S/D Laurie Anderson

I am now reviving that other thread 'cause I liked it.

Destroy: Strange Angels is my least favorite by far although I haven't heard anything new in around a decade. I suspect I would also dislike the Moby Dick album. and the tracks on the Airwaves album are really embryonic and half-formed.

OMG, the kids introducing this:

oh hi

They're so cute! The one on the left, how she's so awkward, but pretty, and they're so enthusiastic!

Has anyone heard/seen *Nothing in My Pockets*? Book + 2 CDs: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/2914563434/
I'll probably buy it anyway, although I passed on *Night Life* (http://www.amazon.com/Night-Life-Laurie-Anderson/dp/3865213391/), thinking that it would be something I'd browse for fifteen minutes and then put on the shelf.

In this interview:
http://www.pomegranatearts.com/project-laurie_anderson/pdf_files/la_interview_04.pdf

...Laurie explains that she was almost going to be the narrator for the opening ceremony at the 2004 Summer Olympics at Athens!

"Q. Tell us about Greece and the Olympics. You were working in Athens with the Olympics team for, what, a year and a half?

LA Yeah. Actually I wasn’t able to talk about any of this when it was happening but it was amazing. They asked me to work on writing the opening ceremony and also to be the narrator. You know, the one who welcomes the world to Athens. So I went back and forth to Athens a lot for about a year. And I got to work with all these amazing Greeks-- writers, designers, choreographers. I just have to say, first of all, they’re a lot smarter than we are. They’re sharper, they’ve got sharper tools, they’ve got a sharper language. They just do. It’s more elegant, it’s more complicated, it’s more complex. And I’m someone in love with English. But I was really aware that they came from the people who invented virtually everything that our civilization is based on-- philosophy, geometry, physics, tragedy, sculpture, painting.

So it was – such a long story- a wonderful experience to work on making something with them. The top secret aspect was also a lot of the fun. I could never tell my friends where I was going-- I’d just disappear. Then last December there was a big money crunch and, sad to say, I was among the casualties so I didn’t get to be the narrator in the end."

Huh. If "Nothing In My Pockets" is anything like "The Ugly One With The Jewels", I'm in.

I adore Ugly One with the Jewels.

I adore Ugly One with the Jewels.

Yes, precisely. So has anyone heard the "Nothing In My Pockets" CDs that can give a pocket review?

"Music for Dogs"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Ku0HL9ToA

(5 min of a 20 min piece, according to what i can tell)

I adore "O Superman" & the disc she did with Lou Reed & John Zorn.

The rest of the things I've heard (which, granted, is only about half of her releases) have varied from pretentious & boring to boring & pretentious, with a few interesting cuts scattered about.

I just heard "Mister Heartbreak"; neither that nor "Big Science" are pretentious or boring (maybe "O Superman" aside). Honestly I'm not really sold on her but those albums are pretty interesting throughout. I'm not really a fan of her singing voice but I could probably listen to her read the phonebook all day.

I love Mister Heartbreak — for me it fits into that circa 84-85 era of digital-based art pop like The Dreaming and Sakamoto's Esperanto. The sound of those records haven't been disinterred as being retroactively "cool" (yet, anyway).

hasn't/haven't

i love at least half of mister heartbreak. the half with "blue lagoon".

I like a few things cumulatively on both albums but I still prefer Strange Angels to either one.

No one's heard "Nothing In My Pockets" (linked above)?

I went to see her at a free outdoor show at Lincoln Ctr last week... Music about what I expected, enjoyed the jaundiced words about how NYC has been replaced by an entirely different city in the last 10 years ("tech conventions and cupcake shops"). Some very timely siren intrusions too.

Also had never heard her Willie Nelson quote, "99% of the world ends up with the wrong person, and that's what keeps the jukebox spinning." (And then she brought out Lou Reed.)

lol

Free show as part of Luminato tonight. All I knew going in was "O Superman" (perplexing), and I think I played a song or two from Strange Angels on the radio years ago. I just figured she'd be worth seeing.

There were a couple of pretty songs, but the one she opened with was excruciating--"Greetings from the Homeland," I think it was called. Went on forever--20 minutes at least.

All I really knew was "O Superman" before I saw her recent collaboration with Kronos Quartet a little while back. Eh, it was ok.

I see she has a new collaboration going:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/arts/music/laurie-andersons-wall-to-wall-summer.html?_r=0

“Ai Weiwei asked me to write some songs with him a few months ago,” said

you guys need to listen to 'big science' at least, it's one of the best albums ever. i've never been able to get into the rest of her stuff as much but that one is a classic (it's the one with 'o superman')

otm, big science is beyond essential -- haven't been nearly as knocked out by anything else I've heard her do (though there are good moments), but that one is a universe of its own.

The Ugly One with the Jewels is 100% awesome from start to finish. Anderson in full-on storytelling mode with Eno on synths backing her up.

nevermind, Eno was on Bright Red, not Ugly One with the Jewels... still.

Nah ugly is def eno too i think?

I <3 Laurie. If it came down to a sophies choice between her and wifey Lou I'd pick Anderson in half a heartbeat just for united states, big science & assorted highlights

I saw the Luminato thing as well, about the same reaction as clemenza. Enjoyed the instrumental passages far more than the lengthy attempted Skype collaboration. I did like the occasional sounds of helicopters hovering in the background.

