Patti Smith - You Light Up My Life

Not a typo, no. and not from some alternate universe. Patti Smith doing an irony-free cover of the Debby Boone chestnut.

I love Patti, and the interview she gives on Kids Are People Too before she sings is a primo example of why. Smith is someone who is so in love with the idea of rock-and-roll that when she embraced it, it in turn it embraced her.

Dylan Video of the Week - Dark Eyes w/Patti Smith

A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes. - "Dark Eyes" by Bob Dylan

I'm not a great fan of Dylan's duets with other people; I don't think his voice lends itself to it. And since he tends to regularly change phrasing, timing and emphasis on any particular song, it must be near-impossible to stay with him.

Having said all that, here's today's Dylan video of the week, a duet from 1995 with another great artist who has always walked her own path, Patti Smith. It's a song of survival, by two survivors, and never fails to move me, as rough a reading as this version is.

In 1994, Smith was nearly broke, her husband Fred Smith and her brother Todd both dead, and she was trying to decide whether to go onstage again after a 16-year-hiatus. Although Dylan seldom tours in the winter season - a time he usually sets aside to recharge his batteries on his Minnesota farm - he started prodding Patti to come with him on a 10-date joint tour in the winter of 1995 - the so-called Paradise Lost tour.

According to Clinton Heylin's Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades, Dylan told Smith,

"Patti, I was worried about you. You gave your soul away to somebody else. Don't ever do that again."

I'm experimenting with a new blogging tool, Clipmarks, which automates a lot of the "clip excerpt to your blog with attribution link" Here's a clip below of Patti Smith on Bob Dylan.

clipped from www.oceanstar.com "One time he was telling me what my gifts were -- he has great humility but he doesn't like flattery -- hates for you to tell him how much he meant to you all your life, through your young years -- he doesn't want to hear that. What he wants to do is tell you the good things about you, so that you can do your own work; he doesn't want you to be involved with him, he would rather inspire you to do your own work -- he's not jealous and possessive about that. So he was trying to teach me just what my worth was, and we did some neat stuff together. They were filming this, at a crazy party up on 8th Street somewhere. He told me to maintain the eye of an eagle, which he told me I had, and then Phil Ochs came up and poured a whole pail of beer on my head, and Bob started fighting with Phil and I said, "What is this"? Every time I'm around you I get doused with beer!" - Patti Smith on Bob Dylan