing truth session about our War-on-Terrorized present, were printed recently in the New York Times:
"The Internet is [contemporary artists'] CBGB. Their territory is global. They will dictate how they want to create and disseminate their work. They will, in time, make breathless changes in our political process. They have the technology to unite and create a new party, to be vigilant in their choice of candidates, unfettered by corporate pressure. Their potential power to form and reform is unprecedented."
Have we heard this before? Sure, but we still launched a hyperreal war in Iraq, no doubt to replace the last hyperreal war in Iraq from a decade or so ago. Since then, however, the pace of technology has accelerated and the means of production are in the hands of the people more than ever. And that is punk as hell.
Smith has a new disc out on April 24 called Twelve, wherein she covers classic rock tracks, which is standard for a postmodernist who's mined the American songbook at length before to form her own unofficial American Idol catalogue. After all, we are all just source materials now. It's how you slice and dice them that counts.
** Extra Credit **
Patti Smith: "Gimme Shelter" (Columbia Records)
REM: "Harborcoat" (GooTube)
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five: "The Message" (GooTube)
