gtaylor@lasspvax.UUCP (Greg Taylor) (08/13/84)
Recently, there's been a bit of discussion of the music/performances of Laurie Anderson. I've picked up a copy of her "script/score" for the performance extravaganza United States I-IV, published by Harper&Row. You can pick it up in hard or trade paper, at 20 or 30 pazoozas. Lotsa pictures, Lotsa colour. My general views on the format of the book are that it is a lavish production job hung up on the problem of how one represents a performance. Certainly, it you've seen the performance, you're much more than likely to recognize the recurring visual motifs, and the book designer has tried hard to give the flow of the book a sense of that. It fails, and winds up often as a set of icons on a page, framing these little snatches of text. As for the snatches of text, I was surprised as to how little there really is to the performance itself. When I saw it, I took extensive shorthand notes during the performance. Comparing those general impressions to my score in the book, there's been a bit of rearranging done, but what I saw and what's in this book are pretty much congruent. I'm surprised at how very much of the texts themselves have shown up in earlier pieces and in earlier forms (there's a bibliography listed at the back of the book, and a discography as well). Obviously, there's a good deal more than words at work here. As anecdotes, they lack something of the persona Anderson uses....sorta like reading a Wagner libretto without the chainmail on.... I'd say that the book is an excellent companion to a recording of the piece, which Warners was rumoured to be releasin a la Einstein on the Beach. The devotee will probably like this, but stick to her music for the first timer (preferably Big Science, since the balance of the pieces are "from" USI-IV, rahter than the more obvious songs on Mister Heartbreak (it turns out that "langue D'Amour" from MH *is* from USI-IV, but the version I saw did it in french....now that I can see the visual stuff, that's clear.) ________________________________________________________________________________ If you ask me, I may tell you gtaylor@cornell it's been this way for years Gregory Taylor I play my red guitar.... Theorynet (Theoryknot) ________________________________________________________________________________