Michael Stipe at City Winery.
Spoiler Alert! Do not read this if you are going to the Patti Smith tribute, March 26 at Carnegie Hall in New York, and want to be surprised.
Last night, on the eve of the show, the New York nightclub City Winery presented an open-to-the-public rehearsal show, with some of the tribute’s performers. Some videos have been posted on YouTube, and I have embedded them, below.
Most surprisingly, Michael Stipe of R.E.M. sang the Doors song, “People Are Strange,” co-written by Jim Morrison and Robby Krieger.
“We’re not gonna do a Patti Smith song,” he says. “We’re gonna do a song that actually, I think, probably inspired her. One of her great heroes wrote this song in the 1960s, and it took me years — decades, really — to figure out that it’s really, actually, cabaret. Like The Beatles are cabaret. It’s like music for theater, right? Musical theater. But then we were talking about it backstage … and one person said, ‘Well, it’s more burlesque.’ And then another person said, ‘Well, it’s more like the hokey-pokey.’ So we’re actually going to do hokey-burlesque, in the form of this song.”
Stipe introduced the group performing the song as The Watch Caps (himself, Smith’s daughter Jesse Paris Smith and Andy LeMaster) joined by Tony Shanahan of Smith’s band.
Here are the videos:
According to setlist.fm, other material performed at the rehearsal show, and the artists who were featured on them, included “Redondo Beach” (Courtney Barnett), “Easter” (Angel Olsen), “Beneath the Southern Cross” (Glen Hansard), “Kimberly” (Susanna Hoffs), “Ask the Angels” (Alison Mosshart), “People Have the Power” (Eugene Hütz), “Piss Factory” (Matt Berninger), “Pissing in a River” (Sharon Van Etten), “Elegie” (Kronos Quartet), “Cowboy Truths” (Michael Shannon) and “Mother Rose” (Paul Banks).
The tribute’s house band features Shanahan along with bassist Flea (of The Red Hot Chili Peppers), keyboardist Benmont Tench (of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers), drummer Steve Jordan (of The Rolling Stones) and guitarist Charlie Sexton.
The Carnegie Hall concert, which will raise money for music education, is sold out.
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