Re: Laurie Anderson Tour

[donley@milton.u.washington.edu (Erik Olson)]

boris@monsoon.Berkeley.EDU (Boris Chen) writes:

>Does she do anything interesting in this latest tour? Big screens with
>spinning objects in the back? Her violin? Glowing mouth? Sharky?

I saw her lecture in Seattle.  Quite unlike any of her previous works.
It took place in the University Student Union ballroom (not very big),
had only one slide projector (and in fact, only ONE slide during the whole
show) which she asked someone in the audience to turn on.
She engineered all the sound
by herself on stage (which consisted of a seat, one keyboard, a couple of
mikes, a mixing board, and a tape deck), and spoke almost entirely from a
notebook full of script.  The "songs" were pretty much used as breaks between
the intense speaking (also unusual:  it was nearly all in her normal voice,
in somewhat rushed tone).  Other "breaks" included a story read by Ken Nordine
(on tape), the showing of her "clone" videos, and the song "How Much is that
Doggie in the Window", also on tape.  The overriding theme seemed to be
techno-shadowing (At one point,
she asked rhetorically if all her hi-tech, flashy shows
lost the messages she was conveying.)
The show I saw was right after the gulf war, which weighed very heavily
in her talk.  She also mentioned Helms, 2-Live-Crew, etc.

>BTW, I am wondering if in the HotB video, that old guy in it, who seems
>to be sharky, is Bouroughs (sp?), the author in which she got the
>quote "Language is a virus from outer space" from.

William S. Burroughs, and yep, he's the "Language is a virus" guy.

>Speaking about her concerts, I saw her Strange Angles concert, and
>thought it was incredibly good. Unfortunatly I got there late and got
>usher up to the standing room area, until a break, where I was then
>seated. I think she sang a song about a cowboy; I don't have it on
>any of my albums, is it on the America Live CD set?

She did this as one of the "songs" from the talk.  I haven't seen it on
ANY album.  Didn't strike me as full song material, compared to the
stuff on _Strange Angels_.  More like one of the incidental bits you
might find on US Live.
-- 
Erik D. Olson					 donley@milton.u.washington.edu