ARTS The Michigan Daily Friday, March 2, 1990 Page 5 The one and only Laurie Anderson is raconteur of the mundane by Greg Baise T HE sun of our spring break is coming up. Like a big bald head. And as that spring break sun goes down for the last time (as most surely it will in just over a week) it'll be Ann Arbor's night for Laurie Anderson's one-person peformance, as she brings it to the Michigan Theater a week from Saturday. Courtesy of her big-time record- ing contract with Warner Brothers, Anderson is one of the best-known performance artists in America. An- derson first established her profes- sional artistic identity in the mid- '70s, when she presented her medita- tions on the realtionship between art and reality at such places as the Whitney Museum and the Kitchen. Even early performances contained songs and music, which would come to dominate Anderson's work. Her * magnum opus, United States, an eight-hour musical and visual col- lage of Anderson's earlier sound/vi- sion/performance pieces, was pre- 'sented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1980. It was from these performances that Anderson culled the material for her first Warner Brothers album, Big Science. It was here that she calmly informed us that our plane was about to crash, like it was some kind of everyday occurrence or something. She also talked about letting x equal x, and referred to the sky-blue sky, and made us ponder the difference :between the time and the record of the time. Four albums later (not including the live-album recording of United States released in 1984 by Warner Brothers), Anderson came out with her recent release, Strange Angels. Strange angels that roam the lonely streets and empty places of "Coolsville," a place "So perfect So nice," where people strive for the sense of perfection of those Olympian bodies you see in beer commercials and the other ideals for existence with which we are con- stantly bombarded. These strange an- gels are kin to those of Anderson's friend Wim Wenders, whose 1988 movie Wings of Desire pursued the plight of a Thomistic angel, deviod of sensation, who desires to feel the earthly sensations of people, and share his experiences with a French trapeze artist. Of angels, Anderson wrote in the Village Voice, "Why were they invented? As some kind of control group?" Strange Angels isn't just popu- lated by those handsome, deceased Germans in their sharp overcoats, however. There's also the "original party animal," aka the title star of "The Day the Devil," Anderson's grapple with original sin and its overwhelming shadow over the lives of certain Southern stereotypes, like Jesse Helms and gospel choirs. Hansel and Gretel make an appear- ance, too, in "The Dream Before," a song dedicated to the German aes- thetician Walter Benjamin. Anderson gives us an update of their lives, with Gretel as a has-been cocktail waitress, and Hansel having had a part in a Fassbinder film and both of them having a domestic argument concerning history and progress. Bear in mind, this is argument in the etymological sense, meaning "to shed light upon." Then there are the non-fictitious characters that dwell within the mu- sic itself, ultra-cool musicians like ex-DNA man Arto Lindsay and former Wire producer Mike Thorne. Also among the all-star denizens on the album are Bobby McFerrin and the Roches, adding their names to the painfully impressive list of mu- sicians with whom Anderson has previously worked, like Bill Laswell, Peter Gabriel, Anton Fier and master vocalist William S. Bur- roughs. Anderson's live performance has an all-star cast, too: a cast of one bright star, Laurie Anderson, per- forming Empty Places, a piece she worked on in conjunction with the creation of Strange Angels. I think somebody once described Garrison Keillor as a raconteur of the mundane. I hope I'm not incriminat- ing anybody by declaring all of us raconteurs of the mundane, at least See ANDERSON, page 7 More fun than a barrel of monkeys Ann Arbor's mega-bass monsters Laughing Hyenas roll into town next week with Columbus, Ohioan sirens Scrawl for a double-whammy of growling, screaming and skirts at Club Heidelberg. The Hyenas' angst-filled, post-Birthday Party madness, paired with Scrawl's lighter, midwestern sound are sure to make for a strong punch with which these maestros will be ready to smack Ann Arbor. The underground success of the Hyenas two Touch and Go pressed slabs have earned them a strong following across the United States, and an even larger one in Europe, where their Nick Cave-esque, groveling fury is more readily appreciated. Unfortunately, the records lose some of the musically translated anger; the vinyl seemingly has toned down much of the aggression with which their live shows have always been laden. Singer John Brannon's (ex-Negative Approach) beastial growling and animositic stage presence forefronts the Hyenas' needling guitar and smacking, power-rhythm section. The show's on March 10th at 10:30 pm at Club Heidelberg, 215 N. Main. God knows who'll be playing first. Cover is a paltry $5. 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