From the Homeland
The Opera House was full up for Laurie Anderson last night, and she put on a good show. The material was often political, but with her characteristic wry humor. The verse about Al Gore, pretty clearly expanded to take recent events into consideration, got a good laugh, but I got the distinct impression that the song about snow wasn’t a grabber for most of the audience (perhaps because it’s already so hot here). Anyway, unlike the last few of her performances I’ve seen, she had additional musicians on stage – keyboards, viola, bass guitar – and focussed more on songs than stories, and only using “the voice” once. Definitely a lot of fun, but all the better because, for an encore, and in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of her debut album, Big Science, she did “Let x = x” (which happens to be my favorite from the record).