More Talk Radio from Spain

Today's edition of Fluido rosa ( = "pink fluid"), Radio 3 Espagna's magazine about music and contemporary art features a different cut of the interview aired couple of days earlier on Radio 3, only this time with no Spanish overdubbing (and with additional parts not heard in the previous programme).

For starters Laurie performed two viola solos, then talked about 'Delusion' and about the making of 'Nothing in My Pockets', her audio diary created for French radio in 2003 (there's also an excerpt of it in the programme). Towards the end of the interview she also touched upon something that sounds, hm, quite electrifying to Mnemosyne's (and probably to some of this blog's readers') ears, namely:

"I think probably I'll put my archive on the web at some point. I'm just trying to figure out now how to do that - both the visual and the audio stuff."

(Laurie Anderson, June 2011)

Laurie's part is between 42:00 and 1:05:00 into the programme:

Studiogast bei radioeins

Yesterday Laurie Anderson was the guest of radio eins' studio in Potsdam / Berlin, Germany:

• German-English interview with Laurie Anderson, radio eins (audio length: 15 mins 23 secs)

"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

Bringing 'Delusion' to the Old Continent

Listen to and read a short interview with Laurie Anderson who prepares for her European tour with 'Delusion':

Current State of Mind of an Universalkünstlerin*

"Today I'm working on a short little poem that I've been thinking about, I have a drawing to finish, and I have a little projection work. This is the kind of hell my life is: doesn't one piece relate to the other one that much. I mean maybe that's great but sometimes it feels little disconnecting. On the other hand, that's just the way things are."


"Do I think art can change the world? I don't have any idea. Politicians can change politics - so can artists? I don't know. I'm a little bit pessimistic at the moment, to tell you the truth."


"[...] "The triumph of capitalism, here it is. Okay. One thing to do: get famous, get rich. That's the game. Good luck and see you later." - That's really harsh, and it's in every field in many ways. Artists are the same thing: we are encouraged to compete rather than to cooperate. And that's not a kind of world I dream of living in."


"I'm a journalist at heart. I like to try to see how things really work-- not make it up, not fantasize. That's a very hard thing to tell a story that is true. It's easy to find a good punchline. But everybody knows that most punchlines smell a little bad... they're clever, okay, but if you really try to tell a story: our lives are so messy. They don't have good punchlines, they don't have ways that they end very neatly. I think a lot of people, myself included, would like to find a way to see the world really clearly, not to somebody's punchline or somebody's story but really how do other people do it."

(Four examples of Laurie Anderson's current state of mind, mid April 2011)

Laurie Anderson @ Canal Street, April 2011

Photo by Christian Lehner

Austrian radio FM4 has recently aired Christian Lehner's interview with Laurie Anderson on the occasion of Laurie's upcoming live appearance at the Donaufestival in Krems-an-der-Donau, Austria: on the 5th of May 2011 she will perform 'Transitory Life', a retrospective collection of her past stories.

The conversation touched on subjects like New York City in the 1970s vs. 2010s, record charts, art and politics, the making process of the 'Homeland' album, the linguistics behind its title, the current state of mind of New York City, last year's concert for dogs in Sydney and the origins of 'O Superman' and 'Another Day in America'.

The Laurie Anderson Spezialstunde** was part of 'New York State of Mind', FM4's interview series "on individuals who set up the Big Apple a little crown". More info on the conversation with the Universalkünstlerin (basically the German translation of the interview) and some photos of the session can be found here.

You can listen to the whole programme in FM4's online archive until the 4th of May:

• New York State of Mind, Issue #3: Laurie Anderson (audio length: 54 mins 8 secs, file size: 49.5 MB)

(FYI: don't worry if you missed the programme in the online archive: stay tuned for a stripped-down-and-cut-and-edited version of the interview here.)




* universal artist
** special hour

Laurie Anderson at ICA (London), 1990

"[...] thrills for me are discovering something while I'm working or talking to someone or suddenly realizing "oh I could see that upside down for a second" or you just suddenly get a totally different point of view of a very familiar situation. To me that's a kind of key of... if it's already familiar but I can look at it as if it's not at all."

(Laurie Anderson, 1990)

Listen to a gorgeous conversation between Laurie Anderson and Sarah Kent at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, UK. According to the British Library's archive, the recording was made back in November 1990, cca. a year after the release of 'Strange Angels' album, and towards the last month of the 'Empty Places' Tour which was running almost during the whole year in 1990. Consequently, it's no surprise that among the topics were the current tour and the album; Wim Wenders; learning to sing; having a lot of different voices; speed and avant-garde; senator Jesse Helms and 'Coolsville' - plus many many more. There's a particularly amusing part about Ken Nordine around 38 minutes into the record; Laurie did a hilarious imitation of his manner of speaking.

