PATTI SMITH
Brooklyn Steel
Brooklyn, NY
December 30, 2022
(76th birthday show)

Audio Technica U853 cardioid mics (4.7k mod) > Church Audio ugly battery box > Sony PCM-A10 > WAV (24/48)
Mixing and mastering: iZotope RX 9 (reduce clapping) > Sound Studio (light dynamic compression for loud peaks) > FLAC (16/44.1) > Tag > FLAC

Recorded and mastered by neil d

01 Dancing Barefoot
02 Redondo Beach
03 Free Money
04 Ghost Dance
05 sock-changing interlude
06 Because the Night
07 My Blakean Year
08 Nine
09 Pissing in a River
10 Time Won't Let Me [The Outsiders] > If I Could Turn Back Time [Cher] > Time Is on My Side [Kai Winding]
11 One Too Many Mornings [Bob Dylan]
12 Peaceable Kingdom
13 Ain't It Strange
14 Summer Cannibals
15 happy birthday
16 Time Has Come Today [The Chambers Brothers]
17 People Have the Power
18 Gloria

Patti Smith: vocals, guitar
Lenny Kaye: guitar, vocals
Jackson Smith: guitar, bass, keyboard, vocals
Tony Shanahan: bass, guitar, keyboard, vocals
Jay Dee Dougherty: drums, guitar
Jesse Smith: electric piano on "Gloria"

Patti Smith's annual birthday shows returned after a COVID hiatus, this time at the 1800-capacity Brooklyn Steel instead of Webster Hall, which holds 1500. Patti was in fine voice and an especially goofy mood (one long digression about socks gets its own track, and its own instrumental theme), there were some new covers, and the AT-853 cards did a good job of muting the boominess of the room.

A couple of notes: The crowd around me (on the riser at house left) was generally respectful, but twice people tried to push through the crowd to get to the front of the floor, and both times the woman to my right had to forcefully tell them that they were headed for a railing and needed to go a different way, which was loud enough even to be picked up by directional mics. (I've deleted a few seconds right after "Because the Night" where she and I both argued with one of these people, but didn't want to remove any actual music.) And there's a brief change in the sound for a few seconds in the middle of Lenny's "Time" song medley where I shifted, though it's less noticeable than I feared. Finally, the bangs audible toward the end of the show are from people popping the large balloons that were released from the ceiling during the singing of "Happy Birthday," though Patti was apparently too distracted by Jesse presenting her with a cake to notice.

Enjoy, buy all of Patti's records (and books), and I hope we're all back next year for her 77th!