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p. I always struggle to describe Laurie Anderson’s music to other people. She plays rather avant-garde music, which is part performance art and part story-telling. She has always used electronic instruments extensively (including some of her own making), and many of her songs involve her deepening the pitch of her voice dramatically to form what she calls ‘the voice of authority’. If that description has convinced you that you would hate this album, then I can only say that I’ve just proved my own point: you really need to listen to her music rather relying on my feeble descriptions.

p. My own first introduction to Laurie Anderson (and her only chart hit in the UK) was the first track on this album—’O Superman’. I hated it with a passion. In my defence, I was in my early teens, and mainly listening to Michael Jackson at the time, so it was perhaps not surprising that I just didn’t get it. It also sounds horrible on a tinny radio—you really need to hear it in a quiet environment, and on a decent stereo to pick up all the subtleties. I’ve been lucky enough to see her perform live a few times, and on the last occasion (a few months after 9/11), she performed ‘O Superman’. It blew me away. It has always been quite a moving and disturbing song—with an atmosphere of loss, alienation and fear—but it has gained whole new layers of associations.

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p. I seem to have “developed an interest”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000430.html in urban sports recently (as a spectator only, I hasten to add), so I naturally gravitated towards this DVD in Blockbuster. In fact, you don’t really need to be interested in skateboarding to enjoy this documentary. It’s a fascinating story—how did a bunch of poor, tough kids from a rough area of LA (Dogtown) come to develop a whole new style of skateboarding?

p. Skateboarding was developed by surfers in the 50s as an after-surf activity. At first, the style was all clean-cut pastel colours and a very straight upright riding style. The Z-Boys (a team put together by the owners of the radical Zephyr Surf Shop) blasted on to the scene like a bunch of break dancers at a ballroom dancing competition. They honed their skills on the concrete banks of school playgrounds, and in swimming pools drained because of the drought in the 1970s, breaking in to yards and splitting when they heard the Police sirens. They emulated the new style of their surf heroes with a low, sweeping action, carving tight turns and touching the concrete with their hands. There were odd echoes of the ethos of the free runners:

Two hundred years of American technology has unwittingly created a massive cement playground of unlimited potential. But it was the minds of 11 year olds that could see the potential. —Craig Stecyk, 1975 Going big worked only as long as you looked good doing it. —Narration by Sean Penn

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