Lenny Kaye Hosts Classic Album Sundays (N.Y.) Patti Smith's "Horses" 40th Anniversary Celebration

This Sunday, November 15th, Patti Smith Group lead guitarist, rock critic and producer Lenny Kaye will host a Classic Album Sundays event celebrating the 40th anniversary of Horses, Smith's incendiary debut album.

The monthly Classic Album Sundays listening party will be from 4–7pm at Good Room, 98 Meserole Avenue, Brooklyn.

Classic Album Sundays’ NYC producer and host Ron Like Hell will discuss with Kaye the making of Horses, Kaye’s original Nuggets compilation, and his production work with Jim Carroll and Suzanne Vega.

Horses will be played afterwards in its entirety through a hi-fi system consisting of a Rega P9 turntable and Apheta MC cartridge, Audio Note amplification, Klipsch loudspeakers and subwoofers, and AudioQuest cabling. The evening will conclude with a Q&A session with Lenny Kaye.

Tickets cost $12 online/$15 at the door. Space is limited. For more info, visit the Classic Album Sundays website.

To purchase tickets, go here.

COMMENTS
LondonCalling's picture

I saw Patti Smith recently at the Roundhouse in London where she played the Horses album in its entirety. They were selling copies of the 40th Anniversary pressing of the album at the merchandise stall (£20)so presumably they will be playing this pressing. I didn't buy a copy on the night since the merchandisers didn't know how it had been mastered and and I already have the Speakers Corner pressing of this album. It would be interesting to find out how the 40th anniversary pressing was mastered and how it compares to the Speakers Corner pressing which I think I prefer to the old Arista pressing.

pmatt's picture

And should be this Country's artist laureate!

rl1856's picture

2 landmark albums were released in 1975.

One of the two went on to become among the best selling albums of all time. A noted critic opined that the artist in question was the future of Rock and Roll. And in a way he was correct. The record was a breath of fresh air coming out as it did in the middle of the Disco revolution, Prog Rock and Arena bombast. This record was a straight ahead rock and roll record and a copy resides in just about everyone's collection. But for all of the success of the record and of the artist, no one namechecks the title as an influence. Hipsters don't get into heated debates about the merit of the artist or individual songs. While it may have woven itself into the fabric of our music culture, its legacy is more of nostalgia than forward looking influence. Just about every AOR cover band can be counted on to include a few tracks from this album so beer swilling 'boomers in the audience can fist pump their way back to High School glory, if only for a moment.

The other record was released to very little fanfare and was essentially a document of an underground artist performing in an underground scene. While the record was a stark contrast to just about everything else released that year (much more so than record number one), very few people appreciated it at the time for what it represented. The first track drew a demarcation line in the sand. You are either with me or against me- no middle ground. The track combined arrogance, poetry and an appreciation of the past, along with a subversively sexual lyrical take that very few probably understood at the time. Through this record you could hear the evolution of Rock from its birth as the bastard child of RnB, through its poppy adolescence, psychedelic teen years and finally into adulthood as a literate form of artistic expression. This record has gone on to become a touchstone in the evolution of rock, in the advancement of the musician/singer as artist, and has become one of the more influential records of the period. Current musicians cite it as a reference, and most music critics deem it a must have for any serious music collection. Listening to it today is still a revelation.

The two records in question are Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" and Patti Smith's "Horses".

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The above has been in my head since 2005, which was the 30th anniversary of both records. At one time I thought about applying for a position as a music reviewer for our local independent /free paper. The above would have been my first review. My perspective for the role was to listen and review new music, then point out influences from older tunes/artists.

smittyman2's picture

As you note, they were both landmarks for different reasons. Fortunately we don't have to choose, we can enjoy both for what they are.

john ryan horse's picture

"Horses" changed my life. Nobody I knew could stand it. Roxy Music had changed my life the year before. 1974-75 was a very strange era, as the music-industrial complex was consolidating, & would soon try to regain its pre Beatles/Dylan/Stones role in shaping the flow of music to the public (free form FM soon supplanted by the long tendrils of "classic rock"). Everyone either broke up (NY Dolls, Traffic, Free, Mott, Byrds, Sly & the Family Stone, Jefferson Airplane,
King Crimson, Faces, and more!) or came "back" from something (George Harrison's sad solo tour, Dylan/The Band which was the first time I felt a palpable sense of nostalgia at a concert, CSNY, Clapton). And unlike just a couple yeas earlier looking at the top 20 albums in Billboard you were uncertain that at minimum 4 or 5 of them were interesting or excellent. The "future of rock 'n' roll" quote seemed contrived - the career management of Bruce & long wait for BTR to be issued could have easily been "Physical Graffiti" ('they're still working on the cover...the final mix...'). I never cared for "West Side Story" and didn't like Bruce. Oddly I did like "Darkness On the Edge Of Town" way more than Patti's overproduced "Easter" (her worst imo). But that night in January 1976 I heard WBCN play Patti live from Paul's Mall (?), ending with a furious 'My Generation', was transformative...What Grace Slick had done a decade earlier, Patti would do with equal authenticity: redefine gender assumptions, the idea of what makes a rock 'n' roll woman physically "attractive" (Farah Fawcett was the ideal of the moment), what defined singing 'well' and how records were made (Cale's production - predicting hip hop and recalling the Velvets is singular!).
After the applause, the DJ on BCN said, "That was tonight's poetry corner," and I laughed out loud...

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