Everything was soaked that morning of the march, and then made clean again. I rifled through my records and pulled out Patti Smith Group’s Peace and Noise LP, mostly recorded lean, terse, no tricks. Songs find their way to the listener through a seasoned rock ‘n’ roll band whose leader is a minstrel, a teacher rich in myth, magic, danger and grace. I turned to the silenced TV beaming image upon image of women, a sea of energy, impossible. No one could have seen this coming. And I turn up the foreboding “Waiting Underground,” the piano in descending chords, the band pushing the tempo, electric guitars banging out grit … but it’s in her voice where you find the power. There by the ridge be a gathering/There we shall await/The beat of your feet/Hammering the earth/Where the great ones tremble/in their snow white shrouds/Waiting underground. The bridge moves up, comes down harder, with the same piano cutting a path to the voice, calling to all who hear it. Short bursts of feedback pushing, charging the song into strength, and it’s in the action of each face I see. It is hard to turn away and Patti Smith shouts one more time that we are more than here, appeased, we are alive.
This article appears in Jan 19-25, 2017.