Mister Heartbreak
Laurie Anderson
1984: Warner Bros 25077-2
WOW what an album…! The weakest track, for me, is “Sharkey’s Night”—and that’s only because I heard the version in the concert film “Home of the Brave” before I heard the original version. Ditto “Sharkey’s Day,” although I still enjoy it on this album.
When I lived in Anchorage, Alaska, in the winter of 1986-87, I used to listen to a tape of “Blue Lagoon” and look out over the wintry weirdness of the city from my apartment window; it always seemed so appropriate for the confused detachment I felt there. Years later I played it for my friend Karen in Edinburgh late one night as part of a “show and tell” tour of our musical loves, and she said it evoked for her not the heat and silences which I described as being my impression but instead an escape fantasy of someone stuck in a New York City winter. While she’s probably accurate in this, and she didn’t mean it in a dismissive way, I’m still happy with my take on it.
It’s an awesome album—get it if you don’t already have it.
“Days, I dive by the wreck; nights, I swim in the blue lagoon. Always used to wonder who I’d bring to a desert island….”
Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.