Laurie Anderson at World Café Live

What's the appropriate response to a musical performance? Stomps and whistles? Or a respectful silence awaiting the signal that the performance is finished?

The question is obviously disingenuous, since the answer depends on the nature of the performance. A rock concert is at one end of the spectrum and a choral church service is at the other. Of course, there are infinite gradations in between, and plenty of variations— I, for one, would love to see a return of beatnik snaps— but the conventions are established and the expectations are clear.

What do you do, though, with an artist who has made a career of defying any categorization— not only specific musical genres, but also the category of music itself?

Changing with technology

Laurie Anderson has performed since the early '70s, mixing visual imagery, electronic music and spoken word, with all of these elements sometimes presented straight but often changed, echoed or distorted. Her material, similarly, is a mix consisting of surreal poetry delivered in a spacey singsong (either her own voice, or an electronically transformed male "voice of authority"), socio-political commentary, storytelling and more-or-less traditional "songs."

Anderson's recent performance at World Cafe Live presented material from her current album, Homeland, to an intimate audience of what appeared to be mostly long-time fans. Dozens of small votive candles were scattered along the edge of the stage, and Anderson entered, stood at her podium, and embarked upon the performance.

(One significant change over the course of Anderson's career is the advance in technology: She seemed to be controlling all of the distortions and effects with a laptop computer at her podium.)

The first few pieces evoked no audible reaction from the audience as Anderson and two backup musicians (one playing electric bass and the other accordion and keyboards) segued from one hard-to-categorize piece to another.

Al Gore and the BP spill

But when she got to "Only an Expert"— a spoken-word piece about the abdication of personal responsibility in American life generally, and about the BP spill, Al Gore, and the war in Iraq, specifically— the audience began to respond, laughing throughout and applauding at individual lines, then clapping enthusiastically at the end.

The applause felt not quite appropriate to me, though, and not just because it's such a conventional reaction to an unconventional performance. More important, it tended to break the spell, to extract us from the mental and sensory world that Anderson tries to create.

It wasn't that I didn't want to share my appreciation; it's just that I wasn't entirely sure how to do so. It was a wonderful performance, and I did join, quite enthusiastically, in the ovation at the end— one that brought Anderson back for a quick violin solo as an encore.

I think she would have dug it if we had snapped, though. I wish I had.