1,960 words

Laurie Anderson
Big Science
Warner Brothers, 1982

In the Seventies, Laurie Anderson made a modest name for herself in the “performance art” scene. Performance art is when talentless scammers do things like move dirt from one pile to another, or sit on blocks of ice and yodel, or have themselves crucified on the roof of a Volkswagen (which at least has the virtue of sincerity; when the nails are driven in, the irony is driven out), or manufacture giant butt plugs and call them Christmas trees, or sit at a piano playing absolutely nothing in three movements.

Basically, performance artists abuse their audiences with stunts—the more stupid, pointless, and offensive, the better. Perhaps they hope that someone someday will finally scream “Bullshit!” But the audiences and critics just keep pretending it is art, so the scammers keep pretending to be artists, shoveling out more bullshit and raking in grants, accolades, and commissions. The great unwashed, who are either too clever or too dumb to be taken in by the farce, stay away in droves.

Laurie Anderson didn’t really fit in with that crowd. For one thing, she was talented. She’s a natural entertainer. She didn’t need to intimidate insecure poseurs into pretending to like her. They really liked her.

Anderson is a poet and a storyteller. She can barely sing, so her songs are more like standup comedy routines. She can barely write and play music, but we can make a virtue of that by calling it “minimalism.”

In truth, though, a lot of pop musicians made it big with similarly modest gifts. In every case, the key is to use one’s gifts with good taste and to produce something entertaining or edifying or maybe even moving.

Big Science is Laurie Anderson’s debut album, and it remains my favorite. The cover depicts Anderson in a white lab coat that signifies “Science.” She is wearing spectacles, which is a sciency thing to do. But the lenses are white, which does match the lab coat but renders her blind.

Her hands strike an ambiguous gesture. Is it hieratic? Is the scientist a priest of higher powers? Is it robotic? Has technology robbed her of her will and humanity? Or is she simply a blind woman—perhaps a self-blinded woman—feeling her way forward in the dark?

The cover communicates Anderson’s message quite well: science and technology are not quite what their true believers say they are.

There are nine tracks on Big Science. The opening track, “From the Air,” is both droll and disturbing. “This is your captain,” says the bland voice of authority over the loud-speaker, “We are about to attempt a crash landing. Please extinguish all cigarettes. Place your tray tables in their upright, locked position.” Okay, we’re in a bad spot. But the captain seems calm. So let’s follow orders and try to get through this.

But then the captain starts a Simon Says routine: “Your Captain says: ‘Put your head on your knees.’ Captain says: ‘Put your head in your hands.’ Captain says: ‘Put your hands on your head.’ ‘Put your hands on your hips,’ heh heh. This is your Captain—and we are going down. We are all going down, together.” At the very best, this levity is inappropriate. But maybe the crash is just a joke too. Worst case scenario: the captain is crazy. Stand by.

Bad news. The captain really is crazy:

Uh—this is your Captain again.
You know, I’ve got a funny feeling, I’ve seen this all before.
Why? Cause I’m a caveman.
Why? Cause I’ve got eyes in the back of my head.
Why? It’s the heat, stand by.

But it gets worse. The voice announces: “Put your hands over your eyes, jump out of the plane. There is no pilot, you are not alone.” There’s no pilot, because the pilot is just a metaphor for the people in charge, and there are no people in charge. And we’re not really in an airplane either, we’re in a metaphor for technological-scientific civilization. And there’s nobody to start it, nobody to stop it, nobody to steer it. The system, in short, seems to be autonomous. The most powerful people in it appear to be mere functionaries and figureheads. A crash landing begins to look like the optimistic scenario.

The refrain is simple: “This is the time, and this is the record of the time.” The time is modernity. The record is the dawning recognition that we may have created a monster.

The title track, “Big Science,” is basically a slow, solemn hymn. Anderson’s voice is accompanied by organ with some percussion, as well as wolf howls. The chorus is “Big Science, Hallelujah. Big Science, Yodellayheehoo.” This is a hymn to America, the cutting edge of technological modernity, the land where science got big first. Consider this Lewis Carrollesque bit of dialogue:

“Hey Pal! How do I get to town from here?”

And he said, “Well just take a right where they’re going to build that new shopping mall, go straight past where they’re going to put in the freeway, take a left at what’s going to be the new sports center, and keep going until you hit the place where they’re thinking of building that drive-in bank. You can’t miss it.”

And I said, “This must be the place.”

There’s something funny about taking your bearings from things that don’t exist yet, but that’s progressivism in a nutshell. The conclusion is also funny. If “town” can only be located in terms of things that don’t exist yet, then everyplace is pretty much the same right now, in which case, you might already be “there.”

