Women in Rock: Patti Smith vs Joan Jett

Patti is more "important" but also an annoying hippie

Both only made one essential album, but Joan has the edge because her singles comp has one amazing song after the others. Also: Joan has better taste in covers.

*after the other

I never got much into "Horses", but I got the 2CD version (£5 fopp) with the 'live' 20yr anniversary version, and finally 'got' it from that version.

I love joan jett as much as any other redblooded american boy but this is like comparing a great comic book and a great novel novel.... I mean I like comic books but c'mon

patti's comeback in the late 90s was a thing of fury and wonder

There's that 5CD box set you can get at Fopp or HMV for £15, it's the first five albums (Horses->Dream of Life). Still haven't played it yet.

I like Smith a lot, and will vouch for Gone Again too, but there's lots of comic book elements in her vision of life – like her Fountainhead-esque obsession with Men in Power.

Joan has more good songs

Horses is really the only one I like.

Easily Joan Jett for me - the Runaways, Bad Reputation, I Love Rock'n'Roll, OK after that gets a bit patchy but I'd take the first 5 JJ albums over the first 5 Patti Smith.

the only thing that has ever mattered to me about Patti Smith is her performance of "Gloria" on the first season of SNL. Beyond that, bleh.

is Patti Smith really "important"? I mean, important to who? (besides Richard Ashcroft)...?

Also: Joan has better taste in covers.

this is my fave JJ moment:

after decades of punk and riot grrls it's easy to overlook how important she was at the time, as a role model for women in rock in the 70s she was huge, unprecedented

no makeup, no hairspray, no singing pretty, total attitude, and not some minor musical footnote, she was a star on her own terms

xp to shakey

This should be interesting, if you're interested in this type of thing.

My feelings exactly.

Patti wins here hands down. And yes, she's very "important" in the history of rock music. That doesn't make her very much fun, though. Her problem is she can sometime bang you over the head with her importance. Also, she writes too many songs about dead people.

But the best parts of Horses are as good as music gets.

if the poll is "who is more fun" patti will not win
if the poll is "who is weirder" joan will not win
if the poll is "who is cooler" it is a draw

this is honestly one of the better false dichotomy polls i've seen on here lately. i'm actually kinda stumped as to who i want to vote for.

after decades of punk and riot grrls it's easy to overlook how important she was at the time

surely there's more Joan Jett in riot grrl than there is Patti Smith...? Patti was SO obsessed with famous men, for one thing.

(speaking of which, the Evil Stig album that Joan Jett did with the Gits is a total lost riot grrl classic)

no makeup, no hairspray, no singing pretty, total attitude

I can't stand her but certainly this could be said of Janis Joplin

also isn't part of being a "role model" having a following? What other women were there in the 70s that followed Patti Smith's example? I can't think of any.

"Dancing Barefoot" is one of my favorite songs.

the thing is you don't have to be all "patti smith is deep" to think she wins. you just have to have heard "pumping (my heart)".

but yeah "importance" weighs against you on ilchallops here so joan jett's gonna walk this

What the fuck? Would anyone ever start a poll called something like MEN IN ROCK: Neil Young vs. Bono with two artists totally unrelated except for their gender?

oh come on these two aren't "totally unrelated"

BONO v. STING

I agree, "Dancing Barefoot" is great. I've only seen Patti once at the Hoboken Street Festival when it was about 99 fuckin' degrees, and she was fine. But Ronnie Spector preceded and gave me gooseflesh w/ "Be My Baby."

apparently going to play Joan in the Runaways movie:

http://italy.imdb.com/name/nm0829576/

Bruce Springsteen vs. Neil Young

i guess it's time for the Bono v. Neil Young poll-off

for the slow kids, the 'women in rock' bit was a way of deflecting charges of sexism by using mild humour.

Joan. Not even close.

haha

Shakey & Kate are bringing me the OTM LOLs on this thread...

