I have adored Laurie Anderson since I first watched the music video O Superman on MTV back when they showed music videos. My first actual music purchase was United States Live. I got it on cassette.
My world was changed for the better. I went back and got Big Science, Mister heartbreak and Home of the Brave. Since then I have also owned United States Live on CD and finally on vinyl. I have been trying to collect as many of them as possible on vinyl.
I also have the United States Live book and the Home of the Brave movie.
I feel that Laurie Anderson is the musical equivalent of Jess Franco. You have to listen to all of it to comprehend it as a whole.
I have had two other opportunities to see her live and financial stuff being what it was, it failed both times.
Now, she was playing her newest piece, Landfall, with the Kronos Quartet in Chicago. Chicago is close enough and the tickets were reasonable, so my lovely Martha said we could go.
I am really not a big city fan. Walking in them is fine, but driving through them is a nightmare. Luckily, Martha drove and that made it all the better.
We always get the time change wrong and leave too early so we went to the Chicago Cultural Center and saw some amazing art. We saw a record store and on the way back there was a comic book store, but we had to get to the performance.
It was amazing.
As they started to play I smiled, but then it came time for one of her spoken interludes that are sprinkled throughout the piece.
That voice I had listened to for decades was in the same room with me.
I smiled even more.
The rest of the performance went too quickly for me and it was over.
I am glad that I finally got to see Laurie Anderson in concert. The thing that made me the happiest was that the theater seats a little over 1500 people. My love of Laurie Anderson is pretty much a singular one in the cultural wasteland of Kalamazoo. To see that many people there to see this person that I have adored for thirty years brought me as much joy as the performance itself.
Sometimes it's a good thing to know that you're not alone in the big, wide world.
Such a good time.
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