Wave | Ghost Dance | Because the Night | Ginsberg Eulogy

VINYL FORMAT. "Poet, punk-rock evangelist and unwavering proponent of authentic rock n' roll, Patti Smith is one of the most brilliant minds of modern music. Making her start in the burgeoning anti-art communities of 1970s New York City, Smith was one of the few figures that maintained the continuum of the 1960s avant-garde, invigorating it with the disillusioned and enraged outlook of post-Nixon-era youth, and in the process reinventing major label rock forever. Basking in the helpless fury of the first legitimately apolitical generation in the United States, Smith and her loyal circle of collaborators pushed their confrontational sonic warfare with fearless confidence and an unparalleled lyrical expressiveness, inspired by the total freedom of punk-rock and resolute in infusing its aesthetic populism and accessibility with a firm intellectual vivacity that did battle with the increasingly grim social landscape of neo-consumerism. Countering rampant alienation with the rejuvenating act of basic musical articulation, Smith affirmed cathartic release through song, word and collective performance, elevating her work from standard punk-rock radicalism to authentic social philosophy, an essential chronicling of the dark shadows of isolation-turned-communal transcendence and self-actualization that always lay at the heart of punk's essentially democratic culture."