Laurie Anderson's Home of the Brave - An International Archive of ...

Tinkerbelle Raids the CapitalistsA Re-Vistation of Laurie Anderson's Home of the Braveby Marc S. Tucker(December 2005)There was a time when the term 'avant-garde' applied to a fusion of art and alteredconsciousness, a foray into the mysterious, the evocative, and the daring, a milieu markedlyprogressed from the norms experienced during an artist's leasehold of life on this depressingmudball. With the infiltration of zen into the western landscape, and especially since John Cage,forgetting Dada for the moment (an exercise that bears much repeating), it was through this formthat one was supposed to begin to see that the artist was possessed of a minute shard ofelevated consciousness, a form of so-called "enlightenment."We always hope this will be the case to one degree or another, in some bizarre shape, whenhearing of specimens of the avant-garde. Certainly, Cage illustrated it as strikingly as any of theremarkableros of the catalogue, constantly excavating and disgorging elements of himself andhidden realities. Other times, on the graphic side, geniuses like Max Ernst and Salvador Dalistruck down the outposts of perception, ushering us into parallel dimensions, realms we hadn'tknown existed until they'd painted them. When they were really successful, rebellious artistsshowed us more of ourselves than we cared to see, yet we stared, fascinated, helpless.Those are the extremest exemplars, granted. In them, a sense of catastrophe and paranoia oftensmothers everything, despite one's fascination, but that's surrealism for ya. Though the movementwas once considered a part of the avant rebellion; in retrospect, the inclusion has not held well,especially given latter day practitioners outside the movement's cloister. With the avant-garde -which, looked at historically, has too often sprung from feeble loins - one has all the time in theworld for the same process minus most of the hazards, a hell of a lot more leisurely and infinitelysafer. Consider: one of Dali's canvases may be an introspective drug but his work is most oftenfrenzied with madness, discomfort, and fire. The avant-garde is, in contrast, almost patrician in itsdetachment, affecting a groundling's perspective from a well-padded house on the beach -academic as opposed to visceral, bourgeois as opposed to bent-plebian. To scandalize theanalogue over into another realm: in surrealism, you take acid and ketamine, while theavant-gardist just smokes pot (just steal a glance at Christo).'Avant-garde' means 'forward guard,' a bit too basketballish a term, so we'll slip in 'vanguard.' Foran inadvertently hilarious illustrative contrast on how inappropriately the term is frequently used,read these quotes from The Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases:

1) "The punk singer, who wowed the avant-garde of Madrid in the frenzied years after Franco'sdeath, has mellowed into a chubby 45-year-old in jeans and a stripy jumper." (1996 Times), and2) "[Stockhausen's] "Gruppen" has always been considered an avant-garde landmark." (1996Country Life)."The first is a typical critic's (in this case: lexicographer's) self-gaffe: punk music as even faintlyavante-garde? Please. The second is appropriate... and appropriateness, bizarrely, will be thecenter of this critique; hence, there's a rather pronounced tone present until the denouement.What will follow may seem disparaging of the movement; it's not... not entirely. We must begin todraw reference to a frequent parasiting which passes for the genuine article, lest the term andevent become lost in the usual neutralizations and idiotspreche. It's quite well understood that alot of what identifies the movement is radicalized individualism fueled by largely uncontrollablevisions, compulsions, and emotions articulated through bizarre craftsmanship. Amongst poseurs,though, such attributes are at best only hinted at through a severe lack of the same. Thus, theersatz Avant-garde Club is most exposed through its too-proliferent pretensions.And that's where we'll start, on Laurie Anderson's Betty Crocker Cookie Dough release Home ofthe Brave(Warner Bros., 1986), which contains not one of the statutory elements just mentioned,being little more than a porridge of visually exaggerated restatements of artistic norms. In thisfutility, Anderson shares honors with David van Tiegham, another academic and yuppie the mediahas tried to paint as avant-gardistic, failing miserably, mainly because there's no there there.Anderson, on the other hand, is smart enough to steal nearly every au courant device availableand knit them together in an entertaining, but ultimately insipid, stew of inoffensively middle-classdivertissements.Society's imp matron, fairydust queen of the bourgeoisie, the bankable peripheral artiste,Anderson was so placed due to a lack of any threatening degree of talent which might upsetongoing accommodations to the demands of the disaffected nouveau semi-riche. She's theapotheosis of what some critics have long known: most of the reputedly esoteric art-fringe world iscrammed to the gills with quasi-clever dilettantes - 'fakers' if you're more the pragmatist - who'vebeen able to sink their canines into various frayed borders of the mode, knowing that practicallyno one really understands any of it and, thus, they're safe in their pretensions. The least cleverand limpest quasi-provocateur, or any similar creature, may profitably exploit this ignorancethrough brazen manipulations. Thus, Home