Soma
Resources => Music [Public] => Topic started by: Nichi on October 31, 2014, 10:12:20 PM
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http://www.youtube.com/v/E21KH_YOk7Y
At the time this came out, this was one of my least favorite songs by her, with its sing-song quality. But today, I have a real appreciation for it, especially when it gets madder, faster and frenetic. Then it ends with fast horns and one dissonant note. I get it now. The message is in the music, not the lyrics.
"In my mind I can't study war no more." ~Laura Nyro
Come on, people! Come on, children!
Come on down to the glory river
Gonna wash you up, and wash you down
Gonna lay the devil down, gonna lay that devil down
Come on, people! Come on, children!
There's a king at the glory river
And the precious king, he loved the people to sing
Babes in the blinkin' sun sang, "We shall overcome"
And I got fury in my soul
Fury's gonna take me to the glory goal
In my mind I can't study war no more
Save the people! Save the children! Save the country now!
Come on, people! Come on, children!
Come on down to the glory river
Gonna wash you up and wash you down
Gonna lay the devil down, gonna lay that devil down
Come on people! Sons and mothers!
Keep the dream of the two young brothers
Gonna take that dream and ride that dove
We can build the dream with love, I know
We could build the dream with love
We could build the dream with love, I know
We could build the dream with love
And I got fury in my soul
Fury's gonna take me to the glory goal
In my mind I can't study war no more
Save the people! Save the children! Save the country!
Save the country! Save the country! Save the country!
Laura Nyro - Save The Country Lyrics
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Todd Rundgren on working with Laura Nyro
http://www.youtube.com/v/APZN_uL-z0A
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http://www.youtube.com/v/Q2PeqqNi9bA
Market in the cool white mornin'
Merchants sell as ladies buy
Milk, tobacco, soap and matches
Sweep the floor
While the dishes dry
Spring whispered in her ear
Like soft Mediterranean wailin'
Sleepy woman by the window
Dreamin' in the morning air
Of the man who takes her sweetness
By a chinese lamp upstairs
The steam of China tea
You could hear the woman sing
In the soft flames of spring
Spring has swept the scarlet side streets
Winds caress, undress, invite
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http://www.youtube.com/v/wzYzCq4-R2A
Morning, come to the windows of the street, selling red watermelon, five cents a piece.
Merry boat on the river, freedom. Fresh dreams to deliver, freedom.
Over and over and over, I call out your name.
God standing on the brown earth. ‘Get up,’ Mama hollers.
Shooflies in the doorway, white dove’s gonna come today, white dove’s gonna come today.
Oh, what a morning, I feel so good. Oh, what a morning of brotherhood.
Hold me by the light. Kittens run the neighborhood through. Ragamuffin boys.
All the world is new by the light of day.
Give with your heart and love will come to you.
Kids come in all shapes and colors to the cool morning dew.
Merry boat on the river, freedom. Fresh dreams to deliver, freedom.
Over and over and over and over and over and over.
God standing on the brown earth. Lovelight in the morning.
Shooflies in the doorway, white dove’s gonna come today, white dove’s gonna come today…
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http://www.youtube.com/v/Q0pshRVJ93Q
Cigarettes
I'm all alone
With my smoke and ashes
Cigarettes
I'm all alone
With my smoke and ashes
Take me night-flying
Maybe
Mars has good news
Who?
Who am I?
I am the blues
Sooth me
Horn's warm red love making
Funky music
Move me
Night wind, red taillights
And funky music
'Cause I'm restless
In my love for sale shoes
Who?
Who am I?
I am the blues
In a world of war
I can't find my laughter
I can't see the night sun
And I can't see my freedom
I guess I can't see too much
No more
Baby till I lose my blues
Fly
Through the sky
Like Superfly
Over the stars
We climb
Over the sweet red wine
I tell myself
Right on
Right on
Right on
Right on
Right on
Right on
Right on
Right on
Blues
Flying so high
A plane in the sky
Listen to, listen to, listen to the music of the night wind
Listen
To the music of the night wind
Listen
To the music of the night wind
Listen to the people
Ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
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Your link was silent, so I found this (live) with sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJNo9iIPa98 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJNo9iIPa98)
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http://www.youtube.com/v/FPENidUWYvI
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http://www.youtube.com/v/2_gu5ZNB_RY
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http://www.youtube.com/v/u3_mdy9VfCs
Ooh, la, la, la
Ooh, la, la, la
Ooh, la, la, la
Ooh, la, la, la
Emily
And her love to be
Carved in a heart
On a berry tree
But it's only, only a little farewell love spell
Time to design a woman
Touch me
Oh wake me
Emily you ornament the earth
For me
Emily
You're the natural snow
The unstudied sea
You're a cameo
And I swear, I swear you were born
A weaver's lover born for the loom's desire
Move me
Oh sway me
Emily you ornament the earth
For me, for me
Emmie your mama's been a-callin' you
Ooh
Who stole
Mama's heart
And cuddled
In her garden?
Darlin' Emmie
La, la, la
Ooh, la, la, la
Ooh, la, la, la
Ooh, la, la, la
You're my friend
And I loved you
Emily
Emily
Emily
She got the the way to move me, Emmie
She got the the way to move me yeah
She got the the way to move me, Emmie
She got the the way to get up and move me
She got the the way to move me, Emmie
She got the the way to move me yeah
She got the the way to move me, Emmie
She got the the way to get up and move me
She got the the way to move me, Emmie
She got the the way to move me yeah
She got the the way to move me, Emmie
She got the the way to move me yeah
Laura Nyro
A raw version sans production
http://www.youtube.com/v/8obTadnSpyQ
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http://www.youtube.com/v/WLY0XaSNF0A
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Thanks for this selection Vicki. I had never heard of this singer. I found her voice and style interesting, but not that attractive to me. I listened to these tracks with interest, and I can't exactly say why, but there is something in the style that doesn't grab me. Yet I think that is a purely personal response - others obviously find her highly attractive, and with good reason.
I am fascinated by those interviews. That song writers felt a sense of release. Elton I have always thought of as conservative, so I'm not surprised he felt that way. I never suffered from that tradition of song writing, mostly because I never knew about it. Only many years later did I hear about things like bridges, which still baffle me, that people write songs like that. I doubt I ever wrote songs with an idea of chorus and what-not, for me it was always a selection of musical discoveries within a field I was exploring, and I would string them all together in the best way I could find. Even before I found other cultural music, I was composing with no rules whatsoever in mind. This caused me to feel uncomfortable when discussing music, or playing, with other musicians, because they all had some expectations which baffled me why they allowed themselves to be so constrained. Laura obviously felt the same way, and I like the way she just followed he musical nose into the music.
I think my dislocation from the main stream of music has only grown stronger over the years, such that I now feel a distinct sense of antipathy to the whole concept of a 'song'. I'm not against all songs, and I enjoy listening to them, yet I am still aware of an underlying frustration with that format for music. It seems like music has been caught, tamed and disfigured to fit into a mould that the public has been taught to expect. And it amazes me to discover other cultures with completely different expectations, so it's a learned thing.
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Even back in her day, Laura Nyro was an acquired taste. I can think of only one or two friends who joined me in liking her. So I'm not surprised you didn't particularly care for her - I'm used to that, heh! For me, she crawled into my ear which expanded up and down with her range. She was great fun to sing along with.
As for a "song", well, hold onto your hat in the world of contemporary music, because not only can no one seem to tolerate the meandering musical mind, but it has become a world of soundbytes -- brief samplings, literally, of a melody. (When one is lucky enough to hear a melody, that its.)
(Oh, and I too have always been annoyed by "bridges". They were a function of the 30's and 40's, which also heralded the long, winding, and seemingly irrelevant introductions. Those intro's were eventually dropped in commercial songwriting, thankfully.)
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I put her up because she definitely was not one of the "breathy, come-flower-me" singers.
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I put her up because she definitely was not one of the "breathy, come-flower-me" singers.
No - absolutely not. She has a very genuine voice - totally her own, although she does remind me in her style with Joni Mitchell. Wonder who came first?
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No - absolutely not. She has a very genuine voice - totally her own, although she does remind me in her style with Joni Mitchell. Wonder who came first?
They were simultaneous, but in different worlds -- Laura in urban NYC, Joni in Canada and California.
Really, they are very different, but they both had that soprano capability. Laura wrote everything on piano - Joni only occasionally wrote on piano.
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http://www.youtube.com/v/te-n7KY3vl4
This one separates the real Nyro fans from the nonfans.
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They were simultaneous, but in different worlds -- Laura in urban NYC, Joni in Canada and California.
Really, they are very different, but they both had that soprano capability. Laura wrote everything on piano - Joni only occasionally wrote on piano.
The other thing about Joni. She defined herself as an artist/painter first. The folk-singing she did for the money, she has said. It was a means to an end initially. Laura, I suspect, had an irrepressible passion for the music.
While Laura was doing the above song, Joni was doing this one (very light-hearted and conventional in comparison):
http://www.youtube.com/v/F_y7O06z77Q
I'm not disrespecting Joni, because she was constantly growing and changing. In fact, her career continued consistently, whereas Laura did semi-retire until she died (of cancer).
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https://www.youtube.com/v/GTK739bHhLw
Invitations to my party
Send Jones an inviting card
He got his mean streak from the gutter
Got his kindness from God
Now tugboats paint the river
Carry coal to the city in white dock liners
Happiness on the uptown side
At my party in the morning tide
Ooh, la, la, la, blackpatch
Ooh, la, la, la, blackpatch
Ooh, la