that sounds interesting & worth checking out & all, Moshe, but
let me get this straight...
somebody like carly simon participates (or is invited to participate), but not Laurie Anderson (who has been on NPR more times than
any of these other performers)?
excuse me, I can't help myself -- people probably aren't gonna like this post...(by the way, I wrote this out the other night, but decided not to post it)
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at least Lou Reed knows she's the shit
Stories From the Nerve Bible
The Speed of Darkness & Other
Stories
Moby Dick: Songs &
Stories
The Ugly One with the Jewels & Other
Stories
Stories stories stories...
stories about "this American life"
Laurie Anderson premiered United States, an 8-hour, 78-song, performance piece about "American life" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music way back in 1982.
Laurie Anderson began composing United States in 1979, nearly four years before its debut performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. An eight hour production in four parts - Transportation, Politics, Money, and Love - the work is modeled after the structure of a classical opera. The portrait of a technological society and its people, Anderson’s “talking opera” portrays a subject which is constantly changing or on the move. Featured in the work are the themes of driving and flying cross-country. Lush with geographical references and imagery, Anderson’s song and stories were complimented by a complex, multimedia stage production (a form of presentation she pioneered) consisting of thousands of slides and film clips. Projected over and behind the performers were, among other things, images of maps, wild animals, astronauts, and electrical equipment. Anderson even devised a makeshift hologram, created by rapidly waving a violin bow in the light cast by a slide projector. Pairing violin and voice with electronic synthesizers and drum beats, the sound of the opera matches Anderson’s handling of images and subject matter. Dreams, Bible stories and images of nature are complimented by radio dials, airports, and outer space. In a striking image, performers held violins in front of their faces producing large, alien-like shadows on a translucent screen. Playful and sharp-witted, Anderson’s United States combines familiar objects, images, and situations to produce an uncanny, evocative performance.
An example of the way in which Anderson transforms an everyday occurrence into something strange can be found with the song “Language is a Virus.” Dedicated to the Beat writer William Burroughs who coined the phrase “language is a virus from outer space,” Anderson’s song scrutinizes everyday examples of language-use from pain cries to performances to overdubbed Japanese films. Remarking in an interview that “it’s a strange thing for an author to say that language is a disease communicable by the mouth,” Anderson’s song relates a similar terror of communication. The song concludes with Anderson describing a group of traveling salesmen who promise her a world connected by a vast network of technology, resembling something like a string of Christmas lights. Wary of the “Neurological Bonding” the salesmen celebrate, Anderson pleads with them, singing “Count me out. You gotta count me out.” While “Language is a Virus” and other songs and stories from United States bemoan the ever-increasing dependence of Americans on technology, each song is marked by Anderson’s sense of irony and humor.
In the end, United States is the story of a society navigating the waves of digital innovation to a distant utopia on the horizon. Seeing technology as a tool which can amplify or enlarge, Anderson’s opera utilizes such technologies to reach out to her audience.
numerous pages abound about Laurie's storytelling prowess
http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...aurie+anderson
She was even recently commisioned by The Chicago Adler (the nation's first) Planetarium to be the narrator of the story of the Universe & Time itself. I went. It was beyond amazing.