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.
― kurt schwitterz, Wednesday, 9 May 2018 21:17 (six years ago) link
"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)
― dow, Wednesday, 9 May 2018 23:47 (six years ago) link
i saw a plane todayflying lowover the island--but my mindwas somewhereelse
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 14 May 2018 07:24 (six years ago) link
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
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
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
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
Love you
― flappy bird, Monday, 14 May 2018 17:52 (six years ago) link
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 DogHow they built ithttp://kronosquartet.org/projects/detail/landfall
― dow, Tuesday, 12 June 2018 23:13 (five years ago) link
Building another story, sure as Heart of a Dog.
― dow, Tuesday, 12 June 2018 23:15 (five years ago) link
Still haven’t got through landfall as it’s so ducking long
― Slippage (Ross), Tuesday, 12 June 2018 23:36 (five years ago) link
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
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 13 June 2018 04:44 (five years ago) link
Any SF residents get to see the Lou Reed drones concert in Nov? A recording has just surfaced, 4 hours!
― MaresNest, Saturday, 12 January 2019 19:42 (five years ago) link
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
― Karl Malone, Tuesday, 19 February 2019 03:35 (five years ago) link
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
― Karl Malone, Tuesday, 19 February 2019 03:38 (five years ago) link
that sounds amazing! every time I've seen her perform over the years it's been magical.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Tuesday, 19 February 2019 04:02 (five years ago) link
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
― The depressed somebody from the popular David Bowie song, (bernard snowy), Friday, 17 May 2019 14:33 (five years ago) link
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
― flappy bird, Sunday, 26 May 2019 05:08 (five years ago) link
at the beginning of the moviethey know they have to find each other--but they ride offin opposite directions!
― difficult listening hour, Saturday, 4 January 2020 08:53 (four years ago) link
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”
― Hideous Lump, Monday, 1 June 2020 01:33 (four years ago) link
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.
― dow, Monday, 1 June 2020 03:55 (four years ago) link
joan wasser's version of "blue lagoon" is beautiful. not really breaking new ground but just amazing.
― walking towards the sun since 2007 (alex in mainhattan), Wednesday, 3 June 2020 14:59 (four years ago) link
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.
― Maresn3st, Wednesday, 3 June 2020 15:08 (four years ago) link
she's doing a "sound meditation" on Sunday via Zoom: https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/course/a-solstice-eve-sound-meditation-with-laurie-anderson/
― lukas, Thursday, 17 December 2020 21:33 (three years ago) link
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: 1934-19374. Fritz Kreisler, Humoresque, Op. 101 No. 75. Laurie Anderson, Flow Homeland6. Allen Ginsberg, Father Death Blues, The Last Word on First Blues7. Christmas music, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2tx5NHDcHA, 8 hours of vintage department store Christmas music- customusic tapes8. Negativland, We Can Really Feel Like We’re Here, The World Will Decide9. Negativland, Why Are We Waiting, The World Will Decide10. Laurie Anderson, Birds, Expo Japan 200511. Lou Reed, I’m Set Free, Brian Eno cover “Fickle Sun (III) I’m Set Free12.Laurie Anderson, Dark Bells, Heart of a Dog13. Philip Glass/Rumi, Don’t Go Back to Sleep, Monsters of Grace14. Astor Piazzola, Tanguedia III, Tango: Zero Hour
― lukas, Tuesday, 22 December 2020 19:03 (three years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zUEroBzyv8only up until 5pm EST on March 4th
― so tonight that I might ramona quimby (f. hazel), Thursday, 4 March 2021 06:19 (three years ago) link
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
― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Thursday, 4 March 2021 16:20 (three years ago) link
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
― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Thursday, 4 March 2021 16:21 (three years ago) link
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.
― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Thursday, 4 March 2021 16:54 (three years ago) link
This lecture was a treat, thanks.
― Noel Emits, Thursday, 4 March 2021 18:01 (three years ago) link
One time I think Laurie Anderson came into a shop I was working in and I spoke to her briefly. I'm pretty sure.
― Noel Emits, Thursday, 4 March 2021 18:03 (three years ago) link
did she ask what flower, expresses, days go by ... pulling you into the future ... and they just keep going by, endlessly, pulling ...
― assert (MatthewK), Thursday, 4 March 2021 18:09 (three years ago) link
She said... do you stock... Apple... Macintosh? I said... no.
― Noel Emits, Thursday, 4 March 2021 18:38 (three years ago) link
these are good videos thank you both
― adam, Thursday, 4 March 2021 18:53 (three years ago) link
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.
― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Thursday, 4 March 2021 18:59 (three years ago) link
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
― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Thursday, 4 March 2021 19:00 (three years ago) link
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
― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Thursday, 4 March 2021 19:08 (three years ago) link
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
― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Thursday, 4 March 2021 19:12 (three years ago) link
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 ;-)
― Noel Emits, Thursday, 4 March 2021 19:19 (three years ago) link
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
― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Thursday, 4 March 2021 19:24 (three years ago) link
<3
― difficult listening hour, Thursday, 4 March 2021 20:05 (three years ago) link
is the national debt long, or is it wide?
― so tonight that I might ramona quimby (f. hazel), Thursday, 4 March 2021 20:08 (three years ago) link
repeatedly mentions “just a lot of questions” in this. at least as central to her technique as aquatic disaster
― difficult listening hour, Thursday, 4 March 2021 20:11 (three years ago) link
she is a master of the arresting question
― so tonight that I might ramona quimby (f. hazel), Thursday, 4 March 2021 20:22 (three years ago) link
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
― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Thursday, 4 March 2021 20:29 (three years ago) link
nothing to add here but this is making me all warm and fuzzy
― I like signing up to dead sites (sleeve), Thursday, 4 March 2021 20:31 (three years ago) link
she calls common sense “really just a long list of questions” on homeland
anyway thanks v much f hazel, woulda missed this.
― difficult listening hour, Thursday, 4 March 2021 20:32 (three years ago) link
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
― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Thursday, 4 March 2021 20:59 (three years ago) link
also i'm going to straight up lift a few of her video/presentation/visual aides from that, because goddamn
― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Thursday, 4 March 2021 21:00 (three years ago) link
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
― dow, Thursday, 4 March 2021 21:06 (three years ago) link
I think the next one is 3/24.
― JoeStork, Thursday, 4 March 2021 21:37 (three years ago) link
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
― dow, Thursday, 4 March 2021 22:27 (three years ago) link
https://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/archives/party-in-the-bardo-conversations-with-laurie-anderson-archive.html
― tylerw, Thursday, 4 March 2021 22:33 (three years ago) link
no, the next Norton lecture. which apparently has a conversation / Q&A portion after the lecture, so I signed up for the second one.
― lukas, Thursday, 4 March 2021 22:35 (three years ago) link