• Laurie Anderson talk at ICA (1990) (audio length: 73 mins 13 secs; listen to the stream directly in the archive of the British Library)

Laurie Anderson 101 - the Audio Edition

Two hours of Laurie Anderson's music - from two recent audio portraits from Europe:


1. First, a podcast from Spain, presented by Alex Kocic / UEMCOM Radio.

• ivoox Artist of the Week: Laurie Anderson (audio length: 59 mins 21 secs, file size: 27 MB)

Playlist:

• Transitory Life
• Born, Never Asked
• White Lily
• Coolsville
• Hiawatha
• World Without End
• Speak My Language
• Washington Street
• Beginning French
• Strange Perfumes
• O Superman
• Bright Red
• Only an Expert

2. The other one comes from Stockholm: Laurie Anderson's musical portrait as part three of Sveriges Radio P4's 'Poets, Dreamers and Visionaries' series. Along with Carin Kjellman's introduction (in beautiful melodic Swedish, of course):

• Bohemen, Drömmaren och Visionären: Laurie Anderson (audio length: 55 mins 2 secs) (click to the PLAY button in the bottom banner of the page)

Playlist:

• O Superman
• The Ouija Board
• Love Among the Sailors
• From the Air
• Cartoon Song (from United States Live)
• Baby Doll
• Thinking of You
• Big Science
• Rotowhirl
• My Eyes
• The Dream Before
• In Our Sleep
• Strange Angels
• The Beginning of Memory
• The Lake
• Flow

Laurie at AndrewAndrew Again, Revisited

"[The reason] why the idea of infinity didn't go over in the Middle Ages [was that] the popes were going like "What if there are infinite number of planets - is there a pope on every planet? And if so, who's top pope?""

Talk radio at its best - no need to say more :)

AndrewAndrew put a video excerpt of Laurie Anderson's recent appearance on their show on East Village Radio's website:

Homecoming #2

"... and then, ['Delusion' is about] the stories you tell yourself about to find meaning in what you're doing, who you are, the way you define yourself. And those are delusional, as we all know. But we need them because otherwise things fall apart without stories."

(Laurie Anderson, January 2011)

WBEZ (Chicagoan radio) host Alison Cuddy talked with Laurie Anderson about the meaning of the word 'Delusion'; singing about the present in 2001: performing 'O Superman' on 9/11 in Chicago; Laurie getting sick of her own voice (wat!); her love-hate relationship with technology; mothers and (failed) expectations; challenge and experimentation: working at McDonald's, and seeing Chicago with the eyes of a child.

Messiness and Chaos (and a Bunch of Other Things, Too)

"I was originally a sculptor and I love things that just don't fit into boxes. I'm really happy when I see that things don't fit."

(Laurie Anderson, October 2010)

KUSF Radio (San Francisco) recently aired a conversation between Laurie Anderson and radio DJ Bryan Chandler, originally recorded in October 2010. Now you can listen to the whole two-hour-long Laurie Anderson Special in KUSF Radio's online archive - with a detailed introduction to Laurie's career by Bryan Chandle.



If you are interested in only the interview, here it is, cut into three parts - I edited the songs out and did some noise reduction on the audio:

• Bryan Chandler's interview with Laurie Anderson on KUSF - Part One (audio length: 6 mins 31 secs, file size: 8.96 MB)

• Bryan Chandler's interview with Laurie Anderson on KUSF - Part Two (audio length: 5 mins 59 secs, file size: 8.24 MB)

• Bryan Chandler's interview with Laurie Anderson on KUSF - Part Three (audio length: 7 mins 44 secs, file size: 10.6 MB)

(Impatient? Here's some tags for you: 'Homeland', workaholism, Karl Marx, 'Transitory Life', 'Delusion', progress, old hard drives and altitude, messiness and chaos, wedding, yawning, lip-synching, TV-B-Gone, food porn, Ken Nordine - who could wish for more.)


FYI: the list of songs that were played:

Flow
Let X = X
It Tango
Only an Expert remix
Sharkey's Day
Transitory Life
O Superman
Is Anybody Home
Strange Perfumes

Another Day in America
Sharkey's Night
Falling
Only an Expert
Accompanied by Ghosts
Difficult Listening Hour
The Ugly One with the Jewels

Double Treat

"The time in 'Flow' is very odd - instead of bars, you'll wait seven beats until the next phrase and it's kind of, "Woah, what time signature is that in." It's in the time signature of regret or something, sort of flowing."

