Watch Laurie Anderson's fantastic "What You Mean We?" (1986) from PBS's Alive from Off Center

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/24/watch-laurie-andersons-fanta.html

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Oh yeah, I remember — PBS used to be good.

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My deepest regret in life is lending my Alive From Off Center VHS tape (Better quality than the recordings posted) and that guy loosing the tape at somebody’s house and never getting it back.

I never forgave him and I never lent rare shit out ever again.

I have managed to acquire a few episodes and post them to youtube but never the episodes I wanted back.

This episode is the thing that got me obsessed by Laurie Anderson:

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This reminds me of back when Channel 4 was new and adventurous.

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“You smoke too much. I mean way too much.”

I loved this show and also have no recordings of it anymore. This show is what made me go to art school to be a “multimedia video sound artist” lol.

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Don’t know if she is still doing any live shows, but if you find one, drop everything I go. I had always thought her fascinating but kind of emotionally distant. I went to see the Strange Angels show and walked out a blubbering mess.

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AAAHHH! Thank you @pesco! I have been trying to remember the name of this show.

I had heard of Laurie Anderson before, but her appearances on this show cemented her in my mind as a goddess of good-natured strangeness.

(Offensive, angry weird is so cheap and easy.)

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Yup. That very same episode got me hooked on Anderson as well.

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It’s a crime against art that you can’t get the entire run of the show on DVD. I saw so much good weird on that show, especially the season that was hosted by Laurie Anderson and her video clone.

Here’s Sally Cruikshank’s ‘Face Like a Frog’ which also appeared on Alive From Off Center:

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Doh! I missed that one from AFOC; otherwise I watched that program religiously. Anyway, Sally is the one who did the creepy cartoon animations for Twilight Zone, the Movie.

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I went out right after seeing that show and bought the album Mr Heartbreak on tape days later and wore the hell out of it.

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Oh hey, here’s the whole episode on YT!

This includes ‘My Dinner with the Devil Snake’, another brilliant animated story, weaving together an African folk tale. a dinner in NYC, and a story of personal betrayal. I think the animator on that might be the same guy who animated the ‘And She Was’ music video for the Talking Heads.

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I loved that show, and taped several episodes. I think it was the tail of hippie free form culture tagging off with emerging technology driven culture.

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