Track of the Week - 8 November 2015
I was in Oxford with Mrs Tea at Johnny's yesterday and we took lunch in a cafe frequented by students of that university city. As well as the people on laptops and reading books there was a maths lesson not far from our table.
The tutor was generally supportive but occasionally slipped into the incredulous, "I can't believe you've got this far in geometry without knowing what perpendicular means!" and sarcastic, "you do know what a circle is?"
There was algebra too and I lost count of the times I heard "what does x equal?" And that drew me to this 1982 Laurie Anderson track.
From the avant-garde performance artist's debut album Big Science (great title track but most famous for the surprise hit single 'O Superman'), it's much less a song and more a story set to some experimental electronic music. An odd story that starts with a hat check clerk in an ice rink and finishes with a feeling like being in a burning building.
Don't let me put you off. It's odder and better than I remembered through the intervening 30-odd years.
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