Dream Of Live

This was described by Patti as the 'stagglers night' of her three shows at The Bowery Ballroom, the others being her birthday (60 this year) and New Years Eve. In order to try and make this show a unique event in itself she'd decided to play all of 'Dream of Life', her 1988 comeback album, from start to finish. This live show format seems to be very much in vogue at the moment, Lou Reed having played 'Berlin' just a few weeks ago at St. Ann's Warehouse in NY, and I suspect I was the only one in attendance who had seen Patti playing 'Horses' at Meltdown last year. However this album wasn't critically well received, and apart from the anaemically anthemic 'People Have The Power' I was totally unfamiliar with it, so it was a fairly ordinary first half, with only the occasional decent sounding song, but at least the set was peppered with amusing and moving between song tales and anecdotes.

After the album she played 'Frederick' the single from 'Wave', dedicated to her late husband Fred 'Sonic' Smith of the MC5. There were a string of great cover versions, The Doors 'Soul Kitchen', Bo Diddley's 'Bo Diddley' which segued into James Brown's 'Living In America', and a final encore of 'Gimme Shelter' which was excellent. So not the greatest or most typical Patti performance, but definately a one off show that was good to have seen.


Spotted David Fricke from Rolling Stone standing moodily at the back. He wrote a rather more flattering review.