Help me, Patti Smith, help me be as amazing as you.  Patti Smith -- for those of you don’t already have like a shrine to her in your house – is the absolute shit and the best female punk poet/alien/fashionista ever born.  Her birth date is December 30, 1946, and in 1975 she came out with the album Horses.  Those of you who don’t have Horses on your iPods or whatever gizmo people are using now to pipe music into their ears need to get it now, now, now.   

This is how you listen to Horses: Get your best friends together in your living room, and maybe put out some snacks.  Not a lot of caffeine, though, or you’ll freak out too much.  Clear out the furniture. Oh, make sure you’re wearing comfortable clothing.  Dim the lights.  The first song on the album is Gloria – I just popped it on the youtube and am listening to it as I write this and can barely sit still in my chair. Patti’s voice is like a secret that you never thought could be spoken out loud.  Her songs are about rage and rawness and New York and warbling ranting femaleness/androgyny.

Patti was best friends with titanic artists like the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, but after her out-there years in New York, she retired to the suburbs to live with her family. Her husband and brother died in 1994, and obviously it completely slammed her.  In her grief, she returned to the world of music, coming out with the album Peace and Noise in 1997.  Patti was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture, and in 2007, she was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

She gets an A plus in awesomeness.