Ugly One is a mixtape-making dream come true.

http://nd03.jxs.cz/553/120/78b5a5bc82_66078638_o2.jpg

http://images.ramonamainstage.com/acts/l/LouieAnderson_465.jpg

http://www.halloffamememorabilia.com/images/products/p-533725-larry-anderson-autographed-hand-signed-mlb-baseball-card-philadelphia-phillies-1986-f-aw-45106.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mRq1xgKykM

Home of the Brave extremely formative for me, hard to imagine anyone not enjoying listening to this

I'm gonna give Big Science another try. I like it but I'm a Strange Angels stan.

I am OK with Big Science but think United States is where it's at

Bunch of bizarre old LA PSAs!

http://networkawesome.com/show/collection-laurie-anderson-psas-1/

my dad always use 2 tok abt hr...... bt a on a vln bow

tape8

*

taebtraeh ym ot netsil

*farts*

from June, on "Hamilton": "It's history lite. It's musical lite. It's just...just horrible."

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/06/laurie-anderson-qa-hamilton-trump-hillary/485054/

Was unaware until recently that she had made a CD-ROM game in the mid 90's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPYOSLqN5Ns

That's so cool, thanks for sharing

"The Big Top" is really doing it for me lately.

Cities with...no basements
No foundations
Cities that could be moved in a minute
Portable cities
Portable towns

Yeah that's top 10

"The Canadians took this very seriously" one of her best punchlines

Some of my favorites.

Great list

No "Blue Lagoon"? It's such a beautiful fever dream.

Or Another Day In America which includes one of Anderson's best lyrics

And you know the reason I really love the stars is that we cannot hurt them
We can't burn them or melt them or make them overflow. We can't flood them or blow them up or turn them out
But we are reaching for them
We are reaching for them

^^^ top-notch lyrics, there she nails it!

Touring :)

she's kind of always touring something around these days, often variations on one show. but is she doing shows with Kronos in support of Landfall?

Looks like she's playing shows in support of her new book all the things I lost in the flood. Seems to have also instantly sold out :-/

Was transfixed by her live show in 1988, how is she now?

I saw her a year or so ago do a "The Language of the Future" show (this is a show that varies a lot apparently) and it was great. Was it as great as Empty Spaces, which was the first thing I saw (probably what you saw in 88)? No, it's much more scaled down. But it was better than that Noah/Whale thing she did in the 90's that I hated.

Still mesmeric.

oh it was moby dick, not noah. whatever.

a coworker of mine did sound for an artist at the Day for Night fest a couple months ago and got to see Laurie Anderson. he said she was great, a lot of telling stories... anyway at some point in the set, his best friend came up to him and asked to leave because he was bored because she "wasn't playing any of the hits" lmao

having said that... does she play O Superman these days?

She didn't when I saw her perform.

My gf fucking hated her lol. She doesn't like spoken word

So do you just sing to her all the time?

no I don't think she's done o superman since United States. .... maybe she did a restrospective show at one point, not sure.

She performed o superman on the post 9-11 live in New York album

I've posted about this before, but she did O Superman here literally on the night of 9/11.

only live recordings of O Superman i've found are from those 2001 shows

This is what Greg Kot wrote in 2013 (I was his +1 at this show):

On the night of Sept. 11, 2001, Laurie Anderson decided to go ahead with her scheduled performance at Park West, even though her city had been devastated earlier that day. Here's my Tribune review of that performance.

It was one of those moments "when everything changes," Laurie Anderson sang, in a voice that sounded like she was narrating a documentary: Slightly detached, pleasant in its lilting enunciation, yet ominous. "But you don't know yet, whether it's for the better or the worse."

Nothing would be the same after Tuesday, and everyone at the Park West that night -- most especially Anderson -- knew it. Her songs, some of them written as many as 20 years ago, were eerily evocative of a collective mood that desperately cried out for some sort of public expression.

The staging was stark and somber, in contrast to the multimedia extravaganzas of past Anderson tours. The singer, dressed in black and flanked by three brilliant musicians who conjured atmospheres that exquisitely suited her songs, was in tune with her listeners. She set out to help them make sense of a world that had suddenly, shockingly lost its bearings.

In times of crisis, we look to our artists not necessarily to provide answers, but to give shape and dimension to the doubts and anxieties washing over us. Their work can be a balm or a purge, an acknowledgment that our private fears are shared by others.

That is why Anderson's concert Tuesday was not only welcome, but necessary. Throughout the entire nation, on a day when terrorist attacks reduced many of us to a stunned silence, public performances of any kind were at a premium. But Anderson's instincts were correct: It is far preferable to face the unspeakable together, especially if the artist in question is up to the task, and she was.

The Park West was packed for this homecoming by the 54-year-old native of Glen Ellyn, and she immediately addressed the harsh reality of the day, dedicating the 105-minute performance "to all those who have died today."

It was a straightforward, dignified remark, and it set the tone for what followed: a performance that avoided pathos or melodrama, or too-obvious song selections such as her harrowing "From the Air," yet struck exactly the right chord of empathy and awareness, longing and humor.

The resonance and sturdiness of Anderson's songwriting was put to the test, and it did not falter. Her great themes aren't particularly unique: the intersection of humanity and technology, the price of progress, and the loss of our identity and freedom. But she invests them with quirky insight, haunted musicality and depth of feeling that make her more than just a performance artist coldly tinkering with her high-tech gadgets.

She opened with a melancholy instrumental, performed on violin, with funeral bells chiming and Skuli Sverrisson's bass tracing a path to "Statue of Liberty," chilling in its appropriateness: "Freedom is a scary thing," Anderson sang, "so precious, so easy to lose."

