Freak Face's definitions
Punk rock's only poet, Patti Smith ranks among the most influential female rock & rollers of all time. Ambitious, unconventional, and challenging, Smith's music was seen as the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan. If that hybrid remained distinctly uncommercial for much of her career, it wasn't a statement against accessibility so much as the simple fact that Smith followed her own muse wherever it took her -- from structured rock songs to free-form experimenting, or even completely out of music at times. Her most avant-garde outings drew a sense of improvisation and interplay from free jazz, though they remained firmly rooted in noisy, primitive three-chord rock & roll. She was a powerful concert presence, singing and chanting her lyrics in an untrained but expressive voice, whirling around the stage like an ecstatic shaman delivering incantations. A regular at CBGB's during the early days of NYC Punk, she was the first artist of the bunch to get a record deal and release an album, even beating The Ramones to the punch. The artiness and the amateur musicianship of her work both had a major impact on the Punk Movement, whether in New York or England, whether among her contemporaries (Television, Richard Hell) or followers. What was more, Smith became an icon to subsequent generations of female rockers. She never relied on sex appeal for her success -- she was unabashedly intellectual and creatively uncompromising, and her appearance was usually lean, hard, and androgynous. She also never made an issue of her gender, calling attention to herself as an artist, not a woman; she simply dressed and performed in the spirit of her aggressive, male rock role models, as if no alternative had ever occurred to her. In the process, she obliterated the expectations of what was possible for women in rock, and stretched the boundaries of how artists of any gender could express themselves.
Its going down tonight in this town
Cause they stare and growl
They all stare and growl
I take a scar everytime i cry
Cause it aint my style no it aint my style
Going down to the gravel head to the barrel
Take this life and end this struggle
Los Angeles come scam me please
Emptiness never sleeps at Cliftons 6 am
With your bag lady friend and your mind descending
Stripped of the right to be a human in control
Its warmer in hell so down we go
They say this is the city
The city of angels
All i see is dead wings
City Of Angels-Patti Smith
Cause they stare and growl
They all stare and growl
I take a scar everytime i cry
Cause it aint my style no it aint my style
Going down to the gravel head to the barrel
Take this life and end this struggle
Los Angeles come scam me please
Emptiness never sleeps at Cliftons 6 am
With your bag lady friend and your mind descending
Stripped of the right to be a human in control
Its warmer in hell so down we go
They say this is the city
The city of angels
All i see is dead wings
City Of Angels-Patti Smith
by Freak Face May 14, 2005
Get the Patti Smithmug. Kid: Yo dude, look at that Edge kid over there. I don't think he has any friends.
Other Kid: Why does he have x's on his hands?
Other Kid: Why does he have x's on his hands?
by Freak Face May 3, 2005
Get the Edgemug. Horrid music that is similar to heavy metal. Led Zeppelin was considered the fathers of hard rock. Fans of hard rock were like punx but they were more violent and they had no purpose.
by Freak Face February 10, 2005
Get the Hard Rockmug. A dealer in New York City in the '70s. He specialized in speed and heroin, since marijuana was considered a hippie drug. He was quite known throughout the under ground for his great deals and for the fact that you could gipp him easily, because he had no common sense. One evening in the year of '77, Rockets Redglare was found at a bar with a bunch of his buddys, drinking beer. He footed the bill, which is something he never did, because he was almost always broke. One of his friends asked him where he got the money. On hearing this Rockets promptly started bragging to his friends that he killed Nancy Spungen. Yes, the same Nancy Spungen who at the time, was the girlfriend of Sid Vicious. Nancy was killed with Sid's favorite knife, that never got seperated from him. Sid was blamed for killing his girlfriend and stayed doped up on heroin for a week. At the end of the week, he and a bunch of friends had a huge party. One of Sid's friends told him that he knew of a great heroin dealer that could make him a good deal because of who he was. The dealer came to where Sid was staying and sold him some heroin. Sid took it and partyed till he dropped. The next morning he was found in the home, dead. We now know that what was given to Sid was a hot shot. Rockets Redglare was later reported to have comitted suicide.
by Freak Face May 6, 2005
Get the Rockets Redglaremug. Any punk that seems poor or dirty. Richard Hell was a gutter punk. He actually needed his safety pins to hold his clothes together. Sid Vicious was also a gutter punk. Pretty much everyone who hung out at McLaren's shop in London was a gutter punk. There are some bands who are considered gutter punks.
The Casualties, The Dead Kennedys, Guttermouth, Sex Pistols, Eater and Antisocial are all gutter punk bands.
by Freak Face May 16, 2005
Get the Gutter Punkmug. Although their "fame" lasted for a full 15 minutes, few bands entered rock & roll with such a crazy reputation as the Plasmatics did. Started by Rod Swenson, a porn film producer who wanted to be the next Malcolm McLaren, the Plasmatics were fronted by sex film "star" Wendy O. Williams, a muscular, raspy-voiced "singer" who generally wore next to nothing onstage. (Her most radical bit of fashion accessorizing consisted of covering her nipples with black electrical tape.) Almost as captivating was guitarist Richie Stotts, a tall, gangly geek who fancied garters and stockings and a blue mohawk; he also liked to smash his guitar against his head until he drew blood.
Playing the New York punk circuit, the Plasmatics became notorious for their extreme stage shows, which, early on, started with Williams firing blanks from a sawed-off shotgun and taking a chainsaw to a human dummy filled with stage blood, sending a spray of fake gore throughout the club and anticipating the fake carnage of GWAR by nearly a decade. The music, however, was another story: mostly sub-literate punk rock loaded with lots of quasi-sci-fi totalitarianism and consumer nightmares of unknown proportions that on record didn't work without the stage pyrotechnics, something Swenson and the Plasmatics understood completely as the stage shows quickly became more elaborate: cars were blown up, guitars were sawed in half (oddly, the dummy disappeared), equipment was set on fire -- it was a Beavis and Butt-Head wet dream come to life, although none of this translated into good record sales.
While Williams became something of a demi-celebrity in punk circles, especially after she was busted (and brutalized by police) in Milwaukee for "public indecency," the Plasmatics were all show and no substance. Jean Beauvoir, apparently on a quest for legitimacy, quit the band, and the focus became Wendy O. rather than the bunch of unknowns backing her up. After 1982's Coup D'Etat, Williams went solo, worked with Lemmy from Motorhead, and roped in Kiss's Gene Simmons to produce her album W.O.W. She made another solo LP, 1986's Kommander of Kaos, and that same year appeared in the movie Reform School Girls; after a 1989 Plasmatics reunion outing, Maggots: The Record, she made a few more acting appearances before essentially dropping from sight altogether during the early 1990s. On April 8, 1998, it was announced that Williams had committed suicide; she was 48.
Playing the New York punk circuit, the Plasmatics became notorious for their extreme stage shows, which, early on, started with Williams firing blanks from a sawed-off shotgun and taking a chainsaw to a human dummy filled with stage blood, sending a spray of fake gore throughout the club and anticipating the fake carnage of GWAR by nearly a decade. The music, however, was another story: mostly sub-literate punk rock loaded with lots of quasi-sci-fi totalitarianism and consumer nightmares of unknown proportions that on record didn't work without the stage pyrotechnics, something Swenson and the Plasmatics understood completely as the stage shows quickly became more elaborate: cars were blown up, guitars were sawed in half (oddly, the dummy disappeared), equipment was set on fire -- it was a Beavis and Butt-Head wet dream come to life, although none of this translated into good record sales.
While Williams became something of a demi-celebrity in punk circles, especially after she was busted (and brutalized by police) in Milwaukee for "public indecency," the Plasmatics were all show and no substance. Jean Beauvoir, apparently on a quest for legitimacy, quit the band, and the focus became Wendy O. rather than the bunch of unknowns backing her up. After 1982's Coup D'Etat, Williams went solo, worked with Lemmy from Motorhead, and roped in Kiss's Gene Simmons to produce her album W.O.W. She made another solo LP, 1986's Kommander of Kaos, and that same year appeared in the movie Reform School Girls; after a 1989 Plasmatics reunion outing, Maggots: The Record, she made a few more acting appearances before essentially dropping from sight altogether during the early 1990s. On April 8, 1998, it was announced that Williams had committed suicide; she was 48.
A great band that wasn't understood by the public. They were so punk that it was impossible to describe them as that.
by Freak Face May 9, 2005
Get the The Plasmaticsmug. by Freak Face February 11, 2005
Get the Fishheadmug.