Morbs, this is an order of magnitude worse -

Dakota Fanning ... Cheri Currie

Can we arrange to have this movie stopped, now?

Dakota Fanning ... Cheri Currie

hahahaha waht

DF's badgirl to be unleashed

I'm amused that you guys didn't object to Billy "Cheekbones" Crudup playing pudgy J Edgar Hoover.

? when did that happen?

I'd love Billy Crudup to play my husband.

http://www.kennethackerman.com/images/hoovercover.jpg

yeah how dare music fans on a music msg board thread about a musician object to casting decisions in a biopic about said musician but remain completely silent on the topic of every other questionable casting decision in every other upcoming feature film.

except some people on this thread are on every horseshit Michael Mann thread.

whatever happened to Frodo as Iggy?

does somebody wanna bear out the comparison for us dumbfucks who don't see any similarities between these two other than "they're both women who came up at roughly the same time" and maybe "it'll really BLOW THE CANON'S MIND if I go for JJ"

most posters on this message board have brought themselves to orgasm thinking about one, or both, of these artists

would be my guess at the comparison

If there was a list of seventies female rock band leaders that were associated with the punk movement, who else would be on it?

Helen Wheels?

penelope houston

J0hn, it was started by a future 51er

does somebody wanna bear out the comparison for us dumbfucks who don't see any similarities between these two other than "they're both women who came up at roughly the same time"

This position assumes that there is no significance to the fact that women comprise a minority voice in rock, particularly in the 70s. If you don't think that's significant, any other complaints about any underlying sexism in the comparison is kinda uh waht. This seems pretty obvious to me. That they are both women who rose to prominence around the same time in what was a predominately sexist environment not prone to giving women much creative space is significant. If you want similarities between their specific bodies of work I don't think those are very hard to draw either - both recontextualized traditionally male rock personas and material (ie, Gloria vs. I Love Rock n Roll), both played up androgyny (Patti in a shirt and tie vs. Joan Jett's lesbianism and lolz cover of Replacements' "Androgynous"), both were interested in hard rock sounds, etc.

iow stfu

Also, the way the cover of Horses is composed for the exact shape and size of an lp shows what a great painter he might have been.

I think.

Who's to say what's fake intimacy? Just because she's obviously performing for the camera doesn't mean it's not really her.

His photos of *anybody* are the best photos of them...

The idea of being there when some of these photos were taken is kindof scary.

Not if you were one of them, which is the only way those photos could have been taken. The act of observing it from the corner would have changed it. They wouldn't have done it. They both had to have control of the image. Maybe one of the sweetest things about the photos is how they were able to share the control.

xpost, no I didn't really mean it like that, I just kind of feel like there's this great energy that comes from this mutual wariness and curiosity. Like each of them trying to get a closer look while keeping their distance.

I'm not really sure what you mean when you say "control" in this instance, but it sounds like it might be really interesting.

yeah, I meant in a fly in the wall sense.

He's controlling his image, as in the photo, and she's controlling hers, as in "Do I look like Keith Richards?" But they meet halfway. She's not being a model, she's being an equal, quite adamantly.

Anyway it's the best look possible of what must have been a quite unconventional relationship.

I didn't realize until I looked it up just now that this is a Polaroid:

http://www.postmodern.com/~fi/pattipics/images/only.jpg

He Photographed Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)

The idea of being there when some of these photos were taken is kindof scary.

Yeah, ok, you're totally right.

And yeah, Bob Six's quotes confirm exactly my worst suspicions about her.

― I Harbour Multitudes (Bimble), Friday, March 13, 2009 11:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's funny, they (along with that hilariously batshit u-tube clip--thanx dude!) helped me make up my mind - luv ya Joan, but it's gotta be Patti, now and forever.

