Patti Smith - Tower Theater, Upper Darby, PA, 5-13-1979

As part of my big BBC project, I checked to see if American singer-songwriter Patti Smith ever performed for the BBC. It turns out she played the Glastonbury Festival twice, in 1999 and 2012, and that counts, since those are usually broadcast on BBC radio. However, I could only find the 2012. I decided, rather than post something from that late in her career, why not post something from her peak years?

That led me to this concert. It seems to be her most popular bootleg concert, and for good reason. She released four classic albums from 1975 to 1979, then retired from music for nine years. She focused on family for a while, as she got married in 1980 and then gave birth to two children. So this concert came right at the end of her 1970s era, allowing her to play the best songs from all four of those albums. 

Furthermore, there aren't many excellent sounding boots from her from the 1970s (and no official live albums, surprisingly enough), but this one sounds great. It was broadcast that same evening by a local radio station. There were some issues with it, including a poor mix. But I used a version that was remixed in 2018 by someone named EN, which sounds a lot better. Then I made a change of my own: I thought the vocals were still low in the mix, so I boosted them for all songs using the UVR5 audio editing program. 

There was one additional, minor problem. Every few songs, the radio station had a DJ do a quick station identification. Happily, this always occurred during crowd applause, so no music was lost, but I still find it annoying. So I got rid of all those. "Citizen Ship" has "[Edit]" because I had to do some particularly tricky editing to make that DJ talk go away without it being noticeable. But I could have easily added "[Edit]" to half a dozen other songs, since I made similar edits to get rid of all that DJ talk. I also cut out some dead air between songs, such as tuning and futzing around, but I didn't cut much.

I should probably credit this to "the Patti Smith Group" instead of just "Patti Smith," since that's what her band was called during the 1970s. Guitarist Lenny Kaye had a particularly big role in this concert, helping to sing lead vocals on a couple of songs, for instance "Mr. Tambourine Man." But I'm keeping it just "Patti Smith," so it'll be consistent with other albums I hopefully post from her after the 1970s, when she dropped the "Group" from the name.

As Smith explained during her banter between songs, there was no opening act. Instead, she performed a particularly long show, with an intermission. She also explained that she'd lived some years in Philadelphia during her childhood (Upper Darby is part of greater Philadelphia), and her mother and other friends and family were in the audience. So she probably was especially emotionally invested in the show.

If you're not familiar with Smith's music, this is a good place to start. It almost serves as a best of for her 1970s albums, though it is missing a few key songs. Furthermore, there are a bunch of covers that never made it to any of her albums, mostly of classic hits from the 1950s and 1960s. She also did an unexpected version of "Tomorrow," which is from the musical "Annie." It seems like a much older song, but it was composed just two years earlier, in 1977. Apparently, that was one of her mother's favorite songs at the time.

This concert is two hours and seven minutes long.

01 Privilege [Set Me Free] (Patti Smith)
02 Till Victory (Patti Smith)
03 talk (Patti Smith)
04 So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (Patti Smith)
05 talk (Patti Smith)
06 Mr. Tambourine Man (Patti Smith)
07 talk (Patti Smith)
08 Citizen Ship [Edit] (Patti Smith)
09 talk (Patti Smith)
10 It's So Hard (Patti Smith)
11 talk (Patti Smith)
12 Redondo Beach (Patti Smith)
13 talk (Patti Smith)
14 Poppies (Patti Smith)
15 talk (Patti Smith)
16 Tomorrow (Patti Smith)
17 talk (Patti Smith)
18 Jailhouse Rock (Patti Smith)
19 25th Floor (Patti Smith)
20 talk (Patti Smith)
21 Kimberly (Patti Smith)
22 5-4-3-2-1 (Patti Smith)
23 talk (Patti Smith)
24 Be My Baby (Patti Smith)
25 talk (Patti Smith)
26 Secret Agent Man (Patti Smith)
27 talk (Patti Smith)
28 Revenge (Patti Smith)
29 talk (Patti Smith)
30 Dancing Barefoot (Patti Smith)
31 Because the Night (Patti Smith)
32 talk (Patti Smith)
33 Frederick (Patti Smith)
34 talk (Patti Smith)
35 Seven Ways of Going (Patti Smith)
36 talk (Patti Smith)
37 Hymn (Patti Smith)
38 Gloria [In Excelsis Deo] (Patti Smith)
39 talk (Patti Smith)
40 Pumping [My Heart] (Patti Smith)
41 talk (Patti Smith)
42 My Generation (Patti Smith)

https://www.imagenetz.de/fZDZW

The cover photo is from a concert in Chicago a few weeks later, on June 8, 1979.