By Gerry Shih
Special to the Daily Press

SANTA MONICA PIER There has perhaps never been a greater legend in rock who exposed the folly of commercial music buyers with such inadvertent clarity.

Patti Smith, progenitor-empress of punk rock, Rimbauld and Verlaine’s spiritual poet child, 2007 Rock Hall of Fame inductee, and absolute commercial flop, will grace Santa Monica’s Twilight Concert Series at the pier tonight.

The 60-year-old rocker, sometimes hailed as the “female Bob Dylan,” is widely considered one of the most influential pioneers of the punk genre despite yielding only one top 20 hit (1978’s “Because the Night”) while piggybacking on the songwriting of Bruce Springsteen.

Born in Chicago and raised in New Jersey, Patricia Lee Smith fled the city and the factory where she worked in the late ‘60s to settle in the freewheeling art-hobo scene of New York City.

She worked odd jobs, wrote poetry and rock journalism, befriended writers and artists (including notable photographer Robert Mapplethorpe), and thrived in the grand, grungy bohemia of ‘70s Manhattan.

Smith’s musical career took off around 1974, when she began playing regularly at the famed CBGB club with her band featuring Lenny Kaye, guitarist Ivan Kral, Jay Dee Daugherty on drums, and pianist Richard Sohl. Smith’s 1975 debut album, “Horses,” presented a raw, garage band sound to the world but received an indifferent commercial response, peaking at number 47 on the U.S. pop albums chart. The effort featured her spoken word poetry, and the sales disappointment proved inexplicable as it ultimately became perennially hailed as one of the greatest all-time rock albums.

In the following decades, Smith’s music career ebbed and flowed, but her queen mother status in punk rock never faded. To date, she has released 10 studio albums, including “Twelve,” a critically praised collection of covers released in April of this year.

The Santa Monica performance falls in the middle of her current 22-performance tour, thoroughly covering America from coast-to-coast and a few select cities in Canada, England, France, as well as Greece. The band she will bring to the pier tonight will include Kaye, Daugherty, and bassist Tony Shanahan.

Admission is free.

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