SOUNDTRACK: LAURIE ANDERSON-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #212 (May 20, 2021).
Anyone who likes original or avant garde music knows Laurie Anderson. Even forty years later, her music is unlike most other music out there. Her music still sounds futuristic.
Which doesn’t mean it’s always enjoyable. But some of it is quite good and it’s all pretty fascinating. It’s also fascinating that you know instantly that it’s Laurie Anderson. Her voice hasn’t changed in years–true she doesn’t sing, but it’s still the same.
She begins this set, which feels incredibly minimal with her keyboardist (and so much more–she played on and produced Big Science with Laurie Anderson in 1982) Roma Baron playing a simple clicking beat track. She speaks (with her voice processed):
I met this guy and he looked like he might have been a hat check clerk at an ice ring. Which in fact he turned out to be. And I said oh boy, right again.
And Rubin Kodheli on the cello is playing gentle strings, including high notes sliding down the fretboard.
Is the song a story? Does it have a narrative? Or is it just stream of consciousness? I’m not sure.
Laurie Anderson is a revolutionary artist who has mixed storytelling, music and technology for the past four decades plus. This Tiny Desk (home) concert celebrates the truly breathtaking breakthrough album she put out in 1982, Big Science. On that record, she used a few different voice processors; one of them was a Vocoder. By singing into a microphone attached to a keyboard, you can hear how it effectively adds harmony to her voice on “Let x=x.”
Laurie Anderson’s music seems so serious, so it’s delightful to hear her be so loose and chatty (and funny) between songs.
She introduces Rubin Kodheli, her favorite musician, with whom she plays all the time. They create what’s listed here as “Violin Cello Improv.” It’s about a minute of vaguely dissonant string music.
Then comes the big song, the one that people know Laurie Anderson for. If it wasn’t a hit, it was certainly popular.
Laurie Anderson also used that [Vocoder] effect, creating what I think of as ‘the voice of authority’ in her storytelling, on “O Superman,” a song unlike anything music I’d heard when it came out in 1981. She made use of a vocal loop, something ever-present these days in sampling, but here she uses an Eventide Harmonizer, looping the single syllable “ha” as the rhythm of the song. It’s a song about dealing with the technological revolution, about compassion; if it’s your first time hearing it, take it in and see what strikes you.
The song has always felt very mechanical to me (it must be the looping and the synthesized voice), but it’s really interesting to hear how it changes live. Not drastically, but it feels like a living breathing song, which is pretty neat. As is Bob Boilen’s story:
On a personal note, I was a lover of Laurie’s music back in those days; they were also the days I played synthesizer in my band Tiny Desk Unit. We opened for Laurie Anderson in 1981, and Laurie joined us onstage for a song. I bring this up because the Tiny Desk name (created by our guitarist Michael Barron) was familiar to Laurie long before this NPR series existed. At the end of her home concert, Laurie, I assume, mistakenly, thanks Tiny Desk Unit for having her. It made me smile and sparked so many memories. Thank you, Laurie.
Laurie Anderson is 74 and she seems as vibrant as ever.
[READ: June 10, 2021] Gravity’s Pull
I really enjoyed everything about Book 1 of this series and I was delighted to see that Volumes 2 and 3 were already out.
Volume 2 follows the same characters and is laid out in the same way (with each section following one of the characters but having the timeline stay linear. MariNaomi also seems to be having even more fun with her drawings,
The first part is about Nigel Q. Jones (just like in the last book). He’s in class when his teacher announces that the girl who was missing in book one (Claudia Jones–no relation) has suddenly returned and is coming back to school. The teacher asks that everyone just give her space.
We realize it has been four months since the last book so Claudia has been gone along time.
Meanwhile Nigel still thinks about Emily (who has a cool new haircut–when a friend said she finally has good hair, the insult is not unnoticed) but realizes it’s time for him to move on. As he’s thinking this Claudia Jones walks into the building and Nigel falls instantly in love with her. How does she suddenly look so beautiful? Almost otherworldly. Here’s where MariNaomi has fun with the illustrations, making Nigel’s dreadlocks look like a kind of glove the way she draws his head. (more…)
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[READ: May 2022] Inked
