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Patti Smith: 'Hey Joe' b/w 'Piss Factory' (Mer601)

Nick Tosches, Creem, November 1974

REMEMBER WHEN rock 'n' roll as poetry was a hot issue? All those wheezing old-before-their-timers trying to legitimize that fine honky noise by jamming its head through the academic wringer? Trouble was, though, that those cerebral creeps didn't know what they were talking about; they had swallowed all that college-kid nonsense about poetry being a bunch of abstruse candygrams from the know-it-alls of the ontology circuit, and when they sent their poetic tracers through rock 'n' roll's bloodstream, they didn't even know what to look for.

Total word count of piece: 427

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