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Rating: Electronic Spoken Word.
A sound show recorded and enclosed in a box of 4 CDs (or 5 LPs). A colossal work that, in its complete edition, exceeded 8 hours. But I am wasting breath; I think many of you know Anderson (Big Science especially, it is the album that most closely resembles this one.)
But let's proceed in order, in the first part (19 tracks), the most spoken and the one with the least music, the bizarre composition for violin Born, Never Asked stands out (also included in Big Science but here in a much better performance).
"A city that repeats itself endlessly, hoping something will stay in its mind"
The second part (19 tracks), in my opinion the best, includes known and new tracks. Among the known ones, standouts include O Superman (in an excellent performance, pity for the applause and the audience's coughs) and Let X=X (ditto); among the new tracks Reverb (sounds coming from amplified glasses - can you imagine Anderson hitting her head to "play" this track?) and Violin Walk. It also includes a version of Language is a Virus different from the one in Home of the Brave but equally beautiful.
"Hearing your name is better than seeing your face"
The third part (21 tracks) is the strangest and most experimental, it contains a beautiful track about Indians titled Hey Ah, vocal experiments are the protagonists of this part, which concludes with the track Big Science (unfortunately not up to the studio version).
"I dreamed that I had to take an exam in a dairy on another planet"
The fourth and final part (19 tracks) musically reminds me of Mr Heartbreak. It contains a version of Blue Lagoon superior to the studio one and a very strange version of Sweaters. It also contains the famous Lighting Out for the Territories in which she wore headlamps on her eyes and interpreted the text by moving through the audience and leaving the stage.
"You are observing enlarged facsimiles of human sperm"
Bizarre, unique, splendid, for those who love Anderson's early works (from Big Science to Home of the Brave), this album is absolutely unmissable.
I do not recommend it to those who, like me, love to listen to CDs in one go without pauses and cannot fall in love with just one or two songs; with this album, gentlemen, you risk going crazy.
Tracklist and Lyrics
13 So Happy Birthday (06:23)
JOE: In our country, you’re free and so you’re born and so they say, “You’re free,” so happy birthday. And even if you were born to lose--even if you were a complete wreck when you were born--you might still grow up to be president ... because you’re free.
GERALDINE: Today, you might be an average citizen ... a civilian ... a pedestrian ... But tomorrow you might be elected to some unexpected office--or sell your novel and suddenly become famous. Or you could get run over by a truck and your picture could get into the papers _that_ way. Because you’re free and anything might happen ... so happy birthday.
JOE: Gee! All those lights and all those screens! The New York Experience is mind-boggling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many screens and I’ll probably come again ... It was really amazing, mind-boggling.
GERALDINE: You’re walking and you don’t always realize it but you’re always falling at the same time. With each step you fall forward. Over and over, you’re falling and then catching yourself from falling ... And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time.
JOE: Look! Over there! It’s a real dog ... and it’s really talking
GERALDINE: I wanted you and I was looking for you ... but I couldn’t find you. I wanted you and I was looking for you all day ... but I couldn’t find you.
JOE: Well, I paid my money, and I’ve got this funny feeling that somehow--you know--it’s not what I paid my money for. I mean I _paid_ my money and I just don’t think this is what I paid my money--you know--what I paid my money for.
GERALDINE: No one has ever looked at me like this before ... no one has ever _stared_ at me for so long like this ... This is the first time anyone has ever looked at me like this ... stared at me like this for such a long time ... for so long.
JOE: Well, he didn’t know what to do so he just decided to watch the government and see what the government was doing and then kind of scale it down to size--and run his life that way.
GERALDINE: She said the hardest thing to teach her three-year-old kid was what was alive and what wasn’t. The phone rings and she holds it out to her kid and says, “It’s Grandma. Talk to Grandma.” But she’s holding a piece of plastic. And the kid says to herself: “Wait a minute. Is the phone alive? Is the TV alive? What about that radio? What is alive in this room and what doesn’t have life?” Unfortunately, she doesn’t know how to ask these questions.
JOE: We were in a large room. Full of people. All kinds. And they had arrived at the same time. And they were all free and they were all asking themselves the same question: What is behind that curtain? They were all free. And they were all wondering what would happen next.
GERALDINE: This is the time and this is the record of the time.
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