thehefner: (Me: Rose)
thehefner ([personal profile] thehefner) wrote2009-04-16 10:30 pm

when I see the future I close my eyes. I can see it now!

I'm at a loss to guess if my recent discovery of Laurie Anderson will elicit which of the following responses:

A.) You don't know Laurie Anderson?!

B.) Hell yeah, Laurie Anderson is awesome!

C.) Good lord, ew, no, Laurie Anderson is crap!

D.) Who the hell is Laurie Anderson?

E.) I like pie.

Whichever response it is, the point is simply this: I think I absolutely fucking love Laurie Anderson, and must travel back to 1984--during which period I would be one year old--and make her mine.

Because this... I gotta say, this gets me a li'l moist. Just a li'l bit.



I hated that song when Peter Gabriel covered it (with her) on his seminal album SO. Turned out, I just wasn't on their wavelength then, because watching that now, I feel like... what Amanda Palmer does to her fans, Laurie Anderson is kinda doing to me. She hits all my drag king points, coupled with my love of 80's prog rock and general wackiness.



She's like if Peter Gabriel and David Byrne raised a daughter together. She's like Peter if he ever looked like he was having fun doing any of his wacky shit.* And to make her even more awesome, look who she's married to:



Lucky, lucky man. God, that is a couple in rock 'n roll love right there.

Yeah, I can't compete with that, even with a time machine. All I can do is watch these, swoon, hope that my swooning isn't meant with reactions as if I just discovered Phil Collins, and pray for HOME OF THE BRAVE coming out on DVD soon.





*even in the videos for "Sledgehammer" and "Shock the Monkey," he just seems so intense; this is a man who treats walking around stage in a Zorb and going bouncy-bouncy-bouncy as SERIOUS BUSINESS.

[identity profile] chickenhat.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:29 am (UTC)(link)
*blink*

oh, hell... in 1984 i was just about to go to college and was staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning watch PBS's Left of Center...

dude. A) and B)

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:33 am (UTC)(link)
If I ever wanted to make the Rudes' heads hurt at Bennigans, I would mention how I was born in 1983, and you ALL KNOW WHERE YOU WERE THEN. And if I really wanted to make them feel old, I'd mention how I was too young to ever have seen any of the real STAR WARS movies in the theatre. Well, maybe JEDI, but that doesn't count.

Considering that I frequently encounter people who've never heard of Peter Gabriel, I think I can that can lessen the A.) stigma somewhat. This isn't like a few months ago when I discovered Europe's "The Final Countdown."

[identity profile] chickenhat.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:36 am (UTC)(link)
(using the icon because it's from 1986)

you SO should have been born closer to 1970

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:48 am (UTC)(link)
God, I know. And as I still would have hated the 90's either way, it all balances out!

Then again, no. My love of 80's-tastic synth music in movies and (certain kinds of) prog rock--plus my obsession with Oingo Boingo--would have just made me one of a preexisting cluster of weirdos and outsiders. At least this way, I'm weird AND special!

[identity profile] chickenhat.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 04:31 am (UTC)(link)
oh, found it!

Alive from Off Center, 1987.
w00t!

my fave was "as seen on tv" with Bill irwin


[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 04:55 am (UTC)(link)
... AWESOME.

It even features drive-by William H. Macy! I'll need to check the whole thing out later!

Wow, this was the guy who did VIRGINA WOOLF with Kathleen Turner a couple years back? I'd heard it was utterly brilliant, but now I'm even sadder for having missed it.

Re: You forgot one.

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:44 am (UTC)(link)
Aside from the damn narrator, AWESOME!!!

[identity profile] little-dinosaur.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:55 am (UTC)(link)
Hell yeah, Laurie Anderson! How did I not guess that you'd crush on her? IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE.

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 04:02 am (UTC)(link)
If you had been on chat an hour ago, I would totally have hit you up before I even wrote this, just to gauge how the hell I should react. Because so far, the few people I've been able to ask had never heard of her!

