Patti Smith began her musical career unconventionally. It took off at a poetry reading where she was backed by Lenny Kaye on guitar; later star photographer Robert Mapplethorpe financed her punk-rock cult single "Hey Joe". In 1975, encouraged by her success, Patti Smith released "Horses", an album in which she fused rock riffs and spoken rhythms to create a punk-trash sound. The rock scene was electrified, raging about »the best garage sound of the 70s« ("Creem Magazine") and conjectured that Smith had »drawn up material from Rimbaud, Burroughs, Dylan and Velvet Underground into a hot needle and injected it under the skin« ("Sounds Magazine"). Later productions were dismissed as sentimental and self-loving outpourings, since the rock-poet didn’t continue in the same vein as "Horses", with its metallic harshness and raw language. That’s why this recording remains an impressive unique production by a visionary rock ’n’ roll singer.

This Speakers Corner LP was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head.