One night in the early eighties I was lying in bed listening to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's late night show "Brave New Waves." The announcer came on, and I can remember as if it were yesterday what she said: "Laurie Anderson played in town tonight." That was it, nothing else, because from then until her sign off at 4:00 a.m. she played United States the recording of Laurie Anderson's stage show.
In an era when New York City was spitting out experimental musicians and artists, Laurie Anderson was not just another face in the crowd. Of all those claiming to be "performance artists, she was one of the few with a completely realized vision. Deceptively simple; one woman, a keyboard, a violin, and a microphone; her performances were part concert, part storytelling, and part visual presentation that utilized the most modern technology available to examine society's reactions to technology's quick development and sudden availability to the general public.
Remember in the early 1980's we were just starting to enter the era of the personal computers – does anybody else remember buttons saying I Love My Commodore 64? Or tape drives for your computer, or having to lay your telephone's handset into a cradle like what came with your phone to connect to the Internet?
By some fluke of nature Big Science, an album made up of excerpts from her stage show, placed her squarely in the public eye. The song "O Superman (for Massenet)" climbed to the top of the charts in Britain and performed almost as well in North America. Listening to the promotional copy provided by Nonesuch records in advance of their re issuing the album on July 17th, I'm as puzzled now as I was then at the widespread popularity it enjoyed.
There's absolutely nothing about it that says "popular" no matter what era of music we're talking about. Brilliantly crafted compositions using tape loops, found sounds, voice, live music and vocal overdubs run through processors and voice machines that openly question the values of society and mock some of the most popular icons of mass consumerism don't normally equate to hit music.
But there is something about Laurie Anderson's voice that sounds so very comforting. At times she may be very acerbic and scathing, and at other times barely even human, what with some of the effects she uses on her voice. But then you hear her untreated voice and you feel that she could understand anything you'd have to tell her.
It's not like she promises she has answers to questions or anything silly like that, but you know that she will actually listen to what you tell her. Nobody can tell stories with such humanity and sincerity, and yes, humour, the way she does without being an amazing listener.
That's of course what makes her art so successful, that ability to listen and observe and report back to us clearly on all that she has seen. Viggo Mortensen described his photography and writings as a means of keeping a record of everything he saw. Laurie Anderson goes a step beyond merely preserving what she has seen, and actively communicates it to us.
Whether we listen to her singing on a CD, watch her in a video, or see her live stage show it's her direct involvement that makes the piece. I can't honestly imagine anyone ever "covering" one of her pieces from Big Science any more than I can imagine anyone but Vincent Van Gogh painting his infamous "Self Portrait".
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