Patti Smith

Last month, at a screening of the reverent Bob Dylan tribute I'm Not There, I wished for more of the movie's brief, wry "Arthur Rimbaud" sequences:

More than that, I wished for a blowout spectacle in honor of Patti Smith: she who chanted "Go Rimbaud, go Rimbaud!" ("Land", Horses) She who flew to Paris for summer Rimbaud festivals. She who dressed a little bit like a 19th-century poet. How many adolescents from 1975 to some unforeseeable date will buy her first album in order to own a copy of the cover photo?
Standing beside a window, photographed by Mapplethorpe at one serendipitously sunny instant on a cloudy day, she was self-styled in skinny menswear. The shot is a great album cover because it first portends her unnerving brand of rock, and then draws attention to itself as a visual statement. Even if you boil it down to a fashion statement, it works, though some of the Patti Smith homages' price tags miss the point:

Her follow-up to Horses came out a year later; though she lived hard, she recorded regularly over a few intense years. She hoped Radio Ethiopia would be a big hit. The idea is strange, since at some points on this album she is even tougher than on Horses: for instance, the track "Radio Ethiopia" is a fiery broken-down riot with great performances by each member of the band.
Radio Ethiopia contained a mournful hit, "Pissing in a River," which didn't compromise her messianic sound. Ten years ago, it was the centerpiece of the movie "All Over Me," a farewell kiss to 90s riot grrrl culture starring Alison Folland. The b-side to the single was vaguely radio-friendly: "Ask the Angels", performed here in Stockholm in 1976: