Sony
2004
Trampin'
About This Album
Nearly 30 years and nine albums in, Patti Smith shows no signs of giving up, or giving in, despite the fact she expected to be quietly doing her work instead of making rock & roll albums and playing in front of audiences. But then 9/11, Afghanistan, war in Iraq. Smith lives the vocation of a poet in an old-world sense of that word. Once, bards were the gadflies of society. Smith's Trampin' is a work that directly evolves from that tradition and fits squarely in her oeuvre. Trampin' is Smith's first outing for new label Columbia. She and her bandmates -- Lenny Kaye, Jay Dee Daugherty, Tony Shanahan, and Oliver Ray -- walk the tightrope between in-your-face garage rock, poetic ballads, and raucous, improvisational pieces (à la "Radio Ethiopia"). Not surprisingly, Trampin' is a largely political album, but it is far from a didactic one. Smith's voice of resistance is a human one, not an ideological one. She and her band cut much of the record live from the floor, and with the exception of the field recorded sounds of children playing in the street in "Radio Baghdad" and immediate and guttural strings added to "My Blakean Year," it comes off as both an immediate and organic record.
Track List (try tracks 3,7 and 11)

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