Punk Rocker and Poet Patti Smith - "Advice to the Young" & beautiful rendition of "O, Holy Night"

Patti Smith | Trampin' Band

Patti Smith | photo by Angelo Cricchi

"O'Holy Night" Patti Smith

Patti Smith managed to make one of the most beloved Christmas hymns all the more exquisite with her gorgeous rendition of 'O Holy Night' at the 2013 Vatican concert. It's little wonder Pope Francis invited the singer back to perform again at this year's show.

With the Vatican orchestra playing back up, Smith's voice resonated throughout the Conciliation Auditorium in Rome, where the 2014 concert will also take place on Dec. 13. The carol's lyrics -- "Led by the light of faith serenely beaming" -- stand out in the wake of Smith's recent interview with HuffPost Religion senior editor Paul Raushenbush, during which the artist discussed her personal relationship with faith:

Spiritually, one has to have the ability to be lifted up themselves. You can be inspired by a rock-and-roll song but spirituality is innate. Someone can make you feel good or happy, but the actual framework of spirituality is within you.

- Huffington Post, 11/28/2014

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Wikipedia Biography - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patti_Smith

Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses.

Called the "Godmother of Punk", her work is a fusion of rock and poetry. Smith's most widely known song is "Because the Night", which was co-written with Bruce Springsteen and reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1978. In 2005, Patti Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture,and in 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On November 17, 2010, she won the National Book Award for her memoir Just Kids. She is also a recipient of the 2011 Polar Music Prize.

"Gloria" MENU 0:00 "Because the Night" MENU 0:04 "Dancing Barefoot" MENU 0:03

Problems playing these files? See media help.

Patti Smith Official Website - http://www.pattismith.net/intro.html

[HD] "People Have the Power" Patti Smith / Arisa
(with a very short Spanish translation)

Patti Smith: Advice to the young

LISTEN: PATTI SMITH'S SPIRITUAL WISDOM AND PROPHETIC POWER

Patti Smith - Everybody Wants To Rule The World (Tears For Fears) - HD

Patti Smith: EXTENDED INTERVIEW on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight

Patti Smith's Polaroid Images -

https://www.lensculture.com/articles/patti-smith-land-250-polaroid-photographs

Patti Smith's Quotes - 

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/patti_smith.html

Patti Smith - Gloria - 1976 - Stockholm

The Story behind Patti Smith's "Gloria" -

http://www.covermesongs.com/2014/08/the-story-behind-patti-smiths-gloria.html

Lyrics: Gloria, by Patti Smith

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine
Meltin' in a pot of thieves, wild card up my sleeve
Thick heart of stone, my sins my own
They belong to me, me

People say, "Beware", but I don't care
The words are just rules and regulations to me, me

I, I walk in a room, you know I look so proud
I'm movin' in this here atmosphere, well, any thing's allowed
And I go to this here party and I just get bored
Until I look out the window, see a sweet young thing

Humpin' on the parking meter, leanin' on the parking meter
Oh, she looks so good, oh, she looks so fine
And I got this crazy feeling and then I'm gonna make her mine
Ooh, I'll put my spell on her

Here she comes, walkin' down the street
Here she comes, comin' through my door
Here she comes, crawlin' up my stair
Here she comes, waltzin' through the hall

In a pretty red dress
And oh, she looks so good, oh, she looks so fine
And I got this crazy feeling that I'm gonna uh, unh, make her mine

And then I hear this knockin' on my door
Hear this knockin' on my door
And I look up into the big tower clock
And say, "Oh, my God here's midnight"

And my baby is walkin' through the door
Leanin' on my couch she whispers to me and I take the big plunge
And oh, she was so good and oh, she was so fine
And I'm gonna tell the world that I just uh, unh, made her mine

And I said darling, tell me your name, she told me her name
She whispered to me, she told me her name
And her name is, and her name is, and her name is, and her name is
G L O R I I I, G L O R I A

Gloria, G L O R I A, Gloria, G L O R I A
Gloria, G L O R I A, Gloria

I was at the stadium
There were twenty thousand girls called their names out to me
Marie and Ruth, but to tell you the truth
I didn't hear them, I didn't see

