How often do you get to hear the sound of history being made?

Some people go out of their way to sound like they’re capturing a moment.  And occasionally that works.  The famous opening line of Straight Outta Compton—You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge—was an opening salvo from a gaggle of college kids who wanted nothing more than to sound like the baddest motherfuckers on the planet.  The Category Five beat that made landfall a moment later, the demands to GET INVOLVED, and Ice Cube’s thunderous debut conspired to seal the deal, and the lords of the gangsta rap horizon began their brief, eventful reign.

Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine. As swaggering punk-rock brio goes, it’s hard to beat the first words of Patti Smith’s epochal 1975 debut Horses, delivered with all the casual power of a coiled viper and none of N.W.A.’s obvious posturing. The Sex Pistols and the Clash may have toppled the decadent tsars of prog rock in ‘77, but stack up “Gloria” (or Smith’s apocalyptic 1976 cover of “My Generation”) against ELP’s nine-minute synthed-out version of “Fanfare for the Common Man,” and you wouldn’t have needed a weatherman to tell you which way the wind was blowing. But if you really want to get to the heart of the matter, you’ll have to get past Smith’s reputation as Godmother of Punk, which leads new ears to believe that she was a St. Francis of CBGB, sermonizing to young Sheenas and Judys, Johnnys and Dee Dees.  Because no matter how brave and confrontational early punk rock could be, it never gazed into the abyss as long and as lovingly as Horses.  Once you hit “Birdland,” you understand that you’re in uncharted territory indeed.

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