(Laurie Anderson on her Grammy-nominated violin piece 'Flow')

1. Listen to Mike Ragogna's interview with Laurie Anderson, recorded from KRUU-FM (broadcasting from Fairfield, Iowa):

• part one (audio length: 13 mins 57 secs, file size: 19.2 MB)

• part two (audio length: 14 mins 21 secs, file size: 19.7 MB)

[note: songs edited out]


2. Read the transcript in the Huffington Post.

Laurie at AndrewAndrew Again

If you've ever wondered if Laurie Anderson is a fan of any mainstream hip hop / pop song, the answer is here for ya; hidden in the following hilarious post-Hanukkah / pre-Christmas chat between Laurie and AndrewAndrew on East Village Radio.


You can listen to the whole conversation in one on EVRadio's website, or in three parts, cut / edited by Mnemosyne:



PART ONE

• Laurie Anderson at AndrewAndrew, Dec 21st, 2010 - part one (audio length: 14 mins 06 secs, file size: 19.4 MB)

Part one's topics: colored "photographs" from outer space, folding chairs and architecture (São Paulo, Matthew Barney, male architects and phallic symbols, Frank Gehry, Manhattan's 1930s quaintness, etc). A super fun part of the chat was the following:

AA: What'd they say about Lincoln Center? They said it was like a gas station, a fancy gas station.

LA: They said it was something that Mussolini ordered over the phone.

AA: [laughter] Oh, that's fantastic. Mussolini ordered over the phone.

LA: Yeah. Gimme, er, something kind-of boxy and white and, I don't know, glitzy, little bit of sparkles...

[...]

AA: It's sort of fascist, when you look at the columns, and the symmetric...

LA: I know, yes, it is.

AA: It's like an Apple store almost.

[...]

LA: You are right that Lincoln Center materials are very Mac-like. They're really smooth and slippery, and kind-of little bit of rounded...

AA: It's seductive... and also stand-offish.

LA: Yeah. Exactly.

AA: There's something in that Mac stores are beautiful, they're simple, and you wanna be a part of this culture but you know you're not a part of that culture.

LA: Right. You're wearing the wrong clothes for that.

AA: Yes. It's aspirational. It's kinda like a night club. Like, "no-no, let me in, I'm cool".

PART TWO

• Laurie Anderson at AndrewAndrew, Dec 21st, 2010 - part two (audio length: 13 mins 09 secs, file size: 18.1 MB)

Topics of part two: Laurie's first time of getting a non-geek Grammy nomination (i. e. not for producing / engineering an album / song), the chair and the projections in 'Delusion', Himalayan art at Rubin Museum, talking about nothing with Charles Seife, multiple universes and the Quantum Suicide Test, Candide, the most photographed barn in the world (see Don Delillo's 'White Noise'), top popes / co-popes / Poperdose / The Sane Pope / "maybe we're all exactly the same pope"... and 'Flow', Laurie's Grammy-nominated violin piece:

AA: We're gonna play 'Flow', it's off of 'Homeland'.

LA: It's on 'Homeland'. Didn't come off of it. It's still on it.

AA: And this is the particular track... although the whole album is quite good.

LA: [in mock relief] Thank you. It's the afterthought track. I wasn't gonna put that on [the album]... It's kind-of... the encore. It's a quizzical thing. It's gonna be in the new Julian Schnabel film a lot. It's called 'Miral'. It's a movie about four generations of female Palestinian terrorists. Really difficult... fantastic. Really brave movie... tough topic.

PART THREE

• Laurie Anderson at AndrewAndrew, Dec 21st, 2010 - part three (audio length: 17 mins 10 secs, file size: 23.6 MB)

Topics in part three: 'Ice Ice Baby', the Secret Vatican Disco, beat poets, alternatives to Wal-Mart, 'Capitalist Realism', 'Baader-Meinhof Komplex' and terrorists today, Bill Ayers...

LA: A lot of underground people and a lot of radicals from the Sixties and Seventies really did have this idea of freedom and of freeing people and making [the world] a better place. This was not Bin Laden who's just a kind of a madman, really, and somebody whose ideal is not freedom. Ours is. I mean, we're from the Western side of the world, we come from the Greeks, they invented a lot of stuff and we thought those were some really great ideals, like, the individual should be free, so this place is built on [those ideals]. But you wouldn't know it now. You wouldn't recognize it now. It's scary.

... plus Lolabelle's Christmas record, and Laurie's concert for dogs in Sydney. Hint: you can get the record on request via Dogrelations' contact form!