of The Brave is probably Anderson's most successfulwork precisely because it's not avant-garde, but only a safe and warm understated styrene replicathat distantly seems like it, beloved of morons disgorging dollars for the privilege of beingmomentarily in the know.In fact, you'll see here that, as the glittery charade draws toward its finale during "Language Is aVirus," you can't help but get the conviction the entire thing's a thinly caucasian bloodless outréNight At the Apollo. Unfortunate to the allusion, which intones a high degree of aptitude,Anderson's impressive neither as dancer nor singer, violinist nor bass player, nor evenpseudo-playwright, though she certainly knows how to concoct a predigested plethora of clichés.Compared to 99% of the charlatans in the avant-garde world, she's head and shoulders superior,at least theatrically, thus deserving of whatever riches accrue to her sham. The discerningaesthete, though will find little more than a shred of the real deal, if any at all.This is precisely the problem, isn't it? If one doesn't already have it, one never will - "it" being aninborn, non-cultivatable, unnameable trait. Try as one might, the diaphanous quality is like asex-change: you can get the surgery but, underneath the new window dressing, you're still exactlywhat you started out as. True-blue, dyed-in-the-wool, genuine oddballs emphatically state andrestate themselves constantly while the rest, the hangers-on in various fields (Andy Warhol, LaAnderson, Alan Rich, etc.), just limp along behind, jealous of the glow, racing to catch itsafter-image.Home, ladies and gentlemen, is confection, pure and simple, an exercise to re-assure the moniedthat all is safe and secure amongst the rabble, that the status quo isn't being threatened bythinkers and workers, that they're able to continue their depredations safely. The RIO schoolmust've had a ball watching this flakeshow - I can just see Henry Cow reforming to come up with

an anti-Home, in grating retribution. Anderson has given us the Cats or Lion King version oflarge-scale avant posturings, a bit more elaborate than anything she's ever done but just asforgettable.It's true that the so-called geniuses at the labels - a dim handful of Clive Davises amongst clownswith greasy 'tudes and puncturable smiles - normally haven't much of a clue what constitutesgood music, most often just making the kind of educated guesses luck favors with apatheticimpartiality. They keep signing up the beef and churning out the crap, throwing everything againstthe wall until something sticks, littering the landscape with pathetic losers as well as (and this iswhere irony shows amidst mindlessness) a few grossly ignored marvels. Weirdly, the practiceworks often enough, though mostly destructively, producing a somewhat wider array of choices.The one release that hits usually ends up paying for the rest - not to say it properly rewards thebands themselves, that'll never happen, but it lines the pockets of the brass and keeps theprocess going.So much for the general appraisal. Here's what the hapless procure when they glom the grandtour. First of all, the line-up: Joy Askew (keyb, vox), Adrian Belew (gtr, vox), William Burroughs(dubbed vox), Richard Landry (horns), Nicolette MacDonald (vox), Sang Won Park (keyb, vox),Janice Pendarvis (vox), and David Van Tiegham (perc), with sundry horn players (incl. Jane IraBloom), percussionists, and others in muted cameo sound-spots (i.e. Chic's Nile Rodgers andgadfly producer/bassist Bill Laswell). There are a couple heavyweights in the otherwise middlingroster - Belew, Burroughs - but Belew uncharacteristically adds nothing to the venture andBurroughs is a momentarily premature literary cum shot, perpetually kept as lap-dog for an upperclass desperately hungering to sup with panthers as safely and as infrequently as possible - justenough to shore up the patrician jello with an illusion of rough edges.The poorly designed stage lights up dimly as Anderson enters in a spastic dance, mummified,copping Nash the Slash's riff, servicing it about as well as the ex-FM string rasper himself - whichis to say: poorly. Her gut-strung axe has been plugged into an effects device transmuting thesignal to an approximation of emulated electronitones. Crash-test-dummied humanequins standabout the floorboards as she carries on a taser-induced jig, prodding, poking, eliciting sullen robotreactions. The emphasis, of course, as will be the case for the entirety of the show, is on the MC,Anderson. This ain't no musical presentation, it's a personality sell-job and glaringly obvious fromthe git-go. The St. Vitus jitter terminates to untowardly wild applause braised in feminine screams,a token entablature that Andercipher has been inducted into New Feminism's ranks of, um, strongand, er, powerful, uh, wymyn.The throwaway gesture's superficially buttressed by an immediate pinning of the spotlight,glaringly nailing her intro monologue to the floorboards, where the violinist's voice warps asslurringly as her instrument, providing a succession of grey flannel vacuities stamp-pressing falsebonhommie and parodic stereotyping, ironically aping hyperthyroidal librarians, their tones andmoods.The object of this scattered on-stage preface is a revelation of the "opera's" inane base: zeroesand ones, binary code. The philosophical heart's hilarious: to be a zero, claims The Imp, is nodifferent than being #1! Oh, how the heavens have opened; we've received The Word from onhigh. Heretofore, we'd foolishly thought