The inhabitants of this post-historical anywhere are, fittingly enough, individualists:

Here’s a man who lives a life of danger. Everywhere he goes he stays a stranger.
“Howdy stranger. Mind if I smoke?”
And he said, “Every man, every man for himself. Every man, every man for himself.”

The best-known track on Big Science is “O Superman”, which became a surprise hit single in the UK, rising to #2 on the pop charts. “O Superman” is an unlikely hit because it clocks in at 8:21, the words are opaque and increasingly unsettling, and the music is starkly minimalist: scored for voice, vocoder, looped voice samples, synthesizer, flute, saxophone, and some sampled bird noises.

“O Superman” starts out as a prayer: “O Superman, O judge, O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad.” All of these figures are set above: heroes and honored moral authorities. There is a sense of living in an ordered moral universe. But then the context shifts dramatically, moving toward the technological themes in “From the Air”, while the sense of the ordered moral universe begins to break down, absorbed by technology.

The one who prays—let’s call her Laurie—seems to be monitoring her telephone calls by letting her answering machine pick up. This is how we did it, back before the days of caller ID. When Mom calls, Laurie does not pick up. Then a mysterious voice calls and begins leaving a message:

Hello? Is anybody home?
Well, you don’t know me,
But I know you.
And I’ve got a message to give to you.
Here come the planes.
So you better get ready. Ready to go.
You can come as you are, but pay as you go.
Pay as you go.

The tone is subtly menacing. When you don’t know someone, but they know you, we call that being at a disadvantage. The voice is explicitly imperative. We’re supposed to get on the plane. And we all know what happens when we board one of those winged metaphors: they take you for a ride; there’s nobody in charge; we’re all in it together; a crash landing at least offers you the possibility of walking away; etc.

Laurie snatches up the receiver and says, “Okay. Who is this really?” And the voice says something genuinely sinister:

This is the hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
Here come the planes.

This isn’t the glad hand. This is not the giving hand. This hand wants something. So you’d better get on the plane.

After a bit, there is a return to the themes of the opening prayer: “O Superman, O judge, O Mom and Dad”:

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!

Justice is associated with the judge who is addressed at the beginning. Force, I suppose, is associated with Superman. Of course, we don’t know if “Superman” refers to the comic book character or Nietzsche’s Übermensch, or both, or neither. As for love, well that is usually associated with Mom. But Mom is stuck in at the end, as the last resort, after love, justice, and force are all gone. No wonder Laurie doesn’t want to answer when Mom calls.

It turns out that Mom is not Mom, just as the planes are not planes. Instead, both Mom and the planes look like metaphors for the very same thing:

So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
In your automatic arms.
Your electronic arms.
In your arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
Your petrochemical arms.
Your military arms.
In your electronic arms.

These aren’t loving arms, strong arms, or just arms. They are smothering arms. These are the arms of “the hand that takes.” These are the arms of the technological-scientific octopus. Mom seems more like Big Brother.

“Big Science” has to be the strangest top-10 single in all of pop history.

The other tracks on Big Science are less weighty, but “Walking, not Falling,” “Born, Never Asked,” and “Let X=X/It Tango” are all enjoyable.

I took a chance on Big Science based on a review and bought the Warner Brothers vinyl release in 1982. The sound was great and the vinyl superbly quiet. I think Warner Brothers figured that this record would appeal to unforgiving art snobs, thus they made sure it was a quality production. Big Science was also one of the earliest CD releases, but the original CDs were audibly worse than the vinyl. Unfortunately, when I went to graduate school and needed to downsize, I traded the vinyl in for one of the CDs. Fortunately, in 2007, Nonesuch brought out a special extended 25th anniversary edition of the CD with much-improved sound—warm, spacious, and detailed—plus a bonus track, “Walk the Dog,” and the video of “O Superman.” In 2021, the 2007 remaster Big Science was released on heavy, absolutely superb red vinyl. Big Science is a wonderful example of a recording that was made for vinyl and still sounds best in that medium.

Big Science made a Laurie Anderson fan of me, but I don’t think any Laurie Anderson fan ever wore the grooves out of her records, hummed her melodies on the way to work, or sang “O Superman” in the shower. As with all minimalism, it just isn’t musical enough for that sort of engagement. Thus it is somewhat ironic that Big Science has been so well-served by high-quality releases, because it doesn’t exactly attract audiophiles.

Anderson’s follow-up album, 1984’s Mister Heartbreak—complete with guest appearances from Peter Gabriel and William S. Burroughs, plus the guitar of Adrian Belew and the bass of Bill Laswell—is a genuine work of avant-pop and much more of a musical experience.

But for the most part, Laurie Anderson appeals more to the intellect than the ear. Thus in the end, she never escaped the long arms of conceptual art. But even in that failing, Big Science succeeds as the record of the time.