Performance artist and singer/songwriter Laurie Anderson has participated recently in two eclectic projects that have attracted media attention.
Anderson's current tour is a multimedia production, "Songs and Stories From Moby Dick," in which
she plays the whale, among other roles, and projects visuals on three-dimensional objects. She also produced an undulating treatment of the Jimi Hendrix song "1983 (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)" (RealAudio excerpt) for the recent various-artists LP Searching for Jimi Hendrix.
Laurie Anderson was born 52 years ago today in Chicago. She studied violin as a teenager and moved to New York in 1967. After earning degrees in art history and sculpture from Barnard College and Columbia University respectively, she taught at City College.
In 1973 Anderson began performing in public and soon took her performance-art shows to Europe. Early on, she collaborated with writer William Burroughs and Fluxus-inspired avant-garde artists. In 1981 her 11-minute recording of "O Superman" became a #2 UK hit and led to a contract with Warner Bros. Records.
Anderson issued Big Science in 1982 and Mister Heartbreak, a collaboration with Peter Gabriel, two years later. Her vocals were electronically treated to fit the moods she chose to create. The project with Gabriel became her best-selling LP, peaking at #60. In 1987 Anderson started working with director Jonathan Demme. She scored his film of Spalding Gray's "Swimming to Cambodia" that year and did the same for Gray's 1991 "Monster in a Box."
In 1989 Anderson began using her own singing voice, sans electronics, on Strange Angels. After almost dying while mountain climbing in Tibet, she focused on the near-death experience on Bright Red (1994), recorded with Brian Eno. The LP featured her boyfriend, Lou Reed, who often plays guitar on Anderson's songs.
The Ugly One With the Jewels (1995) featured "Stories from the Nerve Bible," one of the pieces behind which Anderson toured and also the title of one of her books. Another piece, "United States," was released on four CDs as United States Live in 1984.
Anderson also recently invented an electronic instrument, the talking stick, which is harpoon-shaped and manipulates sound on a computer according to the performer's motion with the device.
She said of her Moby Dick project: "It meant I had to rewrite a classic, somewhat. It's been pretty daunting. I just hope [author Herman Melville's] not rolling over in his grave."
Craig Werner, a University of Wisconsin professor who studies literature and music, said of Anderson's "Moby Dick" work: "I think that's what she's best at: stepping outside the framework of the material she's dealing with and looking in on it with irony, humor and anger."
Anderson is planning to take the show to various U.S. cities through October, and to Europe in November. She also will record a companion album she describes as a separate examination of the novel, rather than a traditional recording by the show's cast.
Other birthdays: Freddie Stone (Sly & the Family Stone), 53; Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden), 45; Richard Butler (Psychedelic Furs, Love Spit Love), 43; Kenny G, 43; Mark Wahlberg, 28; P-Nut (311), 25; and Tom Evans (Badfinger), 1947-1983.
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