Horses [Remastered] - Patti Smith > Reviews > Debut full of passion…

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Groundbreaking
Lyrics	Sublime
Quality and consistency of tracks	Flawless
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Outstanding
Value for Money

Advantages:	Passionate debut
Disadvantages:	nothin' comes to mind

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The first time I came across Patti Smith was on the B.B.C. 2 music show “The Old Grey Whistle Test”, I can’t remember the year but I think it was round the middle of the 70’s.

I remember she was strangely dressed for being on stage, wearing a big coat and hat on stage. I thought strange what’s all this about and then she proceeded to perform the track “Land” which is in 3 parts, horses, land of a 1,000 dances and La mer (de) nothing could have prepared me for the all out assault on the senses that Ms Smith performed.

The performance that I witnessed was incredible; she was jumping up and down, throwing herself around the floor and this was for the full length of the song and runs at nearly 10 minutes long.

After watching this on T.V. I thought to myself I got to get a copy of this album, the next I preceded to my nearest “music emporium”, I asked the shop assistant if they had this title in stock. To my great delight they did, I handed my money post haste, rushed home and slapped it on the turntable.

As the record played I inspected the cover more closely, the black and white photograph on the front was very intriguing, the image was very androgynous, the sleeve credit was to Robert Mapplethorpe, if you look very carefully you will notice a very small badge of a horse on the lapel of the jacket draped over her shoulder.
The opening track to the album was a hybrid version of “Gloria” by Van Morrison this song had as much passion in it as the live performance on T.V., the following track “Redondo beach” was a change of pace more reggae in nature than rock with it’s rock steady guitar sound and off beat hi- hat sound.
As the song “Free Money" started I thought to myself this is more like a 3 chord rock work-out, nothing previous to this on the album had given any indication of the contents of the track “Birdland” this track clocks in at just over 9 minutes long, what an audio attack she really lets fly, very similar to the kind of emotional displays that made Janis Joplin famous.

Most of the songs on the collection have been written by Patti Smith and her guitarist Lenny Kaye but the following track, “Break it up” was co-written by Tom Verlaine of “Television” fame, the song also has some excellent guitar playing by Mr Verlaine.

Then you get to the studio version of “Land” this is even more of an emotional Rolla coaster ride than the “Whistle test” performance.

As the album closes with the song “Elegie” the understated piano sound is welcome rest bite from intenseness of the rest of the album.

When this album was re-issued on C.D. in 1988 the sound of the album was very disappointing, but this 1996 version has better sound but is still only 20 bit, but it has a bonus live track with the producer of the album John Cale from the Velvet Underground playing bass on it which after the bass solo from Mr Cale the performance soon becomes a howling mess of feedback and swearing, and Patti Smith shouting “We created it, lets control it"…



 

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Patti Smith Horses