: D

I don't really know Joan Jett that well...I wonder if a better taking sides would be:

TS - Modern shamans: Patti Smith vs Jim Morrison

(note both photograph well)

oh jesus

romaine vs. iceberg

i love horses.

but i hate easter mostly. rock n roll nigger is so embarrassing.

i got i love rock n' roll when i was a little kid for xmas, so i guess joan was kind of my first "real" rock record
outside of my parents CCR and stones and stuff

it seemed really hard and loud and mysterious and great (i guess i was jeez 7 or 8?)

so it probably blew my mind more than horses did in some ways.

when I was ten or eleven I had the "Because the Night" b/w "Godspeed" single and I liked it so I wrote a fan letter to Patti Smith. Whoever was coordinating stuff for her sent back a multi-page Xeroxed fanclub kinda thing, very D.I.Y. looking, which I loved until I got to the printout of "Rock and Roll Nigger," which, I mean, my case against it was hardly a sophisticated reading ("saying that word means you are a racist") but it offended the shit out of me and I didn't really listen to her again until I got a cassette of Radio Ethiopia when I was 16. Which btw remains one of the great driving tapes of all time.

Patti is great and embarrassing at the same time, because she brought into the whole rock n' roll as liberation fantasy as only an ambitious, working class Jersey outsider could. So to me what makes her great is also what makes her seem like a complete fool. It's both sides of the same romantic rock fantasy. And there's no doubt she's important, while very few musicians quote her style directly, she's just too odd and eccentric, there wouldn't be a Pretenders, Raincoats, or Banshees without Patti. Plus, in that early 70's Mapplethorpe portrait, Patti looks downright vulnerable, so I'd claim just the opposite. What makes the picture so alluring is the absence of any attempt at control. But who knows, I'm not privy, to what type of relationship Patti and Mapplethorpe had. So Patti, yeah...

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Modern shamans: Patti Smith vs Jim Morrison

mods plz rename board thx

I'd never seen that SNL vers. of Gloria before:

http://you.video.sina.com.cn/b/7731156-1298996642.html

Speaking of Patti and SNL

\m/

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

my mind is so blown

Quick!

Women In Music: Meredith Monk vs. Kathleen Hanna! poll

Alice Coltrane v. Courtney Love

http://reduxfilms.com/img/James_Wah_Wah_lg.jpg

Joan's "Roadrunner" cover is so well-used in an episode of "The Wire," season two.

ILM ♥ iceberg lettuce

iceberg lettuce > wilted chard

Really?

Joan Jett wins!!!! Yeah! :) :)

I'm not a huge fan of her or anything but love the first two Runaways albums and her cover of Stooges "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is to die for. Didn't someone here say she covered some other cool stuff? I know about Crimson & Clover, but what else did she cover?

Noodle, much as I love Brian Eno, that James album is an absolute snoozefest.

oh sorry Roadrunner! must read thread before posting...

My love of Patti Smith is definitely not based on the nuanced sophistication of her poetic vision...

Bimbs that goes without saying but the title seemed appropriate.

Hahaha. :)

Hongroe like the wolf! Oh my god, Noodle, your screen names never fail to make me LOL. I really think we should all take you as an example for screen names.

To a kid looking up to me, life ain't nothing but zings and no money.

I loved the Roadrunner cover, wow, thanks ILM.

who the fuck would've voted for Patti Smith?!?

me! you got a problem with that?

"do you want to touch me (oh yeah)" is my favourite song ever

how to vote? For Joan?

Poll's over. Joan won.

Now that I've seen the Patti Smith doc on PBS where she and Flea talk about pee, I want to change my vote.

Sorry to be late to the party, but I think Patti is gorgeous. I love the Mapplethorpe photos, and the story of their friendship. I would love to have been there when all that was happening! And BTW Kenan, I LOVE that I can see her ribs :)

http://www.sohoblues.com/SoHoBluesBWPortraits/previewpages/preview10.jpg

Now that I've seen the Patti Smith doc on PBS where she and Flea talk about pee, I want to change my vote.

― Zachary Taylor

lol