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

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