I let my eyes rise to the big tower clock
And I heard those bells chimin' in my heart
Going ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dong
Ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dong

Counting the time, then you came to my room
And you whispered to me and we took the big plunge
And oh, you were so good, oh, you were so fine
And I gotta tell the world that I make her mine, make her mine
Make her mine, make her mine, make her mine, make her mine
G L O R I A

Gloria, G L O R I A, Gloria, G L O R I A
Gloria, G L O R I A, Gloria

And the tower bells chime, ding dong they chime
They're singing, "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine"

Gloria, G L O R I A, Gloria, G L O R I A
Gloria, G L O R I A, Gloria, G L O R I A
Gloria, G L O R I A, Gloria, G L O R I A

Patti Smith's Quotes

Just For the Fun of It - Keith Urban and Miranda Lambert, "We Were Us"

Miranda Lamberts and Keith Urban performing 2014 Fuse Song, "We Were Us"

Keith Urban - We Were Us ft. Miranda Lambert

We Were Us Lyrics

http://www.metrolyrics.com/we-were-us-lyrics-keith-urban.html

Wikipedia - About the Song - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Were_Us

from Fuse

"We Were Us" is track #6 on the album Fuse. It was written by Galyon, Nicholle Anne / Robbins, Jimmy / Nite, Jon.

Songwriters - Galyon, Nicholle, Anne ? Robbins, Jimmy / Nite, Jon

Published by - Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., EMI Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group

Rearview crosses

Railroad ties
Oh, Hail Marys
Friday nights
Heartbeat baby
Low-beam lights
God, I miss when you were mine

[Chorus]

Back when that song was a song
I could sing along without thinkin bout you every time it came on
Every beat, every line, every word, every time
When a road was a road
I could roll on through without wishin that empty seat was you
Money was gas, dreams were dust
Love was fast and we were us

Shotgun sunset
A cool mint kiss
Backseat promise
Breaking it
Floorboard feeling
County lines
God, I miss when you were mine

[Chorus]

In a sleepy town, just jumping in
Far too young to know that summers end
We were us, we can't go back
It's what it is, but God I miss

[Chorus]

Every beat, every line, every word, every single time
I just close my eyes and you're ridin shotgun
You and me, baby, on the run
I can feel your heartbeat, baby

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Miranda Lamberts and Keith Urban performing 2014 Fuse Song, "We Were Us"

Keith Urban and Miranda Lambert: Behind the Scenes of Their New Song

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20756523,00.html

Only a few years ago, reigning CMA female vocalist of the year Miranda Lambert was opening for Keith Urban. 

Both stars now headline their own tours, but the two pair back up on Urban's latest single, "We Were Us," debuting Friday at 7:30 p.m. on his Facebook page, followed by a chat with the musician. 

"Getting to work with Keith in the studio was awesome," Lambert, 30, says. "He's been someone that's inspired me along the way."

That admiration and respect goes both ways, PEOPLE Country's latest cover star says.

"She's the real deal," Urban, 46, says. "I just love her artistry."

Recording a duet together was a given, but only "if the right song ever came along." Luckily, it did.

"When I heard 'We Were Us,' it was instant. I had two thoughts. The first [was] ''This is that song' and the second – 'Man, I sure hope she says yes!' " Urban jokes.

Thankfully, Lambert did.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Behind the Song: Keith Urban’s ‘We Were Us’ | Courtesy of Capitol Nashville

Behind the Song: Keith Urban’s ‘We Were Us’

http://radio.com/2014/03/18/keith-urban-miranda-lambert-we-were-us-behind-the-song/

By Annie Reuter and Kurt Wolff

March 18, 2014

Urban's duet with Miranda Lambert is nominated for an ACM Award this year.

“We didn’t mean for it to become a duet,” Jimmy Robbins told Radio.com about “We Were Us,” thesong of his that Keith Urban recorded last year withMiranda Lambert. “That didn’t happen until we got to the second verse, and thought, ‘maybe a guy could say this, too.’ That’s when we all got pretty excited about it.”

Robbins wrote “We Were Us” with two of his regular writing partners, Jon Nite and Nicolle Galyon, and last November the song became Urban’s 16th No. 1 hit. Now it’s also been nominated for Vocal Event of the Year at the 49th annual Academy of Country Music Awards, which take place April 6 in Las Vegas. (Update: “We Were Us” won the ACM Award for VocalEvent of the Year.)