The same was true of "Strange Angels," and its chant of "here they come, here they come," with Sverrisson's bass figures taking on the role of a second voice. For Anderson, who has performed many of her concerts solo backed by intense multimedia sound and imagery, the presence of a band so sensitive to her needs was appropriate and oddly comforting. Only when the music became more strident, approaching the cadences and tempos of conventional rock, did it fail to impress. Mostly, Sverrisson, percussionist Jim Black and keyboardist Peter Scherer were concerned with coloring in the spaces behind Anderson's minimalist keyboards, violin and sing-speak vocals, and they did so beautifully.

Before the austerity became too oppressive, the house lights briefly came on and Anderson suggested the audience draw pictures of her so that she could sell them at her next tour stop. "Good luck with your drawings!" she cheerfully said as pencils and paper were passed out. It was difficult not to laugh at the absurdity, which was precisely the point. She also broke up several songs with spoken-word interludes, which had the earmarks of fables, twisted bedtime stories or nursery rhymes for grownups.

When Anderson got back to business, the concert found its emotional center. "O Superman" remains one of the great compositions of the last two decades, a terrifying portrait of trust, security and love misplaced that Anderson performed solo at her keyboard, the electronically altered beats a cross between rhythmic breathing and a dehumanized last gasp. It was followed by "Slip Away," which sounds like an agnostic's postmodern response to the bluegrass Bible-belt masterpiece "O Death."

With "Love Among the Sailors," Anderson pulled all the threads together, and brought the audience to its feet. The last verse bears repeating, because it so eloquently gave voice to what so many must have been feeling on this day: violated, threatened, but still somehow yearning for community.

“There is a hot wind blowing

Plague drifts across the oceans

And if this is the work of an angry god

I want to look into his angry face

There is no pure land now, no safe place

Come with us into the mountains

Hombres. Sailors. Comrades.”

Landfall album is streaming now on NPR:

https://www.npr.org/2018/02/08/584036854/first-listen-laurie-anderson-kronos-quartet-landfall

How about landfall eh

little overlong - were only human

landfall is OK (I'm kind of over the kronos quartet in general) but her current live show for the book/album is just in fucking credible. one of the greatest live performances from anyone ever.

"The front cover of the CD has the title Live at Town Hall, New York City September 19–20, 2001, however the official title of the album is just Live in New York." 23 tracks, intense, committed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_in_New_York_(Laurie_Anderson_album)

i saw a plane today
flying low
over the island--
but my mind
was somewhere
else

Laurie if you're sadly listening

The birds are on fire

The sky glistening

While I atop my roof stand watching

Staring into the spider's clypeus

Incinerated flesh repelling

While I am on the rooftop yearning

Thinking of you

Laurie if you're sadly listening

Selfishly I miss your missing

The boundaries of our world now

changing

The air is filled with someone's

sick reasons

And I had thought a beautiful

season was

Upon us

Laurie if you're sadly listening

The phones don't work

The bird's afire

The smoke curls black

I'm on the rooftop

Liberty to my right still standing

Laurie evil's gaunt desire is

Upon we

Laurie if you're sadly listening

Know one thing above all others

You were all I really thought of

As the TV blared the screaming

The deathlike snowflakes

Sirens screaming

All I wished was you to be holding

Bodies frozen in time jumping

Bird's afire

One thing me thinking

Laurie if you're sadly listening

Love you

Laurie if you're sadly listening

Love you

Thanks flappy bird. Here's what I scratched out just now, with heaphones on, during my maiden voyage through Landfalland vice-versa:

Xgau not that into it but he not likely for chamber setting even w more words vocal shading ditto electronic than he mentions: some tough, gorgeous, tensile levels of blues is a feeling stuff, prismatic searchlight watchlight in the ceiling, the dipper filling and dipping again---as compelling in its way as heart of a Dog
How they built it
http://kronosquartet.org/projects/detail/landfall

Building another story, sure as Heart of a Dog.

Still haven’t got through landfall as it’s so ducking long

Poem up there by Lou Reed was in the NYT on 10/9/01 - https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/magazine/songs-for-the-city-laurie-sadly-listening.html

Any SF residents get to see the Lou Reed drones concert in Nov? A recording has just surfaced, 4 hours!

i saw laurie anderson last night for the first time! i hope to see her again soon. she played quite a bit of stuff from what i assume was her latest album (and first Grammy winner) Landfall. i have to assume because i sto;; haven't heard Landfall, but i know it's a chamber orchestra based album (which won her a first grammy, too), the artwork projected behind resembles the cover of Landfall, and she played as a duo with a cellist. the show alternated between these beautifully performed duets (his cello and her electric violin) and her more familiar synth and vocoder songs, spoken-word pieces, stories and jokes. at the beginning she played a story by her recently deceased chicago wordsmith friend ken nordine over the speakers, before asking everyone to honor yoko ono's 82nd birthday by screaming as loudly as possible for 10 seconds (my throat still hurts).

i was amazed at how adeptly she created a dreamlike web of circling repetition throughout the evening. alternating pieces with the string duets helped, but there were also funnies stories about writing to jack kennedy as a child for advice about how to run for student council, to be referenced much later in the show with references to "jack" and promising to people whatever it is they want. i would recognize certain snippets of songs, but they seemed to be reappropriated and mixed together with other songs. sometimes dreams themselves were referenced - And ah, these days. Oh, these days / What are days for? / To wake us up, to put between the endless nights - or a warning to never tell anyone about your dreams, because they make you sound insane because they never make any sense. it's hard to explain, but it was mesmerizing.

at the end she talked a bit about lou reed and performed some tai chi.

about an hour after her show i was walking around the museum, checking out some "soundscapes" (actually just pairs of speakers) and ran across her doing an encore performance in the spot where the stars of the lid soundscape was supposed to be:

https://i.imgur.com/6iQyVZa.jpg

sorry for typos. tl;dr she really is a treasure, we're lucky we still have her. everyone should go see her if you haven't already

that sounds amazing! every time I've seen her perform over the years it's been magical.

