Quote Originally Posted by Troy
I'm with Mastercylinder on this one.

Maybe Patti's folk-tinged punk changed the direction of some music back in the 70s and 80s, but today that influence is mighty diluted and inconsequential.

I saw her at Winterland back in the late 70s and the gig was really boring. The music ugly, coarse and uninvolving, her voice ragged and sloppy, her poetry laughable angst-ridden juvenilia. A punk Stevie Nicks. BFD. I didn't buy into the mystique one bit.

Maybe some punk didn't play to the DIY ethos already mentioned in this thread, but based on what I saw that night, Patti sure did, cuz it really looked like amateur hour up there.

Meh is right.

She sure had an influence on that one great Jim Carroll record...how many acts like the Pretenders did you see prior to 1975? I think the name PJ Harvey has already been mentioned. Then there's Alanis Morrissette and Liz Phair...these three are not from the 70s or 80s last time I looked, and if you're denying them their due, that's another matter entirely. Unless you want to say that Horses had no influence on these people, I'm not sure why you'd say it didn't change music.

The amateurs who made this record were apparently good enough to be selected by folks ranging from Ray Manzarek to Blue Oyster Cult to Charlie Daniels to the Church to Noel Redding to Paul McCartney to work on their projects. So apparently those artists disagreed with yr assessment of the musical abilities of the Patti Smith Group.

Then there's stuff like the Roches...Suzanne Vega...the Indigo Girls...all of whom brought Horses alumni on board for their early work. Coincidence? I think not.

Considering the easily drawn links between these people and the Lilith Fair, are you still going to deny influence here? I won't bother with Mastercylinder, it's not worth it. And I'm not a big Patti fan, either, let alone the Liliths. But this is just ridiculous.

Birdland is my favorite song on the rec, it's the essence of what she did best to my ears. She could rock, sure, but so could a lot of other people, at least as well as the PSG. What she did with poetry on this tune was unique and stands out. That's not to deny her version of Gloria, however...but Piss Factory should've been on this record.