Customer Reviews

Radio Ethiopia

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I remember when this album came out, it was a critical disaster. Thinking that it would be impossible to follow-up the revolutionary "Horses" lp, critics seemed to had buried "Radio Ethiopia" in the pit of sophmore slump before they even listened to it. When they did listen to it, they said things to the effect of how erratic the music was, how vulgar and uninspired the lyrics were, and how Patti's band was pulling her artistic vision down the toilet. The truth of the matter is, "Radio Ethiopia" is on of Patti Smith's most experimental pieces of music she has ever produced in her ingenious career. What this album does is take the complexity and experimentation of the vocal poetry of "Horses" and infuses it into the sound. While the first track "Ask the Angels" starts of amazingly enough, the heart of "RE" kicks in with the furious "Aint It Strange" which blatently challenges god to fight the energy of rock n roll (side note: Patti Smith broke her neck spinning off a stage while singing this song). "Poppies" rolls in slick and cool, but then comes "Pissing In A River", which remains a rock classic (and one of my favorite songs ever). "Pumping..." like "Ask the Angels" is an awesome piece of work, but not as inspired as the rest of the album. "Distant Fingers" is fantastic, and "Radio Ethiopia"/"Abbyssinia" is an out of body experienc in itself. While this album has nothing on "Horses", it still is a classic piece of work. Get "Horses" first, then this one, then Easter, and you'll have three of the greatest albums ever made.

This album is so underrated that I actually feel a little protective of it, like it was a wounded bird, or the short kid who everyone picked on in third grade.

While "Ask the Angels" and "Pumping (My Heart)" are straight-ahead rock'n'roll songs (brilliant ones, at that), I don't understand how anyone can conceive of the rest of the songs as 'commercial': The opiated explorations of "Poppies" and "Ain't It Strange" move me like no other music I know; "Pissing in the River" rips my heart out everytime I hear it; "Distant Fingers" is improbably delicate and lovely for a song about UFOs; and on the assaultive "Radio Ethiopia/Abyssinia," she uses her voice like a free jazz soloist. (The dreamy, seductive "Chicklet" makes a great bonus track.)

It's not as cohesive an album as "Horses", but "Radio Ethiopia" expanded the band's sonic palette and remains a profoundly trippy, noisy and sexy record.

I have always considered this to be the BEST Patti Smith album of them all, rocking, wild, raw energy and rebellious spirit, decidedly uncommercial and I still go crazy when she does these tunes live.
This is one AWESOME cd.

Smith's debut album HORSES made an incredibly powerful statement; Smith's third album EASTER made an equally powerful statement and proved a breakout success. Between the two lies RADIO ETHIOPIA, a recording many describe as a true failure.

I have always felt this designation is really comparative rather than factual. There is much to admire in RADIO ETHIOPIA. Like HORSES it leaps from screaming guitars and pounding drums in such tracks as "Ask The Angels" to the languidly complex in the likes of "Ain't It Strange," and on no other album has Smith so fully explored her interest in multiple and overlapping vocals. The result, particularly in "Poppies," is at once rawly beautiful, disturbing, and fascinating.

But there is a big problem with RADIO ETHIOPIA. On HORSES, Smith did not so much push the envelope as she ripped it open, and here she seems to suffer from a lack of new barriers to crash. Perhaps more to the point, Smith--always a risk taker--gambles a big chunk of this album's success on the very long title cut and then fails to pull it off, allowing the complexity of the piece to collapse into mere confusion and tonal chaos.

Most Smith fans will find much to appreciate here, but it is an appreciation perhaps best enjoyed from an over-all knowledge of her body of work to date. Listeners with limited exposure would do well to postpone RADIO ETHIOPIA until they are well settled in with Smith's unique idiom.

This can also be my favourite Patti Smith record. Although it was judged as a "egocentric debacle" i think that it just as wonderful as Horses. Although i do agree that it wasn't the right decision to try to make the group sound comercial. Patti here tries to experiment with the sound. It is very powerful, and it takes all that Patti Smith charisma down into your room. My favourite song is Ain't it strange. It really captures her suggestivness. Patti invites:"come explore me".

Rock historians will inevitably dismiss Smith's turbulent "Radio Ethiopia" in favor of her simplier "Horses" or more punk rocking "Easter". But it's a grand tragedy to close an ear to Patti's highly relevent diatribes, which form the bulk of her material and are in best form here. More than a document of a time, "Ethiopia" breaks down the barriers between musician and listener just as early 70's avant-garde theater experiments tried (less successfully). The best work of a superior artist.

Smart, elegant, raw, pure, energy, power, shining, depth, grace, spirit, body, flesh, bones, earth, race, agonizing, despair, heartbreaking, squeak, elegy, life, ground, roots, leaves, perfection, high, languid, beauty.
All these words come through my mind while I think about "Radio Ethiopia". They might be excessive. Undoubtedly, they are not enough.

Dark and strange, this is Patti Smith at her most intoxicated. Pass the peace pipe. I'm glad she took it in a different direction after Horses as that was an untouchable masterpiece. Death is everywhere on this dark opus. "Ask the angels, who they're calling."

late one night, two maybe three years ago, watching late night t.v. i soon heard a voice that would change the way i saw music for ever. it was patti smith singing "pissing in a river." as i felt a chilling heart breaking frenzy run up my spine i thought to myself "iv got to get this" i now own every patti smith album but think of radio ethiopia as my jewell, it is completely uncommercial rock and roll something 70s rock and roll radio lacked it is a fusion of rock poetry and emotion. if your looking for commercial rock and roll by patti smith try "easter" the one the critics loved

patti smith was the answer to the silent prayers of many a literary spirit at a time when the male ego in rock and roll had gotten so gluttonously full of itself that something had to break...and there she was: spindly skinny black crow of a woman growing up her brand of catharsis organically, letting the art of it all flow like a babbling brook through broken concrete...