A new album!

[example22]

It's not often you get a new Laurie Anderson album, so a brief yippee! for "Laurie Anderson Live At Town Hall, New York City, September 19-20, 2001"

The time and place are significant, especially since one of the tracks is "O Superman", which dates back to 1980 but suddenly means something entirely different. ("Hello? Are you there? Are you coming home? [...] Here come the planes.They're American planes. Made in America.")

Eeek.

Comments

We saw Laurie Anderson on the South Bank

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

Performing that show. It was incredible. She got us to draw pictures, and talked, and told us lots of stories, and performed all those songs you knew so well. It was entirely not what I expected -- we'd be thinking we'd be seeing something new, strange, performative, and instead it was a sort of greatest hits show, but so brilliant ... when she sang O Superman the entire hall held their breath, I'd never heard anything like it, and she sang Here come the planes and her voice just cracked, a little bit ... (I also had a migraine, and was hallucinating so badly I could hardly breathe...)

It must be stange, to suddenly find something in your back catalogue changed like that.

Incidentally, did you ever read this Sept 11 strip, by Story Minute genius Carol Lay?

Re: We saw Laurie Anderson on the South Bank

[fuchsiaribbons.livejournal.com]

Yep - it did feel like a greatest hits show. She seemed sincere. But...I don't know if it was the size of the venue, there was no intimacy. The paper thing just felt a joke.

Sorry.

(This didn't stop me downloading still more of her stuff!).

no intimacy

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, I suppose she must do intimate shows, sometimes. I've never seen her anywhere but in ruddy great barns, though. Somewhere up near the ceiling, I was a long way off. I couldn't have got my drawing to her, not even by making it into the best paper aeroplane in the world and throwing it at the stage. But then I kind of get nervous at intimate concerts, where the people performing can see your eyes. It makes me worry that however good a time I'm having it won't be good enough to convince them that what they're doing is fantastic, and then I get distracted and it gets harder to hear the music. Suppose I'm just a crowd type.