Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site flairvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!harpo!decvax!decwrl!flairvax!kissell From: kissell@flairvax.UUCP (Kevin D. Kissell) Newsgroups: net.music Subject: Laurie Anderson's Latest: a second opinion Message-ID: <399@flairvax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 12-Mar-84 19:19:34 EST Article-I.D.: flairvax.399 Posted: Mon Mar 12 19:19:34 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 16-Mar-84 02:06:51 EST Organization: Fairchild AI Lab, Palo Alto, CA Lines: 37 When I was first exposed to Laurie Anderson a couple of years ago, I was at at once pleased and saddened. I quite enjoyed her vision and humor, and found her use of vocoder and vocal loops tasteful and clever, but at the same time I had a sense that she had come too far, too fast commercially, a NYC avant garde dabbler suddenly caught up in the Entertainment Industry. I thought "Big Science" was wonderful, but figured that she would be too heavily indulged by those around her to do anything else of consequence. I'm sorry to say that I seem to have been correct. "Mister Heartbreak" embodies all of the worst and precious little of the best that LA was/is capable of doing. The compositions are minimalist fluff, one of the worst of them, surprisingly, co-written by Peter Gabriel. Adrian Belew, Bill Laswell, David van Tiegham (?), and Phoebe Snow (!) all contribute, but have to move on tiptoe to keep from upstaging LA. Sometimes her deliberately indisciplined keyboard work generates an interesting phrase, and "Gravity's Angel" isn't too bad, but for the most part, the music is wallpaper. That would be OK, if there were something going on within the wallpapered room, as there was on "Big Science". Alas, the lyrics are, for the most part, empty and despirited exercises in pretention. Example: "Ooee, Sharkey, he's Mister Heartbreak Ooee, Sharkey, he's a slow dance by the side of the lake." Reminds me of Laura Nyro on airplane glue. She sums it up all to well in another line: "Ha ha ha, you've already paid for this" I don't like to malign artists of any sort, particularly not ones that have brought me enjoyment in the past, but I'm afraid that, were I to leave Mark Colan's review unanswered, some of you might go out and buy one of the most disappointing records of 1984 (so far). Kevin D. Kissell Fairchild Research Center Advanced Processor Development uucp: {ihnp4 decvax}!decwrl!\ >flairvax!kissell {ucbvax sdcrdcf}!hplabs!/