“It almost didn’t happen,” Robbins said of the song in a phone interview Monday (March 17) with Radio.com. As he recalled, he’d been in a session at his home studio with Nite, and the song idea they had wasn’t going in the right direction, so they put it aside. Then “that afternoon, our friend Nicole was coming over. We pulled that idea out, and she loved it.”

The chorus was their starting point. “Back when that song was a song I could sing along without thinkin’ ’bout you every time it came on,” Urban and Lambert sing.

“The front half of the chorus we were just singing, and the words phonetically sounded like something,” he explained. “A lot of times when you write a song, you have a hook or a title, and you write from there. This was one of those times where we didn’t have anything. We didn’t know what the hook was until we got there.”

Robbins credits Galyon with coming up with what he calls the “disconnected images” that mark the verses of the song.

“I remember Nicole got really into it,” Robbins said. “She’s from a small town in Kansas, and so I think we were really channeling her home town in this song.”

“Rearview crosses

Railroad ties

Oh, Hail Marys

Friday nights

Heartbeat baby

Low-beam lights

God, I miss when you were mine.”

— “We Were Us”

“It’s easy to listen to and kinda hard to write, to tell a story without really telling a story,” Robbins said. One thing he loves, though, about the result is that it’s not a literal narrative. “It leaves it up to the individual to piece [the story] together and make it their own.”

One of the striking characteristics of “We Were Us” that it’s an upbeat duet. “There are a lot of duets out there,” Robbins said, “but there aren’t a lot that are uptempo with a feel like that. They tend to be super ballads.”

Maybe that characteristic, then, is what helped propel the song to the top of the charts. It was the first male/female duet, in fact, to do so since Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood‘s “Remind Me” in 2011.

“I think that Keith had been toying with the idea of a duet, and my publisher knew that,” Robbins said. As soon as they finished the song, “it was on hold with Keith I think that night. He loved it and put it on hold right then.”

Urban, said Robbins, “had been toying with the idea of a duet, and my publisher knew that.”

And Lambert was on Urban’s mind already as a duet partner. “He toyed with the idea of a few different people, but she was always his first choice,” Robbins explained.

Urban agreed. “I just love Miranda’s voice,” he told Radio.com in a conversation last September, when he was preparing to release his album Fuse. “I love her artistry. We did some shows together many years ago. She got up and did a song with me each night, and I loved our voices together.”

Urban explained that in the back of his mind, he has always hoped that he would find a song that they could duet on together.

“‘We Were Us’ came along, and it’s not the kind of song Miranda would normally do, but her voice is the first one I heard in my head,” he said. “I called her up and sent her the song and she loved it and came to the studio. Blake came along as well and hung out for the day. Miranda and I went in and sang the song and I’m just so happy at the way it turned out.”

“We Were Us” tells the story of two former flames looking back on their lost love.

As for Lambert, she had only praises for her duet partner, as she explained last fall in a behind-the-scenes video.

“He’s been someone that’s inspired me along the way,” she said. “He’s really intense and takes what he does seriously.”

Lambert may have been Urban’s first choice — and she may have loved the song when he played it for her — but getting the two of them onto Urban’s record wasn’t easy.

“It was really down to the wire,” Robbins said. “She’s on a different record label, so there’s a whole other world of red tape — [there are] so many people that have to approve of it for him to be able to use it.” Robbins said he, Nite and Galyon wrote the song last March, and so by the time Urban and Lambert agreed to cut the song, “it was right before [Fuse] was done, and we didn’t know if it was going to be on it or not.”

Ultimately, “We Were Us” made it onto Fuse. And that was a relief for Robbins and his fellow songwriters in more ways than one.

“Songs get cut, and don’t make records, and get cut again,” he explained. “But once we heard Keith and Miranda sing ['We Were Us'], it would have been hard to hear anybody else sing it, because it sounds like it was made for them.”

The 49th ACM Awards will be broadcast live from Las Vegas on Sunday, April 6, 2014 at 8pm ET on CBS.

