URIE ANDERSON: BRINGING HIGH TECH TO THE MASSES by Barbara Bernstein on stage is a lot of electronic gadgetry with LED lights blinking back at the audience, when the performer speaks through one microphone her voice appears more or less normal, but through the other mike it is transformed higher or lower, pitched into a variety of personae and differing degrees of gender. Cartoon-like images are projected on a screen behind the performer: scenes of electronic game screens, pictures of a vast array of electrical sockets, cryptic philosophic statements, radar maps. Hidden from sight is the ever-present tape recorder which is the back-up band for this solo artist, who combines the fragmented facets of present-day culture into a cohesive hour or two of musical/visual performance. You are at a Laurie Anderson concert. Ten years ago Laurie Anderson was one of many lower Manhattan artists living and producing art on the fringe of the outer limits. From the start, her unique sensitivity to just what it is that makes modern life so peculiar has made her work stand out among the lot of performance artists. Her combination of humor, political commentary, urgency and irony has created a body of music that may prove to be the most useful time capsule anyone of our generation has produced to explain this epoch to future generations. Close your eyes. Okay. Now imagine you're at the most wonderful party. Okay. Delicious food. Uh-huh. interesting people. Uh-mm. Terrific music. Mm-mmh. NOW OPEN THEM. WALK THEDOC For the past couple years Anderson has been working on an extended opus entitled The United states, and recent concerts have consisted of parts of this whole. The four-hour piece incorporates elements from earlier work as well as the eight-minute entirety of 0 Superman, an EP she released last year on 110 records; a surrealistic montage of life in the age of the silicon chip set to a quasidisco beat. While remaining in the stratosphere of the avant-garde in America, Anderson has picked up more of a following in Europe. 0 Superman was No. 1 on the British hit parade last winter, and the record (flip side walk the Dog} has now sold more than 300,000 copies on both sides of the Atlantic, with the 110 records version of O Superman now out of print, she has recently signed with Warner Brothers, who will soon release their model of the record. Last summer she played to over a thousand people in a free concert in volunteer Park in Seattle, bringing her avant-garde vision out of the lofts and into the open air. Now Laurie Anderson is returning to the Northwest. She will appear at Neighbors of woodcraft in a concert produced by PCVA (222-7107) on April 28. The following weekend, on the Boards in Seattle (206-325-7901) will produce her in two concerts. 'Cause when love is gone, there's always Justice. And when Justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom ... Hi Mom! OSUPERMAN 36 Clinton St. Quarterly Photograph courtesy Warner Brothers
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