This was my second visit to the concrete monstrosity that is the Barbican centre. Tickets were excellent – front row, smack bang in the centre of the stage.
LA took the stage bang on time and proceeded with the act. She started with, quite appropriately, a violin-based soundscape. Being an equipment freak, I noticed that she was used a Line 6 DL4…a good choice.
Anyway, the evening progressed. This was not your normal LA show. This was her “unplugged” tour in so much as that she wasn’t relying on a backup band or a multimedia presentation. It was just her, a keyboard, a violin and mixer/FX.
She proceeded to tell stories based around the concept of happiness, while tinkling on a the keyboard to create a swash of background audio colour. Many of the stories I had heard before…mainly because I’ve listened to all her albums…but some of these stories were expanded or told slightly differently, so it was still an engaging 1 hour 45 minutes.
It’s not like reviewing a concert where you can say, “Oh they played this song or that song”…no songs were involved, it was all storytelling. So all I can say is that she started off with an apochryphal tale of a diver scooped up while diving in the sea by helicopters quenching a Californian forest fire, her time at a Amish farm, her time camping with a bunch of fruit loops, her time working in McDonalds, her time in hospital as a child, etc…etc…
Being in the front row, and directly in the eyeline of LA, it was quite disconcerting to have her staring down at us all evening. In fact, she played exclusively to the front row and even the missus remarked how there was lots of eye contact going on. I’ve never had this happen when seeing a performance before. At the end, after her third round applause, she stared right down at me and winked. All I could do was do the first thing that came to me and that was wink right back at her!
A wonderful evening…and Laurie Anderson will remain one of my favourite performers.
Category: Reviews
If you are a big fan of the LTIA album and aren’t afraid of some musical theory, then you certainly want to check out this interactive guide produced by Spaceward Graphics, with text and theory by KC musicologist Andrew Keeling.
It’s pretty hard to review something like this, because there aren’t that many musical guides of this nature around. Anyway, to cut to the chase, this electronic guide takes a look at the some of the cultural and musical references behind the LTIA album and dissects the two eponymous pieces.
The guide itself comprises of over 13,000 words of text to read, more than 80 musical diagrams for you to digest and a number of photographs of the band, some of which have not been published before. For those of you who have no interest in musical notation, then some of the reading will be pretty heavy going, even though there is a decent glossary to help you pick your way through the terminology. But if you persevere and approach the guide with an open mind, you will probably never listen to LTIA in the same way again.
This guide strips the album of its mystique and presents the raw musical components for you to play with. Fripp’s musical theories are explained, his influences pointed out and there are even electronic scores to follow, complete with computerised soundtrack so you can see exactly what note goes where.
It is pretty exhausting stuff and it reminded me of the work Eric Tamm had done before in this field. You can’t knock the hard work and effort that has gone into this package and I personally look forward to other releases. Unfortunately, most people, except the die-hard fans, will probably overlook this.
For more details and the chance to download the full version of Andrew Keeling’s analysis of “The Song of the Gulls” head over to http://www.larkstonguesinaspic.ukf.net/.
This album was originally released in 1969, and thanks to Castle Communications (and subsidiary Sanctuary Records) you can now buy a rejiggered version of the album on CD.
Featuring Mel Collins on sax and flute, it is a release that many KC fans should check out. OK – many of the tracks are cover versions, but you can hear why Mr Collins got the chance to be in the band. In fact, there are parts of the recording that sound eerily like KC around the time of ITWOP – the pastoral, gentle KC of Cadence and Cascade rather than Groon or Pictures of a City.
The album opens with a rollicking version of Norwegian Wood and this track sets the tone for the whole album, a sort of late-60s easy listening with plenty of woodwind and sax. The accompanying players acquit themselves quite well, and are suitably loose in their performance.
The sleevenotes are written by the band’s former drummer, but there’s not much in the way in album credits. There’s a big emphasis on Mel Collins (who wrote many of the non-cover material) but the rest of the players are only mentioned in passing.
I’ve seen copies of this being sold to gullible Americans for $20+, but don’t be fooled by the sellers quoting this release to be “rare”. It’s not. You can pick it up for £8.99 from Amazon UK and on import from Amazon US.
Check it out, it is a KC gem.