Music:
Member Since: 7/27/2007
Band Website: sonicsrendezvous.com
Band Members:
On the origin of his group, Sonic’s Rendezvous, Smith says, "I’d decide that I wanted to play a gig, so I’d get a few of my musician friends together, and we’d play for a night or two. I always like the idea of a rendezvous, and the name came from that." - Stephen Phelps, Musician’s Insider
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Q: Why did Fred break up the band?
Freddie Brooks, Sonic’s Rendezvous chargé d’affaires: "Fred always seemed to thrive on challenge... perhaps he felt he was no longer getting that with the Rendezvous setup though he definitely relished playing with Scott Asheton. Having worked within the Rendezvous framework for some five years maybe Fred was just seeking a new challenge. It’s fair to assume he had great dreams of what might transpire with Patti, the work they might create together."
"The Mack Aborn releases were meant to document the band’s efforts, provide some closure to everyone involved and get the band members some money for their work. Not to pretend that the band is back together. The spiritual key member is gone, it’s impossible to re-create that band. It existed in a special, very unique and creatively supercharged period of time, you can’t "recreate" those things, that was absolute magic."
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BUYER BEWARE: Neither Scott Asheton nor the Fred Smith Estate have any connection whatsover to any so-called "official" website or Hurley Memorial based on selling cheap t-shirts and did not sanction Easy Action’s inferior "band-authorized" recordings. Fred disbanded the Sonic’s Rendezvous group in 1980 to move on with his life and other creative pursuits while Scott Asheton has rejoined the Stooges and been very successful; there is no longer any "band" or "official" anything worth speaking of.
Scott "Rock Action" Asheton on MySpace
Scott Morgan (7/20/2007): "I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MYSPACE/SRB SITE"
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Influences:
Who influences your music?
SMITH: "No one now, and when I started there weren’t too many to be influenced by."
Sounds Like:
Playing in the late Sixties with the MC5, Fred Smith crafted a resonating sonic architecture: a soaring Gothic cathedral of electric-guitar harmonics, constructed on a foundation of gut-level rock & roll throb, which could induce listeners to surrender as in some ancient tribal rite. - Robert Palmer, Rolling Stone
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When Fred played solo on his trademark-tune, "Rocket Reducer No. 62", you knew why he got the name "Sonic",ÂÂ the only word that packed enough "G-force." Solo, his raven-black pupils vanished under hooded lids, his spine stiffened like a bolt, snug-tight in pink satin pants, his pink-sequined jacket draped his torso behind the gleaming-white instrument he'd back-and-forth stab into the outer space above his head. He leaped up and down, lurching in freaky Frankensteinian jolt-steps while simultaneously spinning around the stage in swirling orgiastic gyrations of musical frenzy, like some demonic pogo stick in the eye of a tornado funnel.
When Fred played, sex itself exploded on stage...
The girls all considered Fred Smith to be the band's major heart-throb. He had a lanky, roughhewn cut to his jib. Fred was a solitary dude, so sparingly did he use his larynx that it was almost startling when he'd actually venture an opinion or observation. The words were never wasted though, he was funny and trenchant and, on rare occasions, he could also break out a grin... I remember the band's manager, John Sinclair, proclaiming his amazement when he described Fred's quite private intellectual pursuits: "Here's a kid who's a stone-hillbilly and he's read all of Marx and Lenin and Frantz Fanon, the guy's a monstrous reader"! - Ken Kelley, Addicted To Noise
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"The real thrust of musical development comes from outside and the MC5 were definitely on the outside, looking in.
The joy of putting [High Time] together was indescribable. It was wonderful because they had all put their hearts on the line, and they said, "this is who we are right now."
In the period of 1970 to 71, Fred was the shining light of the MC5, he was the creative force behind the band at that time. Fred always felt that his music could reach out a bit further, he wanted something more than just the three chord wonder or the twelve-bar blues.
The music business doesn't particularly like anything to be desperately dangerous. Popular taste is ultimately very conventional. And if you don't slot into that category, you will find it very hard to survive in the music business." - Geoffrey Haslam, High Time co-producer quoted from MC5 - A True Testimonial
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"Fred Smith was the soul of the MC5. He was the soul."
"Rob was the thinker, he was the poet, he was the icing on the cake."
"I really think, deep down in my soul, Fred and Rob were the same, I mean Rob was, Fred was creative musically, Rob could put into words what Fred felt in his heart. There's the bond. I mean Rob could write the tunes, Rob could write two songs a night if he wanted him to when he was prime time... Creativity doesn't come from walking around being a big mouth. It comes from thought, it's always quiet."
"Fred was the heart and soul. Rob had to put it into words. so that's probably why they bonded... Fred and Rob would get together and say "well, here's some ideas" and then Rob would explain it in poetry, turn it into words."
"Fred didn't even know about chemistry, he already had it. He was a man of the future. way before his time, the kid had it up here; he had it in his heart and he had the music in his heart. The MC5 was really built around Fred Smith, not Wayne Kramer, not Dennis Thompson, not Rob Tyner or Mike Davis..." - Dennis Thompson
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"The way Fred was, was why the MC5 turned out to be such an enormous enigma; it made people look at themselves. He made us all reach deeper and give our best." - Michael Davis, DISCoveries
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The stage was set with some pretty powerful but primitive equipment; holes in the speaker cabinets, a big hunk torn out of one of the cymbals, nice touches like that. Ahhhh, that must be Sonic’s equipment, I thought. Shades of the MC5!!
