Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Say Hello
2. Walk the Dog
3. Violin Solo
4. Closed Circuits
5. For a Large and Changing Room
6. Pictures of It
7. Language of the Future
8. Cartoon Song
9. Small Voice
10. Three Walking Songs
11. Healing Horn
12. New Jersey Turnpike
13. So Happy Birthday
14. English
15. Dance of Electricity
16. Three Songs for Paper, Film and Video

Disc 2:

1. Sax Solo, Pt. 1 (Continued)
2. Sax Duet, Pt. 1 (Continued)
3. Born, Never Asked (Part One Continued)
4. From the Air
5. Beginning the French
6. O Superman (For Massenet)
7. Talkshow
8. Frames for the Pictures
9. Democratic Way
10. Looking for You
11. Walking and Falling
12. Private Property
13. Neon Duet
14. Let X = X
15. Mailman's Nightmare
16. Difficult Listening Hour
17. Language Is a Virus
18. Reverb
19. If You Can't Talk About It, Point to It
20. Violin Walk
21. City Song
22. Finnish Farmers

Disc 3:

1. Big Science
2. Red Map
3. Hey Ah
4. Bagpipe Solo
5. Steven Weed
6. Time and a Half
7. Voices on Tape
8. Example #22
9. Strike
10. False Documents
11. New York Social Life
12. Curious Phenomenon
13. Yankee See
14. I Dreamed I Had to Take a Test...
15. Running Dogs
16. Four, Three, Two, One
17. Big Top
18. It Was up in the Mountains
19. Odd Objects
20. Dr. Miller
21. Big Science
22. Big Science Reprise

Disc 4:

1. Cello Solo
2. It Tango
3. Blue Lagoon
4. Hothead (La Langue d'Amour)
5. Stiff Neck
6. Telephone Song
7. Sweaters
8. We've Got Four Big Clocks (And They're All Ticking)
9. Song for Two Jims
10. Over the River
11. Mach 20
12. Rising Sun
13. Visitors
14. Stranger
15. Classified
16. Going Somewhere?
17. Fireworks
18. Dog Show
19. Lighting Out for the Territories

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #128802 in Music
• Released on: 1991-01-29
• Number of discs: 4
• Formats: Box set, Live

Amazon.com
For most musicians and groups, the live box set marks the culmination of a lengthy recording and concert career. Not so for Laurie Anderson, whose United States Live appeared in 1984, following her tenure in academic and bohemian circles and a small handful of releases on Warner Bros. and smaller labels. The release was an unusual event, though perhaps less so for a musician who seeks to upend musical traditions, most notably the distinctions between pop and classical, spoken and sung, live and Memorex. The lengthy set is a recording of a live performance composed of dozens of carefully defined experiments in form and technique, most of them fitting into one or two of these three categories: show pieces for items from her technological music arsenal (like her emblematic electric violin), witty narrative snippets (back when "spoken word" was called "performance art," prior to the rise of the poetry slam), and full-band performances, featuring, among others, Peter Gordon and David Van Tieghem. "O Superman" and "Big Science" are the familiar titles that appear amid the nearly 80 tracks. "Just a slow accumulation of details," her computer-enhanced voice intones moments before the intro to "Blue Lagoon" (later heard in a studio version on Mister Heartbreak). That makes a nice epigram for the collection as a whole, which is essential to understanding art music of the '80s in general and the New York scene in particular. --Marc Weidenbaum

Customer Reviews

Overdue for digital remastering
I remember seeing this performance series being advertised in The Village Voice & wanting desparately to go...but at 17, spending $35 + $20 round trip bus fare into NYC for each of the parts (and getting permission from mom to see a concert in Brooklyn by myself, as no other kid I knew was interested) made it out of the question. This missed concert opportunity has always been the one I've regretted most. So when the concert first appeared on vinyl, I didn't hesitate to shell out the $$$ for it. The LPs crammed quite a bit of time on to each side (I think there were as many LPs as there are cd's), and so the sound was very thin (you had to crank up the volume, making the pops & crackle very disruptive, deafening if listening on headphones). So, I upgraded to the cd box set a few years after having bought the vinyl. Contrary to another review, these recordings are from several different shows of the same piece "United States I - IV" which was a sort of anthology of the work Laurie Anderson had created up to February 1983 (when this performance series took place @ The Brooklyn Academy of Music). Many of the pieces are not available on any other recording, and that makes this box set essential. Her better known pieces are also presented in different (usually more sparsely instrumented) ways. The actual performance did also include visuals (projected video, laurie playing various "instruments" that she devised herself...). So you have to imagine what else was going on in each piece (audience laughter usually clues you into the fact that you are missing 1/2 of the performance).