Jenny Winder: "The Music of Science: Exploring Astronomy and Space through Music"

 http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/collective/2013/aug/22/music-science-and-science-music/

The Collective by Jenny Winder
August 22, 2013

When I was 5 years old my father did two things that were to have lasting and profound influence on my life. He showed me the planet Saturn through a telescope. And took me to my first opera.

I have been hooked on astronomy and opera ever since!

I could already recognise the Belt of Orion, the Big Dipper and the “W” of Cassiopeia in the night sky. Dad and I had looked at other planets before, but Saturn jumped out of the eyepiece as a three dimensional object in the vastness of space. I will never forget that moment.

Later that same year Dad took me to see Puccini’s Madame Butterfly at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Before we went he sat me down and told me the sad story of Cio-Cio San and Pinkerton, so that I would have some idea of the plot and characters.

I remember sitting in the darkened opera house, holding his hand, while we both cried at Butterfly’s tragic end. But I also remember being being a little disappointed that she went behind a screen to plunge the knife in so I didn’t get to see any blood, gruesome child that I was!

Since then my interests have widened to encompass science and the arts in general. Fed by the likes of Carl Sagan, David Attenborough and Richard Feynman.

My greatest pleasure now is when art and science combine so The Collective will debut with an exploration of the conjunction of astronomy and music.

Where better to start than with Around Saturn by Fabio Di Donato, who perfectly combines stunning imagery from the Cassini spacecraft, unsurprisingly my favorite space mission, with music from Dmitri Shostakovich - Jazz Suite No.2: VI. Waltz 2.

x

Around Saturn from fabio di donato on Vimeo

My love for Saturn has never dimmed. Rather, it has been re-ignited by the images and science being returned by Cassini.

Here is Dr Carolyn Porco, head of the Cassini Imaging Team, giving a characteristically engaging TED Talk from the early days of the mission.

To return to the music of science, Star Songs is a project from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, that turns cosmic x-rays emitted by the binary system of EX Hydrae, 200 light years away, into music.

NASA’s two Voyager probes that launched in 1977 recorded electromagnetic waves from Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune during their tour of our Solar System. Those signals were then translated by NASA into strange, yet oddly familiar sounds.

Jim Bumgardner, a software engineer has created The Wheel of Stars using data from the European Space Agency’s Hipparcos mission, which pinpointed the positions of more than one hundred thousand stars with high precision. Bumgardner plotted the brightest stars, revolving them about Polaris, the North Star. As the stars cross zero and 180 degrees, the center line plays an individual note for each star, to mesmerising effect.

(Click here for actual simulation and then click "Full Screen")

There is a beautiful online orrery created by Dynamic Diagrams design studio, which allows you, among other things, to switch between the Copernican Heliocentric and Tychonian geocentric systems.

Orrery by Dynamic Designs (click on link to left for actual simulation)

Exploratorium has an excellent site that delves into the science of music, with online exhibits, and videos, looking for answers to such questions as “Why do I hear the bass from my neighbor’s stereo, but not the treble?” and “Why does some music give me goose bumps?” For an answer to that last question, I need look no further than this vibrant TED talk given by Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, about the transformative power of classical music and one-buttock playing!

And here is the wonderful Bobby Mcferrin demonstrating the universal power of music by playing an audience like a cheap piano!

(demonstration of the pentatonic scale - this is great!)

Michael Blake is a musician who has taken the musical scale and used it to interpret Pi to 31 decimal places in What Pi Sounds Like while the ever infectious Vi Hart has a great video that explores Twelve Tone composition or dodecaphony.

What Pi Sounds Like by Michael Blake 

Vi Hart explores Twelve Tone composition or dodecaphony.

Of course much great music has been inspired by astronomy and space. From David Bowie’s Space Oddity has never been more spine tingling than when performed by Commander Chris Hadfield aboard the International Space Station.

John Cage wrote his Atlas Eclipticalis by placing note paper on a star atlas and letting the arrangement of the stars determine the pattern of notes. Not sure I like the results but an interesting experiment nonetheless.

Favored is Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 2 called Copernican. Written to celebrate 500 years since he great astronomers birth, it includes words taken from his great book De Revolucionibus.