For the Auditively Inclined

A recent ear candy for those who "would listen, enraptured, to Laurie Anderson read the phone book"*: listen to the podcast of American writer Hannah Tinti's short story "Milestones" read by Laurie Anderson as part of this week's 'Selected Shorts' programme on National Public Radio. The story was inspired by a Miles Davis piece of the same name.

* Yes, the source of the citation is the same as in the previous Delillo blog post: it's from a comment by an enthusiastic viewer named mytmyt, under the Youtube video of Laurie Anderson's part in 2004 Dramatic Reading of the U. S. Constitution. Amen again.

Idiots Delight with Laurie Anderson

A "quiet, intimate, stimulating" chat between Laurie Anderson and radio host Vin Scelsa from 1995, along with the audio commentary by Vin Scelsa 11 years later. This is 'Idiot's Delight Redux' on WFUV Radio  (formerly on WXRK), nicely preserved in the radio station's internet archive. Back in April 1995, after the closing night of 'Nerve Bible' at the Neil Simon Theatre, Laurie went right into the studio for this conversation.

It's hilarious, it's neat, it's multilayered - a real gem; touching on such a wide range of subjects that it almost seems unuseful to list them here... Nevertheless, I mention just some of them: the pair of animal songs on Bright Red, how it felt to be a five-year-old, the story behind 'Duets on Ice', the Houdini-style photo shoot by Annie Leibowitz, Laurie Anderson as a cheerleader (!), what's worth risking your life for, John Cage, experimenting with silence on the radio, (unlike) Van Gogh, computer animation, 'Angel Fragments' ('Wings of Desire' soundtrack), and 'Hey ah', "another frozen north story" read by Laurie live from the Nerve Bible (originally appeared on United States Live). What more can I say - highly recommended.

• Idiot's Delight Redux on WFUV (audio length: 108 mins 50 secs)

Link kindly provided by Timeiswide - thank you, T.

"I like to do things that I don't know how to do for fun."

WKCR's (Columbia University's radio station) 'Arts and Answers' show featured a recent interview with Laurie Anderson on September 30, 2010. Unfortunately I missed the show by one day but Annie Minoff, the programme's host was kind enough to provide me with the stream which I am proudly presenting here, on Files on a String. Thank you, Annie!

Annie Minoff talked with Laurie Anderson in her studio about 'Delusion' and "the sensation she calls mental drift", Laurie's wunderhund Lolabelle who has just finished her Christmas record, various manifestations of one mother, Fenway Bergamot's "different ways", the "insane third of everyone's lives" (i. e. dreams), Laurie's retrospective performance called 'Transitory Life', audience personalites and many more.

• 'Arts and Answers' Interview with Laurie Anderson on WKCR (audio length: 30 mins 1 sec; the stream will open in a new window)

In the Loft

Lou (Reed) and Hal (Willner) talked to Laurie Anderson in 'Lou Reed's New York Shuffle with Hal Willner' on Sirius Radio's Channel 29 ('The Loft') on the 26th of September 2010. Laurie was also a guest DJ, she chose 'Bodies in Motion', 'Only an Expert', 'O Superman' and 'Falling' ("a shortie") to play.

OMG, Lou Reed does love his wife, it was so heartwarming to hear his affectionate words about Laurie. Here is the conversation in one part; songs edited out:

• Lou, Hal and Laurie on 'The Loft' / Sirius Radio Channel 29 (audio length: 15 mins 58 secs, file size: 21.9 MB)

"I love pushing buttons."

"Everything I do is a kind-of long last piece in the last forty years."

"As an artist I try to make things that I like and hope that other people will get it. And if they don't, I don't really care, if they do, I'm really happy."

(Laurie Anderson, 2010)

... Just some of Mnemosyne's favourite quotes from an interview of yesterday.

AndrewAndrew SoundSound on East Village Radio talked to Laurie Anderson via phone on the day of the New York City premiere of 'Delusion'.


You can listen to the whole show in one in the archive of the show's audio archive (under the date of September 21, 2010) or just the interview here, edited into two parts:

• AndrewAndrew interview September 21st, 2010 - part one (audio length: 10 mins 0 secs, file size: 13.7 MB)

• AndrewAndrew interview September 21st, 2010 - part two (audio length: 8 min 40 secs, file size: 11.9 MB)

College of Musical Knowledge, 1984

Listen to an interview from 1984 with an oh-so-young-and-soft-voiced Laurie Anderson, preserved in Alfred Sneider's archive, as part of his radio series called 'College of Musical Knowledge' on WRUV-FM Radio Burlington, Vermont.


