Music Arcades: Laurie Anderson, William S Burroughs, John Giorno: You're the Guy I Want to Share my Money With

Same Virgin Megastore story with this double album as with You're a Hook. It must be pretty valuable now, I'd have thought — mint condition vinyl — especially since it has at least one track different from the later CD release (as listed on Musicbrainz). The way the vinyl version works is that each artist has one side to themselves. Then each is listed as having one track on the fourth side. The first time I played it, I think I just got the Burroughs track and then the needle lifted at the end of the side. It took me a while to figure out that (as explained on the Giorno Poetry Systems discography) the last side has three parallel grooves, not just one. So, depending on where the needle falls, you get one of the three tracks. You can't control which one you get. I don't know of any other records that have tried that particular gimmick, do you?

Anyway, the Laurie Anderson tracks are not her best material. There's a version of Born, Never Asked that's different from the one on Big Science, I think, but all the other tracks are tape pieces that are also on United States Live, with extra audience noise. John Giorno is, to simplify horribly, updating Allen Ginsberg's Howl for the extra squalor of the '70s. He does this thing multi-tracking his voice, which I used to think was some clever processing device, but now I think that (given that it was recorded in 1981) it must just be him reading each poem over the top of a recording of him reading the same poem, if you see what I mean. Sometimes the multiple voices interfere nicely, as in Steve Reich's It's Gonna Rain. But actually it's quite grating to listen to for more than a few minutes at a time. I guess you had to be there.

The real discovery for me on this album was the William Burroughs pieces. I found while listening this morning that I could recite fair-sized chunks from memory. I think that may be partly because, as with my Lenny Bruce record, I learnt to type by pecking out phrases from these recordings — but also because Burroughs' performances of the text take a genuinely musical turn at times. Oh, and another reason may be that I listened to them intently while compiling the 1986 mixtape for Jeremy that I mentioned before. I think I used sections from My Protagonist Kim Carson (listen to the Sangre de Cristo section here and you'll hear what I mean about musicality), The Do Rights and maybe bits of Progressive Education.

Black humour gets better as you get older, doesn't it? I enjoyed these recordings in 1986, but I wasn't sure entirely why. But I think I enjoy them more now, particularly the tale of in Progressive Education of the Parisian bartender who had fashioned a weapon from his bad breath "so pestiferous" that it could knock you unconscious at a distance of six feet.