Happy Birthday Patti Smith! – two magical sixes! – 66 years old today! Patti’s been featured a fair bit on The Allen Ginsberg Project (and will, of course, continue to be featured). We draw your attention, in particular, to last year’s birthday posting (including the famous mistaken-for-a-boy-in-the-Automat encounter!) and this one (Patti and Philip Glass’s filmed recollections of Allen), and also, (highly recommended), this triumphal rendition of Allen’s “Footnote to Howl” (“Spell”) – “Holy, holy, holy…” In this post, she can be heard saluting Fernanda Pivano, and in this, William Burroughs. She is sui generis, like they say, “one of a kind”, or as the Japanese say, (she’ll be touring in Japan, as a matter of fact, in a few weeks time), “a national treasure“.
Read more recent news about Patti here – “I just reached social security age, but I’m far from retiring”.