Later, with drools
Punk rock!
Did anybody else see Patti Smith spit on the floor before launching into her cover of Gimme Shelter on Later over the weekend? She and her band were on great form, and she proved an amiable and patient interviewee when the hapless, muttering Jools posed his typically trite and unaswerable questions ("Why did you choose to make an album of covers?", "Which of the bands playing tonight have you particularly enjoyed?") - but did she have to gob beforehand? Some minimum-wage BBC cleaner is going to have to mop that up later. This is no example to set our kids. Patti Smith is 61. (Actually, does that make spitting alright again? I'll have to check. You do see old blokes coughing up phlegm occasionally.)
Sorry if this has been an unsavoury post. But she started it.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 8:47 AM
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21 Comments:
I have occasionally seen Neds spitting in the street and looking quite proud of themselves. One starts with a smallish one, then all his pals have to try and make theirs just a litle bit bigger until it's all over the place. Is that the same?
Going right back to the shameless show of armpit hair on her album Easter, plus with songs like PIss Factory, she's always been grubby to me.
was it done as an artistic statement? If so, it's still not very nice, I have to agree, but is the objection to spitting in general or a woman spitting?
Chapati Smith sat at the next table to me in an Indian restaurant in Leicester a couple of years ago. Her table manners were exemplary. Maybe her decision to release a 'grollie' on 'Later' was her comment on the artistic content of the programme?
She's an over rated, tuneless attention whore - hope they made her clean it up.
Maybe she just had a bit of a cough and didn't want to draw too much attention to it by phlegming into a tatty tissue.
A surreptitious spit would alleviate her problem without too much fuss. It's just a shame the cameras caught it.
She probably feels quite embarrassed by her action, but not as embarrassed as if she had started singing and phelgmed all down her nice blouse.
Also, to call her tuneless is rather harsh. She is quite successful after all, and you can hardly say that the other bands on that show were any more tuneful.
I'm not a massive fan of hers, but people like her. One man's Patti is another man's Poison...
I agree that Holland is a bit of a lame interviewer though. He should stick to what he knows best, which is New Year's Eve.
.. yuk, it's like watching your mum gozzing one out
I think if the gob in question was full of artistic integrity, then it's ok..
If it was just because she wanted the other bands to think she was the 'hardest', then it's totally unacceptable.
I don't know. I think Jools' style of interviewing is better on the radio - he clearly has this passion for the technical side of things, (melody, changes etc.)
I think it's preferable to Transmission on 4. I love QOTSA, but Josh Homme always seems to give lousy interviews, and I like Lauren Laverne.
I'd have preferred Smith to do Boy in the Bubble - it's a good version.
Ooh, it's like jockey's blowing their noses into their hands, innit? Still, gotta admire the Smith, specially after her comments in a recent interview about too many artists whining about not being able to get arts grants or huge contracts. Ms Smith's son holds down a manual job in Detroit (IIRC) while he plans his assault on the music world.
Oh, you lot of gurning whinger dads. A nod to punk, quite funny, I suppose you think women don't fart either. Plus she put in a good set.
I was all prepared to write off her appearance as not worth writing home about when she played "Gloria" and all was forgiven. Have you heard the cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" that they posted up on the "Later..." pages on the BBC website? Hmmm.
As for Jools, well, he's an unctuous toad, isn't he? I love that dreadful jamming thing they do at the beginning of the show and try to spot which of the artists think they are trapped in hell and can't conceal their look of fear / disgust / ennui.
ST
In this day and age isn't some mimimum-wage BBC cleaner going to scrape it up and flog it on eBay?
Even so, not a nice thing to do. If that's her idea of being a "rebel" she ought to stay in that nice home and ask nursie to help her finish the jigsaw.
Meal SPOILER alert. At school we briefly used to have competitions to see who could produce the greenest blob of phlegm. The only reason I (ho-ho) bring this up is because we used to call them "patties". No connection I assume.
Is spitting in a TV studio a bigger faux pas than releasing an album of covers? Perhaps it was a manifestation of self disgust.
Maybe she's been reading Dickens - Great Expectorations anyone?
Thought spitting ok just shame she didn't complete it by lighting a fag and calling us a bunch of scared of life whingeing nanny state ninnies. That would have been great.
I saw her perform a year or two ago on telly at a Robbie Burns tribute concert, which I thought was a bit bizarre (her being on it, not the concert itself).
Before she started singing, she launched a huge gob on to the floor, which would have gone down a real treat with the Scottish National Orchestra, who were sitting round about her with their ball gowns and dinner suits on!! She's just a dirty bitch! Sorry.
I think it was The Fall who refused to participate in the "jam" at the start and just stood there.
To be fair, they probably weren't able to
I saw her playing at one of her Meltdown shows last year and she spat on the floor then as well. Horrible. Although that wasn't as yucky as having to watch Yoko Ono.
I've seen Patti Smith maybe 5 or 6 times and each time she has had occasion to gob on the floor. Maybe it's a medical issue? She took a sock off once and threw it into the audience, and boy did we scatter.
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