SAN FRANCISCO — After 50 years of making records, touring and raising a ruckus as a punk icon, you’d forgive Patti Smith for taking it easy here and there, such as at a daytime concert in a park for a crowd that looked as happy to be day-drinking as they were for the entertainment. But taking it easy was not what her performance was about at Stern Grove Festival on Sunday afternoon.

Smith was wound up and ready to go, whether she was glowing with love and appreciation, showing concern for the future of this planet or full of piss and vinegar when someone stuck a camera too close to her face.

“Get that fucking thing out of my face!” she shouted in the middle of main set closer “Gloria,” before going off on being upset about camera and cell phone recordings taking away from the live experience and for people to live in the moment. “Put those phones away!” she shouted again, this time at the crowd.

The outburst didn’t mar the show in the slightest, instead becoming yet another emotional moment that showed the 76-year-old has passion for her causes and dedication to her craft. It was just an extra movement during “Gloria,” the show’s high water mark. The song began more blues than rock before building to a rapturous call-and-response climax. Smith and her backing quartet slowed things down for her to go on a poetic speech.

“Thank you Jesus, thank you trees, thank you nature, thank you Samuel Beckett,” she offered, before repeating one of his signature lines, “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” The song quickly built back up, leading to that contentious moment.

The show began much more calmly, with Patti Smith and the band (guitarist Jackson Smith, her son; drummer Jay Dee Daugherty; bassist-keyboardist Tony Shanahan and guitarist Lenny Kaye) sauntering onto the stage in the afternoon heat. Yes, it was surprisingly warm at Sigmund Stern Grove for much of the concert. She wished a happy 70th birthday to City Lights bookstore for “giving the city poetry and spiritual food.”

She then read from Allen Ginsberg’s “Sunflower Sutra,” and the band kicked into “Waiting Underground,” from 1997 album Peace and Noise, as she finished her last stanza. Singing in her signature gravelly voice, she ended the song with a declaration that “We will rebuild!” before dedicating the song to “the workers of every field.”

Downcast folk song “My Blakean Year” was then highlighted by a guitar solo by Kaye. She warbled through an upbeat “Summer Cannibals,” and then Shanahan kicked off with The Electric Prunes’ “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)” with a two-note bass drone, later taking a post-punk turn.

Patti Smith was talkative all show long. She preceded “Nine,” from 2012’s Banga, with a story about a captain who spanned time and was loved by birds for his ability to fly and take them to new places, even though he didn’t move. I’m unfamiliar with the source of the story, but it sounded like a riddle. She sang the song backed only by Shanahan playing an organ synth before the rest of the band joined in and the song built.

Afterward, she took a break backstage while Kaye led the others through a twangy rendition of the Grateful Dead’s “The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion),” which he introduced as a song about going to San Francisco. Returning, Smith dedicated “Beneath the Southern Cross,” from 1996’s Gone Again, to Sinéad O’Connor, The Band’s Robbie Robertson and other artists who’ve recently passed on.

“This is a song of remembrance, but it’s also a song of life,” she said. “It’s a salute to life.”

The ethereal number went through a couple of mood changes, first to a psychedelic jam and then exploding into a garage rocker, with Smith holding long notes at the end.

Pretty soon, Patti Smith was demanding everyone raise their arms and “feel the blood moving and the healing energy and the creative spirit and fucking freedom!”

“Fuck the government, and corporations that hold people back,” she bellowed vigorously. “We are the future, and the future is now! Cross over people, now!

Smith masterfully throttled the energy for what followed, which was a cover of Bob Dylan’s folky “One Too Many Mornings.” She played it just with Smith on an acoustic guitar and Shanahan on keyboard.

“I used to play this on my record player when I was a teenager and daydreaming about the writer,” she said, before goofing on the first verse, apologizing and starting over. The songs drew chants of “Patti, Patti!”

“Yeah, I’m here, I’m here, for all my shattered glory,” she replied. And later: “It’s beautiful to be loved.”

The show’s final build began with 1976 single “Pissing in a River,” which had a dramatic piercing bluesy solo and concluded with Smith shouting the last lines. Then came an intimate “Dancing Barefoot” and rockers “Because The Night” and “Gloria.” She dedicated the former to the late Fred “Sonic” Smith of influential Detroit band MC5. Following a very short break, the band returned to close out with a cover of Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush” and the iconoclastic “People Have the Power.”

Before the cover, during which her voice was as clear as it had been all performance, she spoke of Young’s warning with the song, 50 years earlier, about taking care of the planet.

“Right now it’s more relevant than ever,” she said, appearing to choke up at the end of the song.

Rocker Bob Mould opened the Stern Grove Festival show with a 30-minute solo set—just him and his overdriven Stratocaster, which howled through songs like “The War,” “Voices in My Head” and “Next Generation,” from his latest solo album, Blue Hearts. He also revisited his Hüsker Dü years with “Flip Your Wig,” “I Apologize” and “Makes No Sense at All.”

Mould strummed aggressively and paced back and forth across the stage. Between songs, he talked about the afternoon’s unexpected weather and chit-chatted about living in San Francisco for more than a decade.

“I brought like four changes of clothes, not knowing it was gonna be the sunniest day of the week,” he said.

Because he was limited to the one instrument, the songs bled over from one to the next, but some stood out more. The angular “Stand Guard” ended in a lake of noise. “See a Little Light” was more melodic and slightly poppier.

“I don’t listen to people who hate on San Francisco,” he said, afterward. “I live in the Castro, so I see pretty much all of it, and it’s all all right by me.”

Following a couple more newer tunes in “Forecast of Rain” and “Next Generation,” Mould talked about how, at 18, he snuck away to the Electric Fetus record shop in Minneapolis to see Patti Smith perform.

“I’m gonna be out there [in the crowd] with you all,” he said. And sure enough, he watched most of her performance from next to the soundboard.

Before the show, Allyson Baker of San Francisco garage rock band Dirty Ghosts spun records to entertain early arrivers, throwing in everything from Motown and Brill Building pop to pop-punk. An emcee was tasked with listing the festival’s sponsors. When he announced Waymo, that drew a round of prolonged boos. Two days earlier, San Francisco approved the expansion of autonomous robo-taxis in the city. The residential area around Sigmund Stern Grove was swarming with them Sunday afternoon.

An earlier version of this story misidentified the person with whom Patti Smith had an altercation over filming. It was a video camera operator. We regret the error.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.