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Patti Smith: Roundhouse, London

Nick Coleman, The Independent, May 2007

"JESUS DIED for somebody's sins, but not mine." It was a good way to start an album in 1975 and it remains a good way to start a concert performance. And if the impact of that baleful incantation has been a little dissipated by 32 further years of rock 'n' melodrama, the oomph of its author's actual presence hasn't diminished one bit. Hers is not the kind of charisma you get from Top Shop. Nevertheless, the question looms: what are we doing, congregating in London's newest cultural rebuild like a wistful pod of ghosts of our youth?

Total word count of piece: 502

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