Patti Smith: Frank, Miles and Janis all in 1

Patti Smith is currently on a tour supporting her 12 album. It';s a long rumored project containing 12 covers of rock royality. Smith this past summer was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a place where she clearly deserves to be although I'm sure record executives still ask who she is and outside of a famous following the mainstream music buying public probably asks the same question.

Smith is an original, her rants legendary ( at the Santa Cruz show last night she screamed at a photographer telling him to "take the picture , not make the documentary"), her voice raspy as ever, her mood upbeat and the band fronted by Lenny Kaye as hot as ever...

After opening the show with a pair of tracks from HORSES “Kimberly” and “Redondo Beach” Smith picked up her clarinet and began blowing what could be loosely called free form jazz. Her fellow musicians joined in with some spacey noodling that clearly pleased the Deadheads in the crowd. Then, suddenly, out of a place only Jerry Garcia would understand , a song began to materialize, Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced?” It was an evening to remember the classics and Patti Smith showed she, like maybe only Ray Charles and Willie Nelson possess the ability to take the familiar and transform it into an original all over again.

12 won't sell like it should and she will be always be remembered for HORSES , however her live shows seem to bring out the best in her. You owe it to yourself to bask in the glow of Ms Smith's creativity at least once, so you will know where all those less talented "one hit" wonders got their original dose of spirit.

As Patti Smith would say " the people have the power"