Laurie Anderson created an unforgettable four minutes of late-night television when she performed a revised version of "Only an Expert," from her recently released Nonesuch album, Homeland, on Late Night with David Letterman last night on CBS. As she has in this week's live performances of songs from Homeland in Philadelphia and New York, and will tomorrow night at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, Anderson added references to the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico ("Sometimes, when the oil dill breaks, and the oil spills out into the ocean ...") to the song's sardonic chorus, "Only an expert can deal with the problem."
At the song's end, Letterman, on his way to greet the performers, says emphatically: "Exactly. That's exactly what I was thinking."