Track Listing

1. Jubilee Album Version
2. Mother rose Album Version
3. Stride of the mind Album Version
4. Cartwheels Album Version
5. Gandhi Live
6. Trespasses Album Version
7. My blakean year Album Version
8. Cash Live
9. Peaceable kingdom Live
10. Radio baghdad Album Version
11. Trampin' Album Version

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50171 in Music
• Released on: 2004-04-26
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import

Amazon.co.uk Review
Poet, punk and priestess--Patti Smith is still all of these, yet much more on Trampin', which ranges from protest songs to hopeful hymns. Though the disc opens with an exuberant exhortation to "discard your Sunday shoes" ("Jubilee") and concludes with a quiet gospel standard, in between Smith's journey to find heaven on Earth is rocky. She calls on Ghandi, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, and the poet William Blake for aid. She chants to rebuild a "Peaceable Kingdom," then whips around and unleashes the furious 12-minute fireball of "Radio Baghdad", a jagged, Zeppelin-esque epic that recalls her 1975 debut, Horses. Her band, featuring longtime guitarist Lenny Kaye, is in superlative form, intertwining hypnotic leads on "Cartwheels", dropping a mournful surf-tinged solo into "Mother Rose". Marked by both its simplicity and ambition, Trampin' confirms that Smith remains a quintessential American artist, every inch the equal of Springsteen, Dylan or Lou Reed. --Kurt B Reighley

Album Description
Patti Smith's ninth album, Trampin', features 10 new Smith songs along with a cover of the Marian Anderson track that the album's named after. Trampin' features the band that has backed Smith since 1996, though guitarist Lenny Kaye and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty have been playing with her since her 1975 classic Horses.

CD Description
'Trampin' is the ninth album from the highly influential Patti Smith and follows 2000's 'Gung Ho'. Recorded mostly live, without overdubs, the album is very much in the vein of Smith's earlier work with her lyrics being inspired by 9/11 and the 2003 war in Iraq. The album also features a guest appearance from Smith's daughter Jesse playing piano on the closing track 'Trampin''.

Customer Reviews

Radio Patti
Patti's first new album since GUNG HO (2000) is a tour-de-force Smithrecord. Gung Ho's rather more polished production has been forsaken infavour of classic Patti Smith raw energy. This puts TRAMPIN' closer infeel to PEACE AND NOISE (1997) than the last record, and this is one ofPatti's looser albums. Fans of RADIO ETHIOPIA (1976) and EASTER (1977)will love it! Indeed, "Radio Baghdad" is very much in the style of "RadioEthiopia" itself (always one of my personal favourites). Trampin' isanother triumph in Patti's unbroken catalogue of greatness. By the secondlisten I challenge you not to rate it the equal of any her other classicalbums.

Welcome back Patti - Awesome!
Patti's really well back on form here! The best audio response to the Iraq war along with Neil Young's 'Living With War' - It just says it all that it takes the old crew to make any worthy musical comment on the atrocities of Bush & Blair & Co! This album is SO much more than 'just' that tho - absolutely bloomin' brilliant! The musicianship is SO accomplished and tight along with Patti's usual inspired and awesome lyrics - together makes this listenning experience truly sublime! I saw her on the tour in Birmingham and they can so do it live too! I've been to LOTS of gigs in my life & this has to be one of the very best EVER - my spine really did tingle the whole show - WOW, what a rush!

A Scathing Masterpiece
Patti's early noughties output has always been overtly political, but few of her latter-day records have the power, the scope, the vision or the FIRE of this magnificent album.

"Trampin" is the sound of Patti trying to "make heaven her home," a message she explicitly preaches throughout the album, which can be interpreted as her heartfelt reaction to the Iraq War & 9/11, and her attempt to make sense of the world as a poet.

"Jubilee" begins the album in a typically beatific fashion. The violins resound over stirring, uplifting guitars as she beats of the message "freedom ring" over this powerful rock beat. This sets the elegiac but hopeful tone for the rest of the record.

Songs such as the haunting "Mother Rose" and the ballsy rocker "Stride of the Mind" are instantly emotional, powerful, engaging, melancholy and impassioned. Patti never lost her Muse, but she appears to have several operating at once on this album.

"Cartwheels" and "Trespasses" are longer, slower songs that explore a darker territory. They can be read as a metaphor for a "shift" in the world, a time when exclusion, danger and terror are playing a greater role in our lives. My one criticism is that they perhaps slow down the pace of the album (esp. "Trespasses") but they are beautiful songs in their own right.

"Gandhi" is an improvised rave-up in the style of "Birdland" but is political and devoid of bothersome jazzy piano. Over an incredible nine-minute build-up, citing Dr. King and taking a pop at the wise one himself (umm... Gandhi), this is a stunningly powerful piece of music. Smith's free-association lyrics have never been as strong as she begs her pardon in the sacred garden.

"My Blakean Year" is written entirely by Smith and has an infectiously hip-hop tang to it. "Cash" has a staggering set of lyrics and "Peaceable Kingdom" is a moving elegy either about a broken relationship or the Middle East. Or both.

"Radio Baghdad" is a towering anti-war rant with a frightening build-up. Around nine minutes in, the music hushes down and Smith whispers over smoky flutes and guitars "go to sleep my child" before the guitars come in, designed to attack like a bomb dropped from the sky. This is the most powerful anti-war song I have ever heard.

"Trampin" (title track) is a gorgeous piano traditional, powerful enough to make you weep. I certainly did.

Magnificent. Essential Patti Smith.