Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Happy Birthday Laurie Anderson

by Robert Boyd

I was a college freshman in 1981 when "O Superman" by Laurie Anderson was released as a single. My dorm-mates and I loved it but found it mystifying. We were especially curious about how she made that repeating "hanh hanh hanh hanh" noise. One of my roommates played sax, and he got where he could exactly duplicate it. So we concluded that it was a single note on the saxophone played over and over. (Of course, it is Anderson's own voice, run on a tape loop--but we didn't learn this until much later.)



Happy 65th birthday, Laurie Anderson!


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