PATTI SMITH Radio Ethiopia (Arista)

Back in July or August of nineteen hunnert sevendee Ronnie Finkelstein of Circus Mag told me there was this dynamite broad working at Scribner’s Bookstore in NYC who was givin people free books all the time and takin outa the cash register and one of the books she was givin was my harder’n-hell-to-read (never read it myself) rockbook which she was even reading. Told me "she looked like Keith Richard so I couldn’t miss her. Had this dentist around the comer from the joint so one cavity drilling afternoon I paid the honey a visit (she stole me Ball Four and Only the Ball Was White and showed me the cover on some New Directions paperback by Blaise Cendrars — long cigarette ash danglin down — who I later appropriated as a pseudonym) and we hit it off so good she wrote the date down in her notebook and we useta \ celebrate the anniversary (can’t remember the date myself cause I’m only good at years & seasons) by havin bloody marys at the El Quijote next door to the Chelsea. Never slipped her the pork — just friends! — but she once gave me a pubic hair that I still got mounted somewhere.