Patti Smith Tour Dates

07/08/08 Byblos International Festival
07/10/08 Rockwave Festival Athens
07/11/08 Musilac Aix-les-Bains
07/12/08 Traffic Festival Torino
07/13/08 Arena Vienna
07/16/08 Moldejazz 2008 Molde
07/17/08 Bukta Festival Tromsø
07/18/08 Stockholm Jazz Festival
07/20/08 Expo Zaragoza 2008 Zaragoza
07/21/08 Santana 27 Bilbao
08/24/08 Roots of America Festival NY

Kevin Shields Tour Dates

10/04/08 Belgie Hasselt
10/08/08 Extrapool Nijmegen
10/10/08 Montreuil @ Instants Chavirés Paris
10/11/08 GROUND ZERO Lyon
10/22/08 NOG Gallery London
10/23/08 Bardens Boudoir London

Patti Smith and Kevin Shields have released The Coral Sea officially on July 7^th worldwide.

I won’t go into details about Smith & Shields, as you guys are probably familiar with their earlier works, including the influential Horses album by Smith and Shields’ work with noise artists/shoegazing pioneers, My Bloody Valentine.

The origin of the live performances of the The Coral Sea is written inside the CD case:

My great friend, the artist Robert Mapplethorpe, died of complications from Aids on March 9, 1989. His mortal suffering was so profound that I wept through much of his illness. After his death I wanted to give him something other than tears, so I wrote the Coral Sea.

This live recordings are from two sold-out shows from June 22, 2005 and September 12, 2006. I wanted to also mention that this double-disc digipack set is very handsome, designed by Xiaofei Zhang. He used a mix of greys and blacks of what looks like water color paintings and a photograph of a mountainous landscape, giving you a sense of eeriness as you listen to the spoken words.

Although the reading of the 1996 book is pretty much the same in both dates, the ambient sounds by Shields in the background are slightly different. I only say slight different because if you were to play them to me, I couldn’t tell you which show it came from.

I wish there was a video of this performance, because listening to this album, I imagine a great visual and deeply personal performance from Patti Smith, especially at the end where she almost scream “What is the point?“

However, just like audio books, you’ll most likely listen to this once and that will be good enough for you, so I can’t say that I would recommend this to casual listeners. That is, unless you already love poetry/spoken words and/or are hardcore Patti Smith and MBV fans.

If you want to hear the two hours of The Coral Sea, you can pick it up at most online retailers, but Patti Smith’s website suggest Rocket Girl Records.

Bonus: Below are songs from Patti Smith and My Bloody Valentine.