Quite a Performance

RAISED IN THE midwest and trained as a classical violinist, Laurie Anderson one day decided that she didn't want to practice anymore. Instead she decided to cut her own hair.

It must have worked, because now she's appearing in American Express ads. Or perhaps these ads aren't just evidence of her popular success, but another means of expression. The unique nature of her work makes it irreducible to any single medium. Anderson herself comes as close to describing it as anyone: "Laurie Anderson has been baffling audiences for years with her special blend of music, slides, films, tapes, films (did I say films?), hand gestures, and more."

Anderson is a human entertainment conglomerate, manipulating every medium known to man in the cause of her art--and presumably her pocket-book. She has become well-known among college students in the past few years primarily for her records. Best known are her two Warner Brothers releases. Big Science (1982) and Mister Heartbreak (1984), as well as her five-record chronicle of the performance-art piece United States Parts I-IV.

Perhaps her most interesting effort was a two record collaboration with poet John Giorno and author William S. Burroughs entitled You're the Guy I Want to Share My Money With. This album is unique in that it divides four sides of vinyl evenly among the three artists by including three parallel tracks, one apiece, on the fourth side, leaving the choice of artist to the whim of the phonograph stylus.

Yet the records encompass only half of Anderson's talents, because they can only document the sounds of her work.

ANDERSON'S SHOW at the Orpheum Theatre on February 28th proved that her performances are the best, if not the only, way to capture the essential elements of her work. She is very much a child of the television age: satirizing game shows, advertising slogans and MTV.

This performance differed from her 1984 Mister Heartbreak tour in that Anderson had musical support from only a single synthesizer and two male backup singers. Her barrage of instruments included a particularly bizarre vocoder (a synthesizer that alters the sound of human voice), an amplified microphone stand on which she tapped out the beat for "Closed Circuit," and her own technological innovation, the magnetic tape-bow violin.

Anderson, clad in a white suit and red shoes, played master of the electronic gadgetry, presenting sights of the show including a wide variety of films, slides, animated cartoons and computer graphics. She is almost a parody of the spoiled little electronics genius exposing her private fantasies to the world.

What saves Anderson from Electronic Age pretentiousness is her cooly ambivalent humor. She's aware of the moral, political, and intellectual paradoxes of the "Big Science" that can provide all this amazing circuitry. She projects radar dishes, poses tough questions--"Should the unborn have civil rights?"--and takes a science lesson to absurd lengths by wondering what would happen if sperm were the size of sperm whales and decided to impregnate Japan.

Performance pieces included selections from her earlier works such as "Let XX," "Gravity's Angel," "Sweaters," and her famous single "O Superman," as well as selections from her forthcoming film Home of the Brave. She managed to captivate the audience for the entire hundred-odd minutes for which she performed.

Though Anderson's newer works seemed more musically oriented and less thematic than some of her earlier pieces, the entire show was beyond criticism in any relevant sense. What if sperm whales impregnated Japan?