Or the Peter Eötvös piece Cosmos which includes comets and asteroids an ends “a quarter of a second before the next big bang.”

Or best of all Antonin Dvorak’s Song to the Moon from Rusalka surely one of the most beautiful arias ever written.

Its been a long long time since I was five years old.

What Could Be More Biblical, More Redeeming, than the Non-Stop, Screwed-Up World of Glee?!

 

The Senseless, Beautiful, Topsy-Turvy World of Glee

 

Glee has hit the world running exposing all the best and worst of the human spirit. It focuses on the disabilities and insecurities of our impersonal societies and heartless spirits. From its nastiness to its beauty – from humanity's warts, pimples, byoptic near-sightedness, weirdness, and ugliness, to its wonder, amazement, incredibility, incredulity, and soaring hopes and dreams. Glee is the Disney version of the Bible’s exposure of our hearts, minds, souls and spirits. It shows to mankind the worst and the best within us. From our disabilities and disbelief, to our insecurities and inner turmoils. From our gross frailties and failures, to our impossibly unchained ambitions and soulful concessions.

 

God’s Word exposes us. And so did Glee as we sat glued to the TV waiting breathlessly for the next big blowup, the next devastating heart break, the next miraculous human touch that would make sense of the senseless world thriving around us. It’s topical pop music lifts our spirits giving hope, healing, and a steely-eyed reality of strength to the deep complexity and oft-times senseless destruction that overwhelms us. A destruction that never quite ends in our teen years but seems to hang-on through our later mature years of denial. Our bigotry. Our unresolved hurts and harm. Our need for compassion, mercy, understanding. For real friendships that stay with us through all that we are and hope to be.

 

 

 

Postmodernity and Glee

 

At Glee’s essence is the struggle of the human spirit to know and express love beyond its bounded freedoms and chained disappointments. To find a group of friends - and especially that one close soulmate - who sees and accepts us at our most unvarnished exposure. Who brings out the best in us when we fail to be at our best. Who might endure our meltdowns and unkindness to help us become less toxic to those family and friends around us bewildered by our too-hasty actions, misspoken words, and intolerable cruelty. To reach a place that we might see sin’s ugliness in our lives and accept God’s world of love, hope, healing in bonds of unbroken fellowship. To find-and-recreate communities of redemption, hope, mercy and forgiveness. Here is the teenage world of postmodernity at its deconstructive best and reconstructive heights binding human souls into depths of fidelity unthought and undreamed.

 

To modernity’s excesses and brutalities, its impersonal arguments for-or-against God-and-country, comes postmodernity’s reach of the human touch admitting froth and failure, helplessness and lost, disappointments and reality. The youth-of-today give to the-world-of-tomorrow a pageantry of hope wrapped within the tenuous tissues of God’s redeeming love that would rescue the worst of us from the ugliness waiting within the cesspool of our loneliness. Tissues that tear too easily and yet cling tenaciously until our human souls might find the exit doors to its dilemmas and confusions, anger and hate, denials and destructions. God’s love is that fibrous tissue – so seemingly frail and yet spidery strong. It is everywhere around us to the one brave enough refusing to give-up or give-in.  His Spirit mighty enough to grant a strength we fail to have against such impossible odds of self and world. His Cross wide enough to take a world of suffering and give to it a resurrected hope little understood until personally found, claimed, and received. This is the world of Glee. The world of the Bible. Our world of God’s love and reach and depth. Cling to it and “Don’t Stop Believing” in the renewing worlds of tomorrow.

 

R.E. Slater

May 10, 2013

 

 

Glee - Don't Stop Believing

 

 

 

 

Short clip

Glee 3D Movie - Don't Stop Believing Performance

 

http://www.foxtv.de/serien/glee/start.html





Addendum

Below is a video produced by resident philosopher/theology Peter Rollins of Belfast, Ireland. His observations fall in-line with the biblical idea of redemptive introspection that was written of above. And is a consistent message of God's directive love and care through our own moments of implosion and failure, griefs and torments, where the bond of forgiveness and understanding through Jesus can bring restoration and healing by the hands and hearts of those God brings into our circumcised lives. - R.E.Slater

 

 

 

For Further Reference - Peter Rollins, "The Idolatry of God"