Thanks to typing is not activism… I’m now OK with the fact that ’Pong and I missed Laurie Anderson when she was in Sydney last month.
They posted this video of her singing Only an Expert / Maybe if I Fall and I reckon it’s crap. The minimalist backing tune is just the same sort of thing she’s been doing forever, and she mumbles through the words without that accurate staccato that used to mark her work. Is age causing her mouth to be less accurate? Or does she just not care any more?
What I do find interesting is that she walks out onto the stage as an Artist (with a capital “A”). Because she’s an Artist, she gets polite applause and respect for something which is really just a smarty-pants poem — but delivered in such a pretentious way that she’d be howled off stage at a real poetry open mic night.
So, I’m happy that I missed her.
I reckon you can learn everything you need to know about Laurie Anderson by listening to her seminal work O Superman and her one hit song, Language is a Virus.
The latter has one of the best opening lyrics of any song: “Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much, much better.”
