Rock
74
A Little Discussion on Big Science
by Adam Wacholder
In 1982, “Big Science” became the title track of Laurie Anderson’s debut LP. The second cut on the record, it is preceded only by one track in which she chants at a point, almost as if to remind you, “this is the time, and this is the record of the time.” The album is almost entirely a nightmarish collage of various American cultural elements, consciously presented clichés and colloquialisms with bitter irony, and an unwelcoming beauty. The title track brings together these elements in a particularly lucid manner.
Starting with the eerie howl of a lone wolf, Laurie Anderson sets the scene. The sonic landscape in Big Science is painted with a church organ-esque synth backdrop accompanying a humble smattering of Native American percussion. It is apocalyptically bleak. Joshua Klein of Pitchfork calls it “gloomy ghost town future-music.” The only bit of warmth comes from the opening lyrics, a soothing yet stern warning, “it’s cold outside…don’t forget your mittens.”
We step outside, in-character. With only the slightest change in tone, Anderson’s second verse becomes spoken-word on top of the messianic synth drone, and the historical echo of Native American percussion that is unmistakably symbolic considering the song’s transition of images. “Hey, pal! How do I get to town from here?” The answer comes, tongue planted firmly in cheek:
And he said: Well, just take a right where
they're going to build that new shopping mall,
go straight past where they're going to put in the freeway,
and take a left at what's going to be the new sports center,
and keep going until you hit the place where
they're thinking of building that drive-in bank.
You can't miss it.
Her response, just as bizarre, is: “This must be the place.” Aside from the ever-present sardonic overtones, the lyrics of “Big Science” are very physical, offering distinct images of specific places. Yet, her landscape remains unchanged. As alluded to in the words of Klein, we are seeing something before it happens. It’s not quite a premonition, but really a blueprint for a new way of life that was already past gestation when the work was recorded.
A simple search for the phrase “Big Science” without the artist’s attachment reveals the song’s title as being a term coined twenty years earlier to describe the massive changes that occurred within the science and technology industries as a direct result of World War II (Weinberg). As the song describes an apparently imminent mass-suburbanization, we are actually witnessing the result of this “Big Science” movement, which entailed a scaling-up of industry projects to compensate for the demands of a wartime nation. The common history of America’s post-WWII environment has the 1950’s being the golden age of suburban living, an increasingly sprawled highway system, the continuous