Music DVD Review: Patti Smith – Live At Montreux 2005

It was 1982. Six of us were crammed into a Honda Civic driving through the night time streets of Toronto, Ontario with Patti Smith’s “Rock and Roll Nigger” blasting. We had the windows open in spite of the fact it was the middle of a January deep freeze, letting the music spill out into the darkness and cold. It was a classic rock and roll moment if there ever was one. Where music, time, and place come together so all that exists in that moment is the song, its power, and the way its relentless beat reverberates through body and soul.

That wasn’t my first introduction to Smith, but it was the first time I’d fully experienced the power and intensity of her music. At that moment the song epitomized what rock and roll should be. It was a proclamation of independence and declaration of self delivered as an upraised middle finger to society. Yet perhaps its real appeal was how it perpetuated the romantic myth of the artist living on the edge: an outlaw who could see what others were blind to and had the nerve to speak those truths in public.

Over the years of listening to Smith’s music I came to realize this was her reality. She wrote and sang about things others either couldn’t see or weren’t able to put into words. Maybe her fascination with photography, freezing moments in time with her Polaroid Land camera, inspired her to work towards the same effect with verse that she accomplished with film. However, unlike a photograph which is forever frozen, her songs take on new life each time she performs them. This feeling was reinforced watching the recently released DVD, Live At Montreux 2005, from Eagle Rock Entertainment, as she performed songs from the breadth of her career.

While any performer worth his or her salt won’t play a song the exact same way over and over again for thirty years, only someone as gifted as Smith will allow her material to evolve to meet the challenges of changing times and circumstances. Always pushing the envelope lyrically, on this night she and her band allowed the spirit of the jazz greats who had previously graced the festival’s stage to imbue their music. As her long time stalwart and guitar player Lenny Kaye, commenting on the night’s performance in his liner notes for the DVD, puts it: “Patti once again defines our credo: there are no definitions but those we choose to create for ourselves.” This artist and her band will never be limited by labels or concern themselves with conforming to other’s expectations of what they should sound like.

While the evening starts off gently enough with the reggae beat of “Redondo Beach”, and its happy, welcoming sounds, Smith and company take the audience into far more unsettled waters with the second song, “Beneath The Southern Cross”. Like the North Star is used to identify due north, the Southern Cross was used by navigators in the South Pacific to fix due South. With its references to travel and exploration its placement in the set list couldn’t have been accidental. Smith is preparing everyone to join her on a voyage of musical exploration and discovery.

From her earliest days as a performer, reciting her poetry accompanied only by Kaye’s guitar improvisation has played a big part in Smith’s live performances. While she’s best known for her singing and song writing abilities, she’s also no mean slouch when it comes to her instrumental work. For although she’s not technically skillful by any stretch of the imagination, she has the unique ability to utilize both the electric guitar and her clarinet to create sounds which accent and elaborate on the mood of a piece. On the rendition of “25h Floor” included on this disc her electric guitar is a chaotic barrage of sound and noise creating a roar of defiance, anger, and confusion.

The very rawness of her playing is what makes it so powerful. While the song’s words might tell us what she’s thinking, it’s this lead which gives us a glimpse of the depth of her emotional commitment to her material. It’s like we’re being given a glimpse into her innermost reaches and seeing what’s boiling beneath the surface. While her clarinet playing is more polished than her work with the electric guitar, it too takes us into a place of emotional rawness most pop musicians wouldn’t dare venture into. “Seven Ways Of Going” is given an even deeper layer of mystery than normal with the inclusion of her clarinet solos. Its like an instinctual reaction to the music with Smith using the instrument to express those things mere language is incapable of articulating.

One thing that becomes abundantly clear over the course of the concert is the level of anger and defiance Smith was feeling at the time. Even such apparently innocuous numbers like her cover of Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” are delivered with a sneer and a level of distaste for the type of person the song describes; you almost pity those she’s pissed at. When “Because The Night”, the only song she’s ever written that could pass for a pop standard, becomes an expression of defiance, as if she’s daring anyone to deny lovers the right to their nights, you know she’s not happy with the direction the world is moving in. For she knows there are far too many people in the world who would deny people the chance to be lovers no matter what the time of day.

On this night Smith and her band, Kaye, Tony Shanahan (bass & keyboards), and Jay Dee Daugherty (drums) are joined by their fellow veteran of the New York City music scene Tom Verlaine on lead guitar. Seated off to one side it’s almost as if he’s in his own little world, but his guitar work is the perfect complement to the band’s perfect storm of music. Like the eye of a hurricane he is calmness personified as he lays down his almost delicate leads. Yet each note he plays, whether with his slide or his fingers, stands out. He doesn’t attempt to overpower, instead his guitar seems to appear when its needed in a particular song as if by magic to fill out the sound and add another layer of texture.

While there are no special features included in this DVD, as is usual for Eagle Rock concert DVDs, its technically superb. Aside from the normal surround sound options (DTS, and Dolby 5.1), the quality of the camera work and post production editing is some of the best you’ll ever see when it comes to live concerts. From the beautifully focused close ups of Verlaine’s fret board during his solos to the way in which they capture Smith’s facial expressions while singing you’re brought right up on stage. Cross fades from one shot to another have become overused to the point of cliche in concert recordings. So it was a pleasure to see them used sparingly and to great effect here. In fact, the director even resisted the urge far too many succumb too of incessantly cutting back and forth between band members. Instead, cameras linger lovingly on individuals allowing us to fully absorb and appreciate their performances. Watching and listening to Smith, either while she’s singing or hunched over her guitar squeezing sound and fury out of it, we are gifted with an intimacy you’d never experience attending a concert.

For close to 40 years now Smith has been one of the most unique voices in popular music. Yet for all that her studio recordings are works of artistry, as this DVD proves, her concerts take her music to an even higher level. While catching lighting in a bottle might not be possible, Live At Montreux 2005 captures Smith’s mercurial nature and indefatigable spirit and brings them to life in our living rooms.