Here is the interview in one long part in its original place:

• Ira Melnick's interview with Laurie Anderson on WRUV-FM, May 1984 (audio length: 63 mins 23 secs, file size: 59 MB)

... or chopped, enhanced and edited into more 'edible' parts here, on Files on a String:

• WRUV interview (1984) - part one (audio length: 5 mins 34 secs, file size: 7.65 MB)
   - the car horn concert in Vermont, 1972 / about 'Juanita'

• WRUV interview (1984) - part two (audio length: 4 mins 12 secs, file size: 5.79 MB)
   - being a storyteller / conversational talking as real improvisation / mistakes and their use, e. g. in 'Langue d'amour'

• WRUV interview (1984) - part three (audio length: 5 mins 40 secs, file size: 7.78 MB)
   - being a feminist performer (or not) / separating art and politics

• WRUV interview (1984) - part four (audio length: 4 mins 7 secs, file size: 5.67 MB)
   - the role of the audience

• WRUV interview (1984) - part five (audio length: 4 mins 18 secs / file size: 5.91 MB)
   - using all kinds of sounds in music / tape-bow violin

• WRUV interview (1984) - part six (audio length: 4 mins 36 secs, file size: 6.33 MB)
   - the digital equivalent of the tape-bow violin (United States Tour!) / the colour white

• WRUV interview (1984) - part seven (audio length: 5 mins 53 secs, file size: 8.9 MB)
   - the Handphone Table / an epic album in progress: 'United States Live' (!!)

Stories and Dreams on WNYC

Laurie Anderson talked to John Schafer on WNYC (New York Public Radio)'s Soundcheck show on September 16th, 2010. In a week 'Delusion' will premiere in New York City, as the highlight of BAM's Next Wave Festival.

Topics:

- 'Delusion' - how "a series of plays for two people about things you just can't reconcile turned into a three-dimensional movie with stories", "a weird hybrid about things that I don't think I've really understood yet",

- Fenway Bergamot, who is not the voice of authority anymore ("I decided to accept blowhards"). He also performed a renewed / shortened version of 'Mambo and Bling' in the studio - this version might be known as "the Mambo and Bling without mambo and bling",

- 'Only an Expert' - a "pointed commentary on American society",

- the concert for dogs in Sydney, where "thousands of dogs showed up: they brought their people",

- plus a live performance of one of the most unsettling parts of 'Delusion': the movement which, for the sake of simplicity, I will call 'Mother's Death'.




Here is the show in its entirety, as part of the WNYC Soundcheck archive:






Or you can listen to an edited version of the interview here, on Files on a String, along with two live performances:

• interview part one (audio length: 7 mins 0 secs, file size: 9.63 MB)

• interview part two (audio length: 3 mins 46 secs, file size: 5.18 MB)

• 'Mambo and Bling' on WNYC Soundcheck, 16th of September, 2010 (audio length: 5 mins 16 secs, file size: 7.24 MB)

• 'Mother's Death' (excerpt from 'Delusion') on WNYC Soundcheck, 16th of September, 2010 (audio length: 3 mins 25 secs, file size: 4.69 MB)

Those Were the Days

Here's the transcript of Silicon Valley Radio's interview from the heyday of the internet when a webradio station's netcast was a unique experience accessible for more or less a handful of geeks only, and Laurie Anderson was literally one of "the Internet's most important personalities and newsmakers". The interview touches on subjects like Laurie's hobbies from childhood and recent days alike (kinda moving backwards on the evolution scale, ha), the children's book she wrote while in college, what kind of impact she and her boyfriend Lou Reed were having on each other's art; how boredom, a Japanese puppeteer in Munich and Laurie's trademark hairdo relate, and so on.

Fun facts proving how we all change through the years: at the time of the interview (cca. 1997) Laurie Anderson was still fond of the internet*, and averse to Broadway musicals.

I even managed to dig out the (quite poor quality) audio of the interview from Teh Internet Archive - do I need to explain further the awesomeness of the Wayback Machine?

• Silicon Valley Radio's interview with Laurie Anderson (1997), now saved by Mnemosyne for posterity (audio length: 14 mins 57 secs, file size: 878 KB - did I mention "poor quality"? But hey, it's more than nothing)

* An addition that might throw a new light upon Laurie's initial enthusiasm: at that time, the majority of the Internet was being composed of cultural centers' and universities' websites - as this list shows it, too... (Yes, once there existed a concert-goer (a fan maybe) who took the effort to type in all the URL-s that were featured on the Nerve Bible show's official tour T-shirt. Wow. Alan Lasky, if you might lurk somewhere nearby: you rule.)