S/D Laurie Anderson

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!

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.