Seriously, Amanda Palmer is great and all, but no, Laurie is SO much more my wavelength it's not even funny. I adore her, and must now see her live. I hear she's still performing and is still awesome.

Totally crushing, like whoa.

[identity profile] little-dinosaur.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 12:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, she's a performance artist and I have a degree in art history! I've had lectures about her and read her writing and watched her videos and all that! That's why I know about her. She is very, very cool.

(I had to find out about her that way. In 1984, I was completely hypothetical.)

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, that makes sense too, yeah! I'd just figured that she was married to Lou Reed meant she would be familiar to people who follow that crowd.

(BTW, I GOT LEONARD COHEN TICKETS! I'M FINALLY GONNA SEE HIM BEFORE HE DIES! PRESUMABLY!!!)

[identity profile] tragical-mirth.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:59 am (UTC)(link)
I haven't heard of her either, but then again, I was pretty much only allowed to listen to country radio until about 1985. Anything that wasn't country radio was Hair Band or 70s Rock.

Oh, how I did love Duran Duran. XD

icon battle!

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 04:06 am (UTC)(link)
Check out the above videos! DISCOVER HER WITH MEEEEE.

See, yeah, my 80's-fetish isn't across the board. There's very little in the way of hair band rock that I like, but give me any of these kinds'a songs and I am GOOD. But that ties into my love of Meat Loaf as well.

And I do have a soft spot for Duran Duran. I wouldn't buy any of their albums, but I'm always up for rocking out to "Hungry Like The Wolf" and "View To A Kill."

Re: icon battle!

[identity profile] tragical-mirth.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 04:29 am (UTC)(link)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, man. "The Final Countdown." Heh.
GradeSkool!Me totally used to rock it out to all those.

The following was the first Duran Duran song I heard/video I saw. Being the budding sci-fi, borderline transhumanist nerd that I have always been, it was love at first sight.



(Also, apparently the Canadians have joined in the icon fight.)

Re: icon battle!

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 04:47 am (UTC)(link)
I made it all the way to the end. Do I win a prize?

Have you heard Paul Stanley's new song? It was most famously featured as the montage music in the brilliant WORLD OF WARCRAFT episode of SOUTH PARK. It sounds like a lost sibling from that list that landed in an iceberg during the 80's and was thawed out last week:



It's written by Desmond Child, who recently did new songs for Meat Loaf. One of my goals in life is now to have Desmond Child write me a concept album which will surely make me huge in Oslo.

Re: icon battle!

[identity profile] tragical-mirth.livejournal.com 2009-04-18 02:47 pm (UTC)(link)
No, but I did watch part of Sunset Boulevard for the first time yesterday morning in the hotel (Norma Desmond), and it was creepier than I expected. *shudder*

[identity profile] shadowlongknife.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 04:10 am (UTC)(link)
Personally, I am in favor of pie.

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 04:14 am (UTC)(link)
That was just there in case the above four groups began a quarrel on an epic GL-style War of Light scale, so that we could all have that common ground to which we could return.

It's one of my immutable laws of the universe: everybody loves pie, it's impossible to hate Ringo, and it sucks to be Harvey Dent.

[identity profile] shadowlongknife.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 04:19 am (UTC)(link)
Now, are we referring to Ringo Starr? Or perhaps Johnny Ringo, as portrayed by the criminally underrated Michael Biehn?

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 04:24 am (UTC)(link)
Starr of course, but any excuse to hail the excellence of the Biehnster is always welcome.

It's so wacky that in WYATT EARP, a main member of the Ringo gang was played by Jeff Fahey, who would go on to play Biehn's brother in GRINDHOUSE: PLANET TERROR. They need to team up more often, damn it. Truly a power duo.

[identity profile] shadowlongknife.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 04:30 am (UTC)(link)
I would watch that buddy cop movie. You do realize that the only acceptable villian would be the Foppish Billy Drago.

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 04:37 am (UTC)(link)
YES. Wait, only if it's inexpliciblyalbino!Drago from the Grace Jones epic VAMP.

