"Here We Go", She Said (and She Meant It Literally)

"From a program recorded on September 14, 1981, Charles Amirkhanian gets a demonstration of the Eventide Clockworks Harmonizer from Laurie Anderson. The Harmonizer is the piece of equipment that Anderson has used, with such great effect, to lower the pitch of her voice in real time, during her concerts", says the description of Ode To Gravity's September 14, 1981 issue at archive.org.

Before that, the program also features Fenway Bergamot's first ever public appearance at the Nova Convention in 1978 (at that time he was just "a pompous blowhard" (quote from L. A.)). The recording, titled 'Song from America on the Move', a two-part performance piece by Laurie Anderson and Julia Heyward, can be found on the LP 'The Dial-A-Poem Poets: The Nova Convention'; Laurie's part was later titled as 'The Language of the Future' (in 'United States Live I-IV.').

• 00:45 - 07:02 The Language of the Future 

• 07:03 - 09:23 interview

Big Science v0.1

"'Big Science' started out as an orchestra work called 'It's Cold Outside' which the American Composers Orchestra played, and this was something that I consider something of a failure. I don't really know how to make an orchestra sound and [...] I found that my ideal instrumentation is a few electronic instruments mixed with real ones which are sometimes processed, sometimes not. My favourite combination is violin and saxophone and then other things added to that.

[...]

One of the things about writing works for an orchestra is first of all [that] it's hard for an orchestra to spend much rehearsal time on new work and also you hear it a day before it's actually performed for the first time. So it kind-of is a huge shock and you realize "oh, I should have had the French horns do that" and it's really too late then.

[...]

['It's Cold Outside'] was a work for tape and orchestra. I couldn't quite leave audio tape out of it."

(Laurie Anderson, 1984)