janzen@cougar.DEC (Tom J. LMO2-1/E5 279-5421) (03/10/86)
On Friday , 28 FEB 86, at 8PM I saw Laurie Anderson perform for 2 hours with
intermission at the Orpheum in
Boston down a short alley from the Boston Common. I waited in the alley with
the crowd on the first show, and slowly got in. I had a seat a mile
away in the orchestra. She did 3 new songs, but mostly old stuff.
The opening: she sat by herself on the edge of the stage and did a little
number with a keyboard in her lap, (with 2 chords) about a man and a woman
speaking, I think at a table in a cafe, with European accents.
In it, the man says "You can really be a bitch." Everyone laughed.
I certainly had never heard that from her before.
She danced around a little during some breaks in some songs.
In many numbers she had 2 males vocal backup, and another guy on keyboard
(hung around his neck) and maybe the same guy on electronic drums, making
a tiny group on stage. There was a huge screen for visuals.
She did Post Card ("thanks for showing me your Swiss army knife")
I'm in a burning building
The radar dance, where a movie of a radar antenna turning behind her as she
turns in the opposite direction on a raised podium.
She was wired for electronic drums, and had different drums fired by
pads at different joints on her body. She played a drum solo on herself,
then we saw a a live concert film of the same thing.
This was the first time I noticed her feet hitting effects pedals by
the keyboard center stage. The big echo was way over on the right and
she always had to reach way over for it.
There was also a broken mic cable or something
center stage, and technicians kept running out in the darkness to fix it.
Her arrangements were sort of gospel or funk or something. I don't know
anything about black pop music, or white pop music either, for that matter.
There was a film of one of her concerts in which there was a film of
people in silhuoette imitating the gratuitous violence and affection on
commercial television (inside a television front frame),
while a sax player played on stage, while she played on a
electronic violin combined with a tape-bow violin (so she didn't have
5 different violins on stage) a tape that said "Listen to my heartbeat"
I think the film was 16mm and had terribly distorted sound.
A song probably called Baby Doll, is either a take-off on a song about a
guy dominating a gal in a phone call, or a description of how
her brain tells her to do things that are more entertaining.
Her brain says to her "Hey, baby doll, take me to a movie"
and she says "I'm trying to work out this rhythm."
Her brain says "Hey, baby doll, let's go out to dinner."
A story about a flower shop scene in a movie. (Bunuel?))
The guy says, "I'm looking for a flower that says, the days go
by, day by day, relentlessly dragging us forward to the future."
The salesperson
tells the customer he's looking for lilies, with a projected
silhouette of Anderson holding a lily. There was lots of death
in this show.
A story about how people told her she had had multiple lives. (More death.)
First she was a cow, then a bird, then a hat (the bird's feathers were
made into a hat, that counts as a half-life) then hundreds and
hundreds of rabbis, then now, her first time as a woman
"That would explain a lot." She offered to dredge up
answers to rabbinical questions at the souveniour stand.
"Coo-Coo," an old song
He Said/She said, from United States, was set to music. It had been
merely spoken at BAM.
A story about how the Soviets like the idea of Park Strips,
where narrow blocks of park and trees conceal factories as people drive
through the parks.
A new song "Give me back my innocence, and a new cadillac"
about how all the possessions you ever own, and perhaps other
things you've had, "It all comes back to you in heaven," (more
death) with animations of a house with flamingos and cars and other
garage-sale junk. The line "Give me back my innocence was set like a
typical pop title line, with all the bells and whistles.
"Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much better."
projected on the screen, and sung. (more death)
There was a noisy, hard-to-hear, version of Gravity's Rainbow, at least I
think that's what it was.
A story about a motorcycle helmut, and driving her motorcycle around town.
She forgot to take out the packing material before wearing it for 3 weeks,
so she couldn't hear anything. She enjoyed driving around town in first gear,
staring at people, who couldn't see she was staring at them because of the
helmut.
A story about having once had a goldfish.
He would go into the magic castle just to see what was going on, then
hang around the plastic fern, but he finally died of boredom.
"I no longer love it," an old song, set more commercially with the guys.
Leanne Ungar was not engineering! Also, during the intermission,
the people behind talked about what great shape she was in for 37, jumping
around on stage so much, with the usual squareish jerky movements.
"Closed Circuit," which I imitated later at home, having seen how she hit the
mic stand with her finger with a reverb to get the rhythm track.
She sat on the floor by herself, the way she's always done it.
"O Superman," near the end. The instrumental parts were
stripped down to one line. The two singers helped near the end.
"O Superman" does not have clear fixed barlines. I saw her tilt her
head back and forth to the beats to signal to the backup when she was
coming up on a big division.
She read her stories from little 5 x 7 cards while pacing back and forth
on stage.
I wish she'd had more new material. They were selling Talk Normal and other
T-shirts in the lobby, but they didn't look like the ones she's worn,
so I passed.
Tom
Laurie also did a skit of a Spanish game show called, "What is more macho?"
and then a little song.
What is more macho? A pineapple or a knife? What is more macho? a
schoolbus, or something else?
Wasn't this a Saturday Night Live Sketch?
I think this was at the moment a guy in the audience near me cried out "Ripoff!"
Tom
DEC 150 Locke Marlboro MA