The sound quality of the cd's is a definite step up from the LPs. The cd's are louder without as much tape hiss. However, if you listen to the cd's on headphones, it is quite noticeable that the cd's were mastered from vinyl, which I've always found rather annoying (hence the deduction of a star), but the surface noise is quite a bit less noticeable than what had existed on my own vinyl copy.

If there is any Laurie Anderson release that needs a digital remastering (24 bit/192 Khz) from the original tapes (and issued on SACD or DVD audio), this is it. With all the second rate artists doing the remaster thing, it is more than a bit disappointing that first rate artists on big labels (like Laurie, Philip Glass, etc..) still haven't remastered their back catalog using the latest technology to optimize sound quality (I don't care as much about 5.1 channels, as I do seeing that as much detail in the recording is available). It is really surprising that someone who was been at the vanguard in using technology in her music, has fallen so far behind others in using technology today. Now with Blu Ray discs capable of holding gigabits of info, the sound should not only be remastered, but the entire performance (visual too, which I do believe exists) should be put onto Blu Ray, so we can experience it in its full glory. However, until that day comes, this release is still highly recommended over any of her other recordings (except Big Science).

Have worn out the cassettes; time to buy the CDs
I don't need to go into the finer points of the performance, or of LA's career, in this review; that has been done already (see John Bickelhaupt's review in this section for a great take on the essence of US Live). I will say that if you want an intellectual, complex snapshot of the political, social, economic, psychological and popular culture forces driving Americans in the 1980s, you need to listen to this album. LA captures with (oftentimes frightening) clarity what living in America -- especially urban America -- entailed during that period. However, don't think that her lens is trained only on the '80s; to sum up her approach using a lyric line from a later album (in my opinion her most accessible album, Strange Angels): "History is an angel being blown backward into the future." So much stands out here, so much that is dissected and yet left opaque so that, rather than pontificating, LA simply draws pictures of the landscape and steps back, allowing for multiple interpretations. Key favorites in the work for me include "Violin Solo" (haunting); "Yankee See" (in which LA takes the ironic turn and parodies her own performance -- it also says much about American consumer culture and, specifically, the state of modern art); "Dance of Electricity"; "Private Property" (remember Wm. Buckley??); and, of course, "O Superman." How can you not shudder and snicker simultaneously at the lines:
"And 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!"
Be warned: This is difficult music. This album forces you to look over the precipice into the abyss. That's what's so great about it.

One final, unrelated note: Whenever you can, see her live performance. She could read from the phone book and make it powerful. Best performance I saw was the "Empty Places" tour (supporting the Strange Angels album). Sadly did not see the US Live performance. At least with the recording, you can live it in your head. I guess it goes back to polysemic interpretation again. Instead of ruing the lack of visuals, the discs draw out your own personal memories, visions and nightmares.

p.s. Think about the time this was recorded (early '80s) and the technology LA used for this performance work. There's a current exhibit at the Cleveland Inst. of Art on video/audio works from 1964-1977 that raises an interesting technical question: How does this media hold up over time? What LA did in US Live, the exhaustive work that went into the technical aspects -- any powerful computer and the right software could produce similar results with less effort today. (Of course, it wouldn't have LA's stamp on it, but mine is a technical point, not an interpretive one). Will we look back in 20 years and say, 'Wow, to think that she built that digital processor from the ground up!'? Will it seem as spectacular? And, more importantly, will we stop critiquing the very machines and technology we use to create the art; in other words, will we lose the self-reflexivity that LA captures so well in US Live (note "Yankee See" in particular as an example)? Hopefully, artists like LA will keep us honest.

Sorry for the rambling. Just go out and buy this; or, if you're a neophyte, start with her newest live album or the "Talk Normal" retrospective.

Absurdity filter
In the 80's, I would listen to this over and over while I vacuumed the balcony's at a Florida beach condo where I was (barely) gainfully employed at the time. It operated for me on the level of the associations that it dredged up from my memories and knowledge. Are you well read in the history of modern military technolgies? Do you have a morbid fascination with environmental decay and the mostly unconsidered consequences of the choices imposed on us by imperatives of our economic system? Are you endowed with a cinematic imagination with which you can explore these consequences? If so, this recording is for you.

The first time I ever heard Laurie Anderson's music, I was terrified.
I got over it.