I just recently became aware of the 1960s Smithsonian Folkways recording of Marian Seldes reading Gertrude Stein, and immediately thought: Woah, Laurie Anderson must have listened to a lot of this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RpnLjR45ZM#t=3m57s

thanks for sharing that, I've had this post bookmarked for a week and I finally put that on and got a lot of writing done, zoomed by in the zone. otm about the influence

at the beginning of the movie
they know they have to find each other--
but they ride off
in opposite directions!

Two pro-shot shows, both released because of the quarantine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VohblFNYnjE

Laurie Anderson "All the Things I Lost in the Flood" (Town Hall NYC 2/15/18)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbuinUOV9Cc

2020 Vanguard Gala Honoring Laurie Anderson (Joe's Pub Live! 2/3/20)

-Lafcadio Cass
-Ryuichi Sakamoto
-Starr Busby with Stuart Bogie, Alex Koi & Colin Stetson - “From the Air”
-Carl Hancock Rux - “The Puppet Motel”
-Shara Nova with Stuart Bogie & Colin Stetson - “Beautiful Red Dress”
-Theo Bleckmann - “Falling”
-Alex Koi - “Gravity’s Angel”
-Theo Bleckmann & Helga Davis - “Walking and Falling”
-Colin Stetson & DM Stith - “Fear of the Unknown and the Blazing Sun”
-Nona Hendryx with Kiki Hawkins, Asa Lovechild & Alex Sopp - “This is the Picture (Excellent Birds)”
-Christina Courtin - “Flow”
-Meg Harper directed by Derrick Belcham (film) with My Brightest Diamond “The Beginning of Memory”
-Joan as Police Woman - “Blue Lagoon”
-Morley Shanti Kamen - “Only An Expert”
-Justin Hicks - “Nothing Left but Their Names”
-mmeadows (Kristin Slipp & Cole Kamen-Green) - “Walk the Dog”
-Meshell Ndegeocello - “O Superman”
-Theo Bleckmann & Nona Hendryx - “In Our Sleep”

Great, thanks, Hideous! This isn't great, but told my blog and that year's UpRoxx ballot more about Landfall, an underappreciated album, it seems:
On Landfall, Anderson's violin and keyboard loops and grooves guide Kronos through vast flooded condo corridors, occasionally checking the stars (yep, still awesome-sounding) that she never got around to naming, in that slowed-goofy-male voice, once more or less purely satirical, that now seems more personal-global, or at least more lived-in, than ever.

joan wasser's version of "blue lagoon" is beautiful. not really breaking new ground but just amazing.

Over the years I've been checking out previously un-heard (to me) corners of her back catalogue, mistakenly thinking that I'm going to find some line that I will eventually refuse to cross, perhaps some horrible eighties production values or technologically-dated pretensions, but I haven't yet found one and it's nearly all fantastic.

she's doing a "sound meditation" on Sunday via Zoom: https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/course/a-solstice-eve-sound-meditation-with-laurie-anderson/

Here's what she played:

1. Max Richter, Dream 1 (before the wind blows it all away), Sleep
2. William Basinski, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Lamentations
3. The Mills Brothers, Ida Sweet as Apple Cide,The Decca Singles vol. 1: 1934-1937
4. Fritz Kreisler, Humoresque, Op. 101 No. 7
5. Laurie Anderson, Flow Homeland
6. Allen Ginsberg, Father Death Blues, The Last Word on First Blues
7. Christmas music, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2tx5NHDcHA, 8 hours of vintage department store Christmas music- customusic tapes
8. Negativland, We Can Really Feel Like We’re Here, The World Will Decide
9. Negativland, Why Are We Waiting, The World Will Decide
10. Laurie Anderson, Birds, Expo Japan 2005
11. Lou Reed, I’m Set Free, Brian Eno cover “Fickle Sun (III) I’m Set Free
12.Laurie Anderson, Dark Bells, Heart of a Dog
13. Philip Glass/Rumi, Don’t Go Back to Sleep, Monsters of Grace
14. Astor Piazzola, Tanguedia III, Tango: Zero Hour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zUEroBzyv8

only up until 5pm EST on March 4th

holy crap, only 6 hours left, but this is very, very good, and i'm looking forward to the rest of her lecture series. sometimes when she quotes someone, she puts an image of them and animates their mouths moving as they speak. for example, laurie/eno is currently talking to me about ambient music.

she may be my favorite artist, i guess

thank you for the link and head's up, f. hazel. watching that before i went to bed last night put me in a better place

also, check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTxqg8g_jXM

first of all, we should all be so lucky to be wheeled out on a platform by assistants. but then check out her human sampler performance and then utterly charming conversation/demo afterward.

This lecture was a treat, thanks.

One time I think Laurie Anderson came into a shop I was working in and I spoke to her briefly. I'm pretty sure.

did she ask what flower, expresses, days go by ... pulling you into the future ... and they just keep going by, endlessly, pulling ...