accomplishment meant something. Well, kiss myexistentialist grits and call me Spanky.However, the brow wrinkles, watching the spiky-haired figure in the kleig soup lamely presentingher latest attempt to capture... What? A top-selling single? A storefront video? Whatever Fatemight perplexingly grant? The substitute here is self-effacement, in stereo, at a locally famousvenue, with a supporting cast, all concentrated intently on star and ego, and with La Laurie's Stingmug prominent on gigantiscreen, dwarfing the musical ants on the stage. The zen-ness of it all,juxtaposed against what one's lying eyes survey, is more than a little non-credible.Music erupts immediately thereafter, illustrating exactingly what the viewer's in for. It's all decentlypresented, true, but in lightweight simplistic pop musics, nothing more, nothing less. This, weneedn't hold our breath waiting to understand, spells the entirety of modern avant-gardism,whether it's Phill Niblock noodling for hours over a single note worshipped for oscillating quavers,Laurie Anderson multi-staging, or a framed piece of wood riven with rusty nails and a splash of

tempera atop glued-on dogshit at Los Angeles' dismal La Luz De Jesus gallery. The new venue'sslightly rude, inanely pretentious, but still an acceptable ego indulgence that disports outsideone's gold-lined sandbox, uncharted territory for whomever mommy and daddy bankrolledthrough Tulane or UCLA. The melodies can be found on mainstream music stations,microscopically sanitized for mass consumption, gimmicked for pseudo-sophistication, perfumedwith pheromones formulated to engorge the passionate agitation of A&R monkeys: gelt. Art, afterall, must serve a purpose. Hence, what better mission than this?The Leprachaunette halts almost before beginning, broadly winking slyly, so we know she'staoistically crushing that evil ol' ego, babbling about boho visitations to streetside palmists,rendering revelations that, in former lives, she was a cow, then a bird, and, later, hundreds andhundreds of incarnations as rabbis until this very moment, this lifetime, her first go-round as a,ta-daa! woman. Ego, thy name is Tinkerbelle. The multi-levelled crassnesses needn't becommented upon, but one again sees exactly what the film really is: shallow self-referentialism.Were some new book to properly catalogue the avant-garde, this fluff wouldn't merit the first letterof the first word in the opening sentence. How did the refrain go? "Show-biz kids making moviesof themselves, you know they don't give a..."Another spastic dance follows as we're tortured by an aimless syndrum exercise: theepiphanistically rabbinical transmorph's dressage has been implanted with responsivetouch-points kicking up a synth somewhere off-stage. She taps various parts and we hear a fewseconds of electronica drum soloing, the equal of what butter-faced, suit-and-tied, tub o' gooflunkies inflict on the rubes at any NAMM show. The audience, predictably, goes nuts. Thatdisplay segues into a game-show parody, wherein The Selfless One trots out her collegeescholastica Espanol, launching into a brief round of "What's More Macho?" for no apparentreason other than solidarity, from a laughable distance, with Andrea Dworkin. The elements areabout as subtle as flying hammers wrapped in barbed wire.One might think there'd be nothing redeeming about this mess, given the above. Not true. Homeof the Brave, a catcall title from one carny to a bunch of others, is calculatingly chart-oriented, asseamless as a Bob James jazz-lite release, innocuously exploratory within predictable borders,and, inside those same limits, quite good. Whether that's complimentary is another matter. Belewambles out some of his pre-Crimsonite stylings and there's sufficient progression peeking out tosatisfy the bubble-gumming segment of that slice of the consuming public. In fact, it comes as noshock that there's at least one song for most every taste on the charts. Paradoxical? C'mon,wasn't Breton's real mission a matter of end-run capitalism, pre-MTV 'tude merchandising?Perhaps you'll find in my words a sense of provocateuring. Well, sirrah, so be it. Our hostessmakes so bold as to invoke Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and, if she's studying Fassbinder's inanecatalogue, well, she must be avant-garde! yawn Think of this farrago as Sominex for art hags, alullaby for the jangled nerves of a yuppified audience fressing over stocks and BMWs, and you'llhave it pared to a fare-thee-well. Home's a kinetic uptown exhibit of trend-of-the-moment tripe artfutilely attempting the divide between utter mediocrity and backwater incoherence. When youcognize that Anderson isn't the avant-goddess she's laughably promoted to be, something sheotherwise semi-daintily sweats to abet, you can settle back into a cynical enjoyment of the film'smany quasi-well-crafted failures. Discard the A-V sobriquet and understand it's a euphemism forNew Age music stabbed slightly out of focus, but... pay to see it on-stage? No, 'tis merely agrown-up version of little girl puppet shows. Though the savvy wage slave might retain the video,tickling up curmudgeonly glee from time to time, music for the macaw, neon crassness for thosetimes when Kenny G and Yanni just aren't cutting it, even the obstreperous have to admit thatsuch ventures are clever to a miniscule degree, a weird soma when all other sedatives fail.That's success of a sort...isn't it?Check out the rest of PERFECT SOUND FOREVERMAIN PAGE ARTICLES STAFF/FAVORITE MUSIC LINKS E-MAIL