Lost Gem: "25th Floor/High on Rebellion" - Patti Smith (1978)


"Desire to dance,
too startled to try.
Wrap my legs 'round you,
starting to fly."
~ Patti Smith ~


Patti Smith is a brave bad-ass babe who doesn't play nice.

Patti is the...Godmother of Punk...a CBGB icon...and a beatnik poetess with a rock and roller heart.

"Easter" (1978) is filled with classic rockers and head-spinning free-form poetry burns.  Though rarely does one hear anything but the charter song..."Because The Night".  (A good song...but hardly the best one).

The words of poetry flow from her beautiful mouth with defiance. Sometimes angry.  Sometimes with an aching vulnerability.  But always with words of truth...intent on exacting just the right emotion.

Backing Patti...are fine rollers...deliciously skilled in hammering Patti's RnR nail deeper and deeper into our consciousness.
Best of all...Patti Smith lays it out...her way. And no apologies.

She's real.  The music's real.  And hey, if it was easy. we'd all be doing it.

Lost Gem:--> "25th Floor/High On Rebellion"...is about sexual abandon...that grooves into a thrilling poetry rant.  The studio captures the band tripping off Patti's free-flow sandwich...and the rest is magic.

Have you heard this one?


We explore the men's room.
We don't give a shit.
Ladies' lost electricity;
take vows inside of it.
Desire to dance;
Too startled to try.
Wrap my legs 'round you,
starting to fly.
Let's explore
up there, up there, up there,
on the twenty-fifth floor.

Circle all around me,
coming for the kill, kill, kill
oh kill me baby
like a kamikaze
heading for a spill.
oh but it's all spilt milk to me.
Desire to dance;
Too startled to try.
Wrap my legs 'round you,
starting to fly.
Let's soar
up there, up there, up there,
on the twenty-fifth floor.

We do not eat
flower of creation.
We do not eat,
eat anything at all.
Love is, love was, love is a manifestation.
I'm waiting for a contact to call.
Love's war. Love's cruel.
Love's pretty, love's pretty cruel tonight.
I'm waiting here to refuel.
I'm gonna make contact tonight.
Love in my heart.
The night to exploit.
Twenty-five stories over Detroit,
and there's more
up there, up there, up there.

stoned in space. Zeus. Christ.
It has always been rock
and so it is and so it shall be.
within the context of neo rock
we must open up our eyes and seize
and rend the veil of smoke which man calls order.
pollution is a necessary result of the inability of man
to reform and transform waste.
the transformation of waste
the transformation of waste
the transformation of waste
the transformation of waste
is perhaps the oldest pre-occupation of man.
man being the chosen alloy,
he must be reconnected via shit, at all cost.
inherent with(in) us is the dream of the task
of the alchemist to create from the clay of man.
and to re-create from excretion of man
pure and then soft and then solid gold.

all must not be art. some art we must disintegrate.
positive (anarchy must exist.)

(background)
i feel it swirling around me
i feel it feeling no pain
I'm waiting above for you baby
i know that I'll see you up there
I'm floating in a door backward
on boundaries over this world
I'm waiting above in the sky, dear
upon a ...)

what i feel when I'm playing guitar is completely cold and crazy, like i
don't owe nobody nothing and it's just a test just to see how far i can
relax into the cold wave of a note. when everything hits just right (just
and right) the note of nobility can go on forever.

I never tire of the solitary E and i trust my guitar and i don't care about anything. sometimes i feel like I've broken through and I'm free and i could dig
into eternity into eternity riding the wave and realm of the E.
Sometimes it's useless. here i am struggling and filled with dread-afraid that I'll never squeeze enough graphite from my damaged cranium to inspire or
asphyxiate any eyes grazing like hungry cows across the stage or page.
inside of me I'm crazy I'm just crazy.

Inside i must continue. i see her, my stiff muse, jutting around round round round like a broken speeding statue. the colonial year is dead and the greeks too are finished. the
face of Alexander remains not only solely due to sculpture but through the
power and foresight and magnetism of Alexander himself. the artist must
maintain his swagger. he must he must he must be intoxicated by ritual as
well as result.

Look at me i am laughing. i am laughing. i am lapping cocaine from the hard
brown palm of the bouncer. and i trust my guitar. therefore we black out together. therefore i would run through scum. and scum is just ahead, ah we see it, but we just laugh. we're ascending through the hollow mountain.
we are peeking. we are laughing. we are kneeling.
we are laughing. we are radiating at last. this rebellion is
just a gas our gas a gas that we pass.

Good stuff!

Casey Chambers
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Comments

Nazz Nomad said…
when this came out, people got crazy cause she had hairy pits
July 9, 2010 at 2:52 PM
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