She said... do you stock... Apple... Macintosh? I said... no.

these are good videos thank you both

i still barely know anything about her. i've never seen a bad laurie anderson youtube video, actually. sometimes she's a video artist, sometimes spoken word (a term she apparently hates and in that lecture she requests that her audience come up with a "snappier" name for it), sometimes instrumental music, sometimes all of it at once. always conceptual, i guess. that's what ties them all together.

sorry - i got sidetracked. what i meant was - i just type in "laurie anderson" in youtube every few months and something astounding immediately comes up, and i see that there are dozens more just beneath that. she populated a sea of mesmerizing videos and music, we all owe her thousands of dollars

i see laurie anderson as among those whose very lives have become a piece of art, or performance. but where that can be so, SO, annoying and even alienating with so many other people who have tried to do it, with laurie anderson i come away more impressed every time. as she gets older, her words and messages are getting warmer and more...comforting...but also her sense of humor is somehow getting both sharper and more subtly deployed. with everything. in interviews, in lectures. i saw her speak and play and show and tell at the art institute of chicago a couple years ago. after her performance, she wandered down the hall with one of the other musicians and they played instrumental duets (she on viola) out in the middle of one of the big hallway exhibits of ancient sculpture, with a small amp. i sat behind her and got lots of good pics of their setup from her pov, but with a perfectly chiseled ancient ass as the frame.

lol, i suddenly realized i've told this whole story before. i'm going to grab the image from above but not read my telling of it back then, to see how warped my memories have become

https://i.imgur.com/6iQyVZa.jpg

hmm, i see see that now i think she "wandered" down the hall. i don't know. she probably did.

i loved one part in that first lecture above (which i think is still up til 5 pm EST today) where she talked about teaching ancient syrian and egyptian art history, and she couldn't remember so she just started making up things. and then later, got fired/quit. :D

It's probably not your fault but it took me a moment there to realise with some relief that you were talking about a statue's ass and not LA's ;-)

lol, hey she may be old but she is not ancient! either way, i'd say that we should put her on the $100 bill but it seems to disgusting to mix her up with the world of printed circulation. but she's a national treasure at any rate

<3

is the national debt long, or is it wide?

repeatedly mentions “just a lot of questions” in this. at least as central to her technique as aquatic disaster

she is a master of the arresting question

obviously there's the zen koan connection too, and she cites them so frequently. i've never really been able to find a way into zen koans (not that i've given it a serious level of effort, like the amount of effort that it takes to run a ilm poll. so maybe i should...run another ilm poll!). but i kind of see her questions as related to those, maybe as her own versions of those for the modern day, and it makes me appreciate both her and also kind of helps me think of how those koans might be useful for other people too

nothing to add here but this is making me all warm and fuzzy

she calls common sense “really just a long list of questions” on homeland

anyway thanks v much f hazel, woulda missed this.

same! did anyone catch when the next one is supposed to be? and there are 6 of them? 8? i may have dreamed about this last night

also i'm going to straight up lift a few of her video/presentation/visual aides from that, because goddamn

Yes. thanks---I wonder if the replay of the radio shows she mentions are going to be at 4:00am again---? Wouldn't be the same effect she describes if I set the alarm, grab a coffee--will just have to stay awake 'til they start.
Her acceptance speech for Lou at R&Roll Hall of Fame--balance to what she says about music in lecture and pretty fine anyway (comments about "Lulu" most of the balance. also now we go from Eno to re:Arethe etc)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VaeEmBPmGk

I think the next one is 3/24.

The next radio show!? What station? I'm guessing wfmu. Anyway, she's in good company amidst Steinski's Rough Mix: https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/56137

https://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/archives/party-in-the-bardo-conversations-with-laurie-anderson-archive.html

no, the next Norton lecture. which apparently has a conversation / Q&A portion after the lecture, so I signed up for the second one.

Bummed that, it appears, they aren't posting the rest of the conversations in this series.

The Mahindra Humanities Center is pleased to announce an upcoming broadcast of Laurie Anderson's second Norton Lecture, initially presented on March 24, 2021. The Forest will be available to watch online for a limited time. The recording will premiere at 5pm EDT on April 7, 2021 and will remain available for the next 24 hours, until 5pm EDT on April 8, 2021.

it'll be here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd68fLDyN_4

thanks, put it on my calendar!

Fantastic!

Laurie Anderson’s 1982 debut album, Big Science, will return to vinyl for the first time in thirty years with a new red vinyl edition due April 9 on Nonesuch Records. The vinyl includes the re-mastered original album first released on CD for the 25th anniversary of Big Science on Nonesuch in 2007.
...While working on her now-legendary seven-hour performance art/theater piece United States, Part I–IV, she cut the spare "O Superman (For Massenet)," an electronic-age update of 19th century French operatic composer Jules Massenet’s aria ‘O Souverain’, for the tiny New York City indie label 110 Records. In the UK, DJ John Peel picked up a copy of this very limited-edition 33⅓ RPM 7” and spun the eight-minute-plus track on BBC Radio 1. The exposure resulted in an unlikely #2 hit, lots of attention in the press, and a worldwide deal with Warner Bros. Records.

'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!
..."In the ’70s I traveled a lot," Anderson recounts. "I worked on a tobacco farm in Kentucky, hitchhiked to the North Pole, lived in a yurt in Chiapas, and worked on a media commune. I had my own romantic vision of the road. My plan was to make a portrait of the country. Big Science, the first part of the puzzle, eventually became part two of United States I–IV (Transportation, Politics, Money, Love). My goal was to be not just the narrator but also the outsider, the stranger. Although I was fascinated by the United States, this portrait was also about how the country looked from a distance. I was performing a lot in Europe, where American culture was simultaneously booed and cheered. But the portrait was also a picture of a culture inventing a digital world and learning to live in it. Big Science was about technology, size, industrialization, shifting attitudes toward authority, and individuality. It was sometimes alarmist, picturing the country as a burning building, a plane crash. Alongside the techno was the apocalyptic. The absurd. The everyday. It was also a series of short stories about odd characters—hatcheck clerks and pilots, preachers, drifters and strangers. There was something about Massenet's aria ‘O Souverain’—which inspired ‘O Superman’—that almost stopped my heart. The pauses, the melody. 'O souverain, ô juge, ô père' (O Lord, o judge, o father). A prayer about empire, ambition, and loss."
https://www.nonesuch.com/albums/big-science-lp?eml=2021April2%2F5293848%2F6011771&etsubid=33248291
And here,, in conversation w Will Young on BBC2:https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tnsk?eml=2021April2/5293848/6011771&etsubid=33248291

The olde Official Video is in that Nonesuch link too.

