Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Spreadin' them wings



I really have nothing today. I suppose I can talk about the shows I've been seeing recently such as LAURIE ANDERSON AND LOU REED at Joe's Pub. I was a very happy camper. Laurie Anderson is as lovely as ever and a really nice lady and Lou, well, he was old.

The show itself was pretty good. Laurie Anderson played mostly new material from her forthcoming album, it was surprisingly more ambient than her typical stuff. It retained her humorous spoken observations, though.

Kitsch, my hetero life partner, noted that much of the material sounded dated a sentiment I concur with, although I'm not sure what to do with that. I'm not sure how to go about criticizing two living legends on stage together. Saying they sound "dated" is like saying the Empire state building looks dated, its true but you can't really argue either way. Now if the Empire State Building stopped doing what it does best, which is to be tall, then we'd have a problem.

Its always good to see living legends.

3 comments:

Ryan said...

reminds me of when I saw Bob Dylan... I could've been sad about his performance, but instead I was like, "oh shit, it's Bob Dylan." I mean, yes, he's oldOLDold, shit man... it's Bob Dylan...

Melody Nelson said...

by 'dated' i mean that it sounded very much like early 80s electronic avant-garde music, from the dreamy (as well as relatively cheap sounding) keyboards to the vaguely "global" rhythms (sounded a bit like byrne and eno's [i]my life in the bush of ghosts[/i] - either the template or the apotheosis of this stuff, i'm not sure which) and finally to the speak-sing vocal work. i didn't mean it as a qualitative statement necessarily, just my initial impression of how it sounded. probably came off the wrong way.

awesome show all around, really beautiful but unfortunately short. i could have stood another hour of music - preferably "o superman" somewhere in there, but the new material was nice and you don't hear an artist get up and start talking about [i]the communist manifesto[/i] anymore. actually, i think that may be another part of what seemed a little 'dated' about the show... and i liked it a lot.

Melody Nelson said...

oh, and you know that laurie anderson and lou reed have been a couple (possibly married?) for, i think, two decades, right? apparently they own a brownstone in the west village. i should go look for that.