Man, I must have set some kind of record at Potomac Video for the number of times I rented that damn film. For, uh, research. Yes. Hrm.

[identity profile] beaq.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 06:15 am (UTC)(link)
She played at my pissant little college, in the gym, fercryinoutloud, TEN FEET FROM ME, in ... uh.

1993.

But I swear I don't remember where I was in 1983.

I think she was working on Nerve Bible. God, it was great.



(here via [livejournal.com profile] badmagic's flist)

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh awesome! I love the thought of Laurie frickin' Anderson performing at a pissant little college for some reason.

I'm so very new to her that I have no idea what Nerve Bible is just yet. I'm that green!

(Howdy-ho!)

[identity profile] beaq.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Lucky you!

Stories from the Nerve Bible is a retrospective book, and she was doing performance-arty readings and stuff from a couple of her then-current albums.

[identity profile] benchilada.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 07:15 am (UTC)(link)
A and B, mate.

She sounds rabidly awesome on vinyl.

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:31 pm (UTC)(link)
It was the album cover on [livejournal.com profile] randompictures that got my attention. Y'know, the one where about three people left rave comments. It made me go, "Hm, so this could be an obscure person who's also awesome. One of my favorite things in the world!"

Dude, I'll bet. If vinyl keeps making a comeback (yay hipster douchebags!), I may have to track down a new player and some records.

[identity profile] muzikmaker21.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 08:49 am (UTC)(link)
You didn't know Laurie Anderson?! WTF, dude? I've failed you.

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh good, then I can blame you for my not knowing!

Based on these reactions, I'm just trying to figure out how I'd never heard of her. My only guess is that she never had any big crossover into movie soundtracks nor radio nor was even referenced in THE SIMPSONS, but remained purely fixed in her corner of the music world, which I never visit.

And again, considering how many people don't know who Peter Gabriel is (or think he's just a soft rock musician on par with Phil frickin' Collins), I'm still amazed by this reaction. But pleased, nonetheless!

[identity profile] gravityslave.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 12:25 pm (UTC)(link)
True to my parallel-track train of thought, the above post has funnelled my energy into researching Zorbs. Conclusion: LaurieZORBAndersonZORB may be ZORBcoolZORB and ZORBawesome, but ZORBIZORBjustZORBwant a ZORB.
This is a sort of apology.

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Huzzah, someone payed attention to my Zorb footnote!

I presume you saw the Gabriel video? I saw him do that live. Old man Gabriel, bouncy bouncy bouncy! Who WOULDN'T want one?! Just get liquored up, hop in your Zorb, and head into town! None would dare stop you!

[identity profile] gravityslave.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 03:48 pm (UTC)(link)
The video was mesmerizing! And, I think, you are reading my mind. Stop that!

[identity profile] droidboy010101.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 10:21 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm afraid I'd abuse the privilege of a Zorb...

GET.ME.ONE.NOW!

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 11:05 pm (UTC)(link)
It would utterly dominate your living room and either hamper or severely improve your next party. Choose wisely.

[identity profile] droidboy010101.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 10:20 pm (UTC)(link)
I discovered Laurie thru Gabriel (same way, Excellent Birds...) then thru her afterwards discovered William Burroughs...

Language is a Virus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZkjoXyexKk

Of course Cronenburg played on the Anderson/Burroughs connection for the trailer for his lovable adaptation of Naked Lunch using Gravity's Angel (Gabriel did backing on the album version)
Home of the Brave Version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY7uTO_GuDg

Naked Lunch Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh-Q07iVQws

A tall glass of Mugwump gism for your happy discover of her!

[identity profile] thehefner.livejournal.com 2009-04-17 11:36 pm (UTC)(link)
I've never quite been able to get into Burroughs, but damn if she doesn't make me wanna try again. *swoon*

[identity profile] 2sick2pray.livejournal.com 2009-04-19 03:17 am (UTC)(link)
I like pie.