Would it kill them to re-release United States Live?

Christ, it’s ridiculous that LAURIE ANDERSON HOME OF THE BRAVE never got a DVD. Her website mentioned a box of her WB works some years ago, and I think it was supposed to include it

Really would love for them to release The Ugly One with the Jewels on vinyl too fwiw.

She's a guest on this week's Adam Buxton podcast too - https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/podcasts

Laurie Anderson hitchhiked...to the North Pole??

Really would love for them to release /The Ugly One with the Jewels/ on vinyl too fwiw.

I haven’t heard this one before - what is it like?

As someone who's always been a fan of her spoken word cadence and learned, through the years, to appreciate her music compositions, it was for sure a gateway drug. It's all spoken word and it's all hypnotic to me.

Laurie Anderson hitchhiked...to the North Pole??

She references doing so on the Ugly One with the Jewels and I always wondered if she had really done that!

(and for my money, that's her best album)

I really love that album and that story in particular

The whole routine about being stopped by security in Israel is all-time

iirc the North Pole trip is real? I think the hardcover book covers that

TUOWTJ is almost completely spoken-word iirc, right?

Basically yes, and a (highly edited) live album.

Her narratives are so confidently related in her work that I always assumed they're all made up. Like the scene from "It Was Up in the Mountains" from United States Live... did that really happen?

I had a really nice afternoon a few years back when I took acid and wandered around a park listening to The Ugly One With the Jewels, it's kind of perfectly balanced between funny and unsettling and comforting.

I'm really hoping this is the first of multiple reissues? So much of her best work is hard to find on any physical format.

wow, I guess it's not surprising but the majority of her albums are indeed OOP in any physical format.

Ugly One and Bright Red were both great albums and should be in print again and on vinyl, that would be nice.

Home of the Brave: here's a really nice looking visual remaster someone did and put on youtube. It's been there for quite a while so I don't think it's going to be removed. I wouldn't hold out hope for any kind of official re-release since I've heard she has little to no interest in revisiting her past works. I wonder what kind of visual documentation there is of things like Nerve Bible and Empty Spaces? Empty Spaces was the first show I ever saw of hers and it was thrilling but so long ago I barely remember it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v663kBnsD0A

I've heard she has little to no interest in revisiting her past works

this is a shame, do you have a source or can you expand? it also explains the weird out-of-print issues.

brb gonna salvage my HOTB interview 2LP from the sell pile in the basement

I attended a screening of HOME OF THE BRAVE. She says the hitchhiking story is true, although she didn’t quite reach the magnetic North Pole

Anderson also explained at said screening that she is proud of the music in it, but that the visuals make her “cringe” which is nuts to me

it's almost uniformly amazing. maybe she cringes at whatever is going on at about 1:02:45, because holy shit they really ham it up for a while there, lol

"Radar", at 45:12, is maybe the best thing i've ever seen

"do you have a source or can you expand? " Anil Prasad told me that based off conversations and interviews he's done with her.

That kind of attitude is admirable but I wish there were a way to thread the needle between not forcing an artist into Legacy Mode and ensuring their past work is properly archived/made available

As lukas noted upthread, part 2 of the Norton Lectures is now live until 5pm EDT on April 8th:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd68fLDyN_4

"It has never been more pertinent": Margaret Atwood on the chilling genius of Laurie Anderson’s 'Big Science'

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/apr/08/margaret-atwood-laurie-anderson-big-science-o-superman-prophetic-80s-america-pertinent

Free registration now open for lecture 3, 4/14 at 5ET

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lecture-3-rocks-laurie-anderson-spending-the-war-without-you-tickets-148381147005

(the last one she prerecorded her segment, fwiw)

She's programming a day of music today at NTS.

(Link above doesn't seem to work. https://www.nts.live/shows/nts-10-laurie-anderson )

Long, big-picture profile in this Sunday's NY Times.

Laurie in Smithsonian Mag & Hirshhorn---live performances coming later:

AT THE SMITHSONIAN | OCTOBER 25, 2021

The Multiple Arts and Artistries of the Inimitable Laurie Anderson:
A Hirshhorn retrospective opens with ten new works from the pioneering artist, composer, poet and musician

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/the-multiple-arts-and-artistries-of-the-inimitable-laurie-anderson-180978912/?eml=2021October29/5506248/6011771&etsubid=33248291

Cool, thanks for the heads up! I'll be in DC for Thanksgiving, and hopefully the Metra will be repaired and running regularly by then.

another of her lectures is up for the next 18 hours or so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf6HsjTeQBQ

the fake scarcity of the lectures is beyond annoying, just put them all up ffs

I do love that at the end of this I'm going to have a new 6-hour Laurie Anderson album on my phone.

