Sept. 30th, 1207: The mystic poet Rumi is born.
Sept. 30th, 1399: Henry of Bolingbroke becomes Henry IV, King of England.
Sept. 30th, 1791: Mozart’s last play, “The Magic Flute,” debuts at Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna.
Sept. 30th, 1861: William Wrigley Jr., founder of the Wrigley Company, is born.
Sept. 30th, 1924: Truman Capote, author of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” is born.
Sept. 30th, 1964: Trey Anastasio, Phish guitarist, is born.
Sept. 30th, 1985: Faheem Rasheed Najm, a.k.a. T-Pain, is born.
September 30th, 1997: Peace and Noise by Patti Smith is released.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” takes place almost entirely at night. It’s a tale of love and the tribulations of fidelity. The two heroes—Tamino, the prince, and Papageno, the birdcatcher—strive for the love of Pamina and Papagena. In addition, Tamino/Pamina strive to gain entrance to the temple of Isis and Osiris, in pursuit of enlightenment.
Tangentially, the trials of Tamino are complicated by the Queen of the Night, Pamina’s mother, who promised her to another man, and who hates the temple for its associations with the day and light and such.
Now, how well would an adaptation of “The Magic Flute” work with T-Pain as Papageno and Patti Smith as the Queen of the Night? I couldn’t rightly tell you. Could you handle an auto-tuned version of “Ein Madchen oder Wiebchen?” Could you handle Patti Smith screaming her way through, “Nur stille, stille?”
While, of course, Patti Smith doesn’t have the vocal chops for an opera, she could certainly make something of the words. As someone whose career has been predicated on raw guitar and rawer words. As someone whose music doesn’t quite sound right if it isn’t dark outside, as dark as Smith feels.
On Peace and Noise, that feeling of darkness is well magnified. One of the first albums she recorded after a spat of sudden deaths—her brother, her keyboardist, Richard Sohl; her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith—it’s an album that is, at first glance, a rock n’ dirge.
The cover says as much: Smith sitting on a bed, jotting in a notebook, a moment cast in black and white. Day and night, maybe.
The subject matter doesn’t lighten up much, either. Lead single, and Grammy nominee, “1959,” is about China’s annexation of Tibet, rendered starkly in the driving beat and Smith’s wailing for the Dalai Lama, “[who] was a young man/And watched his world in flames.” Death lurks all around, aptly, on “Death Singing,” a figure Smith frames in “straw colored light” as he goes about his business.
And then there’s “Memento Mori.” For anyone who doesn’t remember their Latin, that means “remember death.” A whole ten minutes of clacking drums and mercury vapor guitars, with Smith spinning the tale of a helicopter accident—a trip bringing Johnny home—that cuts short his life. A Vietnam reference? As the fire rages, the song escalates into the thralling anguish of the whole of humanity, past and future, in bliss and agony. Heavy.
It’s not all (quite) dark though. Like the real night, there are layers. In Peace and Noise’s case, there’s a song like “Spell,” not actually a song per se, but a poem composed by Oliver Ray and Allen Ginsberg. If you’re familiar with or like Ginsberg’s work, then you’ll find a lot of the same themes here, elucidated by Smith. Lots of trance inducing guitar work and paeans to marijuana and Beat writers and shouts of “holy! holy! holy!”
You may be tempted to dismiss this all as histrionics of the most mawkishly plangent—and Peace and Noise does little to dissuade that notion—but then you remember, for better or for worse, that a lot of opera is predicated on histrionics. When done poorly or ignorantly, histrionics is a frightening, awful thing. But when the emotion is invested right, it can come off beautifully.
Peace and Noise is histrionic and not perfect. But it’s not mawkish. Its plangency is well earned.
Other albums released this day: At 89 by Pete Seeger (2008) and Vivian Girls by Vivian Girls (2008).
Are you waiting on the edge of your seat for “T-Pain Presents: Mozart’s The Magic Flute?” Tell Sean at sreichard@wisc.edu.