"Sonic" Smith was magnificent. Sporting the same lank brown hair he always had, just a bit shorter, and wearing a torn black silk shirt that looked like MC5 original equipment, it was like a flashback into the crazy days of the late sixties... when Fred Smith returned to the dressing room after their show he had blood running all down his hand from his ripped fingers. He attacks those strings! - John Koenig, Cowabunga!
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At the end, Fred (Sonic) Smith, with whom Miss Smith now lives in Detroit, came on to join the band. Mr. Smith is a former member of the MC5 and, as his name intimates, is a devotee of the sonic possibilities of the electric guitar. Lots of rock performers play self-indulgently with the mind-blowing aspects of electronic feedback. But what Mr. Smith and others of the Patti Smith Group wrought in that regard – soft, bending filigrees of sound alternating with rich, grating onslaughts – was the most interesting use of feedback this writer has ever heard. - John Rockwell, New York Times
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Dream of Life was really more Fred’s record : it was all of Fred’s music, Fred’s philosophy, "People Have The Power," Fred’s concept, the titles of a lot of the songs… even though I wrote the lyrics, a lot of the titles and the concepts of the songs were Fred’s… so it was really Fred’s gift to me…He really crafted that record for me." - Patti Smith, Addicted To Noise
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Dream of Life manages to toe the line between subtlety and calculation so well that it looks deceptively easy, and for that, most of the credit must go to Fred Smith’s exceedingly eclectic guitar playing... The result is an album that sounds professional, careful and considered without being dull or walked-through. Both Smiths seem to be eyeing everything carefully. That self awareness makes this record work. - Harmen Mitchell, Ann Arbor News
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I’m going to miss Fred "Sonic" Smith. When he died at the age of 45, Detroit lost one of its most enigmatic, reclusive and integral artists...
In 1989, Patti issued Dream of Life. It was a collaborative project: all the songs were written by the two of them, and Fred co-produced. That record featured little of either’s fiery hard rock years, but it showcased their mature artistry and vision. It remains an underrated masterpiece. Their final public project was a gorgeous spoken word piece on the Until the End of the World soundtrack.
I’m sure Smith wasn’t a saint. Nobody is. But in a time when most people would do anything to be famous, Smith was interested in being a husband and father.
Along with all of his musical accomplishments, it was this rejection of the rock and roll spectacle that I admire most about Fred Smith. Because it is in this that I see evidence of something that I always believed rock and roll was supposed to have – integrity. - Thom Jurek, Metro Times
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Smith may have been a rock star in one of the ‘60s’ most notorious bands, but offstage the soft-spoken musician was a gentle friend and proud father. In April 1991 he and Patti performed at the closing of Ann Arbor’s Second Chance nightclub, a venue they had often played...
Backstage, in lieu of the usual music biz schmoozing, Smith proudly pulled his wallet out to show a visitor pictures of his son and daughter. - Susan Whitall, Detroit News
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As far as guitar heroes go, Orby can’t think of a better one that the Motor City’s own Fred "Sonic" Smith.
Smith unleashed an ear shattering crush of sound during his heyday in the legendary MC5, and later fronting his own band, Sonics Rendezvous in the mid-1970s.
For those of us who tumbled into Detroit’s underground rock scene back in the '70s, Monday nights in Ann Arbor’s Second Chance Saloon was where it was happening... Sonic played some of the most biting and distinctive leads that somehow defined what living in Detroit means...
For older fans of Smith, the MC5 days in the 1960s and early 70s were, to put it simple: you had to be there. But one thing’s for sure, back then the MC5 put their bodies and music on the line. The MC5 were right up there on the front lines of the 60s youth rebellion, and they often paid dearly for their beliefs. After a while the politics imploded, the revolution, of course, didn’t happen, and the MC5 splintered apart.
Fred picked up the pieces with his new band, and you could still hear plenty of the snap and crackle he had while fighting the great culture war.
In 1978, Fred and punk poet-rocker Patti Smith became a couple and later married. At the time, Patti was at the height of her fame with a hit song, "Because The Night," being spun on mainstream rock radio of all things, while Sonics Rendezvous put out the single, "City Slang"...
But a funny thing happened on the way to fame for Fred and Patti: they turned back on their hype, leaving behind plenty of frustrated fans...
You gotta like people who call their own shots without a hint of pretension or self-righteousness. Maybe that’s why Fred’s passing is still so hard to believe. Fred put his heart, maybe too much, into every aspect of his music and life. Put that into the context of modern rock coasting from the new flavor of the month and you know sooner or later Fred will inspire loads more of angry kids to tell the motherfuckers of the world what they can do. - Chip Sercomb, Orbit
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"I think Fred’s (“Sonic†Smith) greatest gift to me was my children Jackson and Jesse."
"The day Johnny Cash died I was sitting in the practice room on this old weather-beaten couch with springs sticking out of it and there was a newspaper picture of Johnny with his long black coat and I found myself contemplating a certain type of man, people like him and Fred “Sonic†Smith. Those whose struggles are so deep and complex that there’s the thinnest of line between success and failure, because of their personal pain." - Patti Smith, Harp Magazine
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NEW YORK (AP) -- Punk poet Patti Smith brought her earthy growl to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday, inducted as a member along with the Ronettes, Van Halen, R.E.M. and the institution's first hip-hop act, Grandmaster Flash.
Fighting back tears as she thought of family members, Smith recalled how her late husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith, told her before he died that she would someday make the rock hall.
"He asked me please to accept it like a lady and not to say any curse words," she said, "and make certain to salute new generations."
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Record Label: Elektra, Atlantic, Orchidé, Arista, Mack Aborn
Type of Label: None
