I’m listening to Patti Smiths Rock and Roll Nigger . This song (and its intro, Babelouge ) is great on so many levels. When it came out in the late 70s, I was a junior high school punk rocker in a small town in PA. Needless to say, I got my ass kicked on a daily basis untill punk started being cool around 82 or so. Well, actually, the beatings pretty muched stopped when I split a rednecks face open with with a piece of 2x4 in woodshop, but thats another story. That song just fuckin’spoke to me man I felt like I WAS outside of society. I WAS a rock and roll nigger, even though I was just some skinny white kid from the suburbs.
Patti smith was the first rocker to do what a generation of rappers would do in the next decade; de-politicize the word ‘nigger’. Black Panther bands of the late sixties like The Last Poets did it in the sixties, but they weren’t really a rock (and I believe rap can be a form of rock, but mostly I think its a form of lame disco/dance/pop music) band. She didn’t get married to the MC5s Fred Smith untill the 80s, but this song fits right in with the MC5 related faux political party The White Panthers who weren’t racist, rather they were in solidarity with the Black Panthers.
Its funny though, I live in a nice middle class neighborhood thats probably about 70 percent black, and I wouldn’t really feel comfortable blasting it on the stereo during a back yard barbque. I could see how someone could get the wrong impression hearing the song in passing. I played it once kind of nervously for this black guy that I used to buy pot off of in high school. He didn’t really like white people, but he kind of liked me, ‘cause I dug P-Funk. He got the meaning right away, and then we talked about the shit he had to eat from assholes growing up, and I told him about getting my ass kicked every day. He said it wasn’t the same thing, that he didn’t choose to be black, where I chose to be a (at that time) social outcast. I didn’t need to wear that Vacation Bible School T Shirt with the big picture of Jesus X-ed out with magic marker javascript:smilie(’:D’).
Looking back now, I realize that, no, it really isn’t the same thing but when you’re fifteen and face down in the mud while some big dumb future frat boy in a Molly Hatchet T-shirt is punching you in the kidneys for wearing a Ramones shirt, it sure feels like the same thing.
There’s really no point to this post other than to point out how cool this song is after all these years, and how it actually makes you think IMHO this is one of the greatest if not THE greatest rock and roll songs ever.
Jon