the fake scarcity of the lectures is beyond annoying, just put them all up ffs

otm

maybe they will at the end

thanks for the heads up though, on this one! I am watching the 4th one now. every time i listen to her at length i come to think that she is my very favorite artist of all, musical or otherwise. then some time passes and i listen and look at other things and i forget about her a bit. then i come back and am even more sure that she is the greatest

she is a reasonable pick for sure

watched this a few weeks ago, wild stuff in 1977:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXfMpZeiKtk

I wish she had recorded more stuff along the lines of "It's Not the Bullet That Kills You (It's the Hole)" in the early days. It's one of my favorite songs of hers, seems like it's been kind of buried under the weight of everything she's done since
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zA6LL78KYU

Strange Angels is mostly sorta like this?

xp that is a great one yes

xp True, especially re: the writing but Strange Angels has that slick high-end 1989 production. I'd like more of a basic amateurish rock band vibe

She might agree with you now about that production: managed to watch all of the fourth Norton Lecture just before it went away, and while she talks enthusiastically about being a "wirehead"--who for instance found a broken machine while poking through the bounteous street trash of old Soho, and yadda yadda her drum suit--demonstrated in her martial arts dance on stage back in the day---a lot of it is also My Life As A Capitalist Tool, beginning in the early 80s, with avant as pop, and the business of being an artist, a creative brand (going with Tim Lawrence's dance culture histories, as NYC comes back from the dead via real estate and related fevers, in the Age of Reagan and Koch and so many more---also her own later experiences, in the context of the process continuing (to Gens Z and Alpha of course, but she doesn't get into "kids taday."
I think somebody upthread mentioned at least one interview where she was pretty tough on herself and her early work---can she why she'd feel "humiliated," as she says here, about the lame 80s video with Peter Gabriel, although it's not all that bad, but she doesn't mention a lot of stuff sadly unavailable (by legit means and in first-gen quality, if at all). But this fourth Norton does include a lot of intriguing excerpts I'd never seen before.
One thing I did miss, which I'd seen in a previous Norton, the one where she mentions her studio with windows on the river etc., was that thing she does so well (on the CD of Life of a Dog; I haven't seen the film), of mentioning or showing something in passing, then coming back to it later from a different angle, incl. what's happened since the first time. I mean, she still does it in terms of intertwining themes, but not imagery or phrases.
(Could have something to do with her praise of haiku as a thing in itself, not like the Western wirehead always be connecting and optimizing analogies and shit.)
Yet she did this after all, implicitly, if you track her back around through a previous work: was struck, near the end of this, about her description of her mother, and how that seemed affected by her breakthrough memory near the end of Life of a Dog--but maybe I shouldn't spoil those.
Also liked that she had Gertrude Stein and Oscar Wilde and their American tours in there, along with her own.

She poked the trash and found a broken *drum* machine, I meant to say.

Stuff like the lame video now seems "humiliating," I believe she says, rather than feeling "humiliated," like a victim, or maybe she does say the latter, but is candid about being excited at the time, or a lot of the time---though trying to keep up with the changes in her career and the biz and tech etc., frequently having to adjust, like trying to understand and pretending that she did.

Just got back from the Hirshhorn, loved the exhibit!

for those that missed the Norton Lecture (I missed 4 of the 6), it appears that they're re-youtubing them on December 15, like all of them, one by one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LuKgGn5e2g

i really wish they'd just put them on youtube in a normal way, now, though

sorry, i think there were only 5, not 6.

but both of the ones i saw were among Anderson's best work, i thought

Cool, I know what I'm doing next Wednesday

recording the upcoming streams and putting them on vimeo for laurie anderson fans, i hope!

before i updated to the latest version of the MacOS, i had software that could do that easily, but alas

another tragic big sur victim

i had been using the same screen recording warez since like 2014. the recording shortcuts were in my muscle memory. now i have to get out my DSLR to take a photo of the screen, i'm sick of it

can you not get it by looking at inspect element > network and looking for the biggest thing?

i don't know! i'm not sure how youtube's thing with timed countdown events works. if you're a big name artist and you want to schedule a video "premiere", is it actually available beforehand by inspecting element > network?

either way, now that they've aired and served their function as being artificially limited for a while, it would be cool if they just put them up for good

just got this in the ol inbox:

We are pleased to announce that all six of Laurie Anderson's Norton Lectures will be permanently available on the Mahindra Humanities Center website and YouTube channel starting on Wednesday, December 15.

the YouTube stock just soared

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-8pNSolp7I

https://www.rockefellercenter.com/events/philip-glass-and-the-rink-85th-birthday

oh shit thank you for the heads up, copped two tix

the norton lectures are the shit

https://www.openculture.com/2022/01/laurie-anderson-turns-zoom-into-an-art-form-watch-her-hypnotic-harvard-lecture-series-on-poetry-meditation-death-new-york-more.html

I really think these are my favorite thing she’s done in decades, some of that being because they feel so much a summation.

https://www.nonesuch.com/sites/g/files/g2000014771/files/2023-03/laurie-anderson-marc-maron-2023-0320-1200x628.jpg

“It was thrilling to talk to her,” Marc Maron says of Laurie Anderson, his guest on the latest episode of WTF with Marc Maron. “Laurie Anderson had a profound impact on my life. Just hearing her in my headset while I talked to her was kind of mind-blowing.” They talk, among other things, about life in 1970s New York with fellow artists like Philip Glass, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Spalding Gray; playing straight man to Andy Kaufman; and The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi, a new book she helped edit of Lou Reed’s writing on tai chi. You can hear their conversation here via Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

love her Andy K stories so much, especially the one about the centrifuge carnival ride

She is one of the few artists I can hear tell the same story (or pieces of the same story, reshuffled) over and over and over again and it never stops sounding fresh.

i mean tbf that's part of her act

i say this with massive love and respect

Yep, I sat through all 5 or 6 hours of Spending the War Without You and would do it again another half dozen times.

the only artist i can think of for whom the "phone book" expression is literally true

She could totally do this---and occasionally mention what a person's name, number, street's name. number, reminded her of. memtion this in passing, and then come back to it later, mentioning how this street looks from that street---reminds me of a Dave Van Ronk song with him saying (not announcing, in the usual way) train stops while playing guitar---via that voice, that guitar.
And speaking of Andy The K, he told about a show which was him reading The Great Gatsby: he was gonna stop when the last person left, but one guy stayed, so Andy had to read the whole thing (aloud).
I think I would have stopped with the vocals, and just stood there, reading silently, maybe with lips moving, or just "reading" and turning pages---but still trapped! That's art.

I could also hear her just doing a straight read, with no adds, like Dave and Andy: that could totally work too.

I was fortunate enough to see her live in 1990, on the "Strange Angels" tour. She is one of the most remarkable performers I have ever seen.

I guess I'm swimming upstream in loving "Strange Angels." Her voice was at its best on that album, imho.

"Landfall," with Kronos Quartet, was interesting.

Babydoll!

Songs From the Bardo is amazing. Hypnotic and beautiful and scary.

Thanks for mentioning! https://songsfromthebardo.bandcamp.com/album/songs-from-the-bardo

yes ty, I had no idea that existed

as she gets older, her words and messages are getting warmer and more...comforting...but also her sense of humor is somehow getting both sharper and more subtly deployed. with everything. in interviews, in lectures.

― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Thursday, March 4, 2021 11:08 AM (two years ago)

yes this exactly

Did anyone go see her at the Barbican last night? I didn't manage to get tickets in time but man, what a setlist.

01. From The Air
02. Another Day In America
03. This Is The Language Of Positive Change
04. Let X=X / It Tango
05. Scream for Yoko Ono
06. O Superman
07. The Biggest Story
08. Get On The Good Foot
09. Gravity's Angel
10. We Don't Know Where We Come From
11. The Future Is... Digital

12. Walk the Dog
13. Advice for suicidal students:
14. Born Never Asked
15. Junior Dad
16. Flow
17. The Lake
18. It's not the bullet that kills you - it's the hole
19. Only an Expert
20. From The Air

Encore:
21. Thai chi dance

wow

18. It's not the bullet that kills you - it's the hole

Holy shit

*holey ;)

It went up on D1m3 today, the Barbican is a difficult capture for any taper, it's so roomy and the PA is a maybe little underpowered, but it's very listenable and omg at the version of Junior Dad!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/co4egdy2grc3z6vkvk5hg/h?dl=0&rlkey=4vl4d7sk205wg3n3iru9yonyp

_18. It's not the bullet that kills you - it's the hole_

Holy shit

yeah that thing is hard to find.

she's coming to SF again this spring, doing the Let X = X show, which I gather is a bit retrospective, and that song features.

https://x.com/clavendr/status/1736786186813771811?s=46&t=u2ZSlsY3trRV36IPP6jNDQ

O Superman is getting trending use on TikTok and IG but many young-ins don’t know that it’s Laurie Anderson

The New York–based artist and musician Laurie Anderson said she would not take up a visiting professor position at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany, amid scrutiny over her views on Palestine.

Earlier this month, the school announced that Anderson, who has produced such works as the hit 1981 song “O Superman,” had been appointed its Pina Bausch Professor, a position named after a famed dancer. But since that announcement, the school appears to have reneged on its decision, citing the fact that Anderson signed a 2021 open letter that urges support for Palestine.
“To frame this as a war between two equal sides is false and misleading,” the letter reads. “Israel is the colonizing power. Palestine is colonized. This is not a conflict: this is apartheid.”

Moreover, the letter continues, “We have seen how governments in Europe and beyond recently have instated policies of open censorship, and fostered a culture of self-censorship, towards Palestinian solidarity. Conflating legitimate criticism of the State of Israel and its policies towards Palestinians with antisemitism is cynical. Racism, including antisemitism, and all forms of hate, are heinous and not welcome in the Palestinian struggle. It is time to stand up to these tactics of silencing and overcome them.”

She was one of thousands to sign the letter, whose signatories also included artists such as Nan Goldin, Kara Walker, Simone Leigh, and many more.

On Friday, the Folkwang University of the Arts issued a press release saying that Anderson would no longer be taking up the position at the school on April 1. Specifically, the release claimed that the letter “takes up boycott demands from the anti-Israel BDS movement,” even though neither the movement itself nor a boycott of Israel are ever mentioned in the text. (In Germany, BDS has been particularly controversial, with some political figures attempting to render it illegal.)

“For me the question isn’t whether my political opinions have shifted,” Anderson said in a statement. “The real question is this: Why is this question being asked in the first place? Based on this situation I withdraw from the project. My colleagues at the University and the Pina Bausch Foundation have discussed this with me at great length and we have jointly decided this is the best way forward.”

In its release, the university said the decision came amid “the context of the current discourse about freedom of art and freedom of expression.”

It was the latest such development in a country whose art scene has been roiled by the October 7 Hamas attack, with many artists who voice pro-Palestine views facing the prospect of canceled exhibitions and withdrawn opportunities.

Earlier this month, Berlin attempted to implement a funding clause reliant upon a definition of antisemitism that many said would be used to keep pro-Palestine artists from receiving money. After mass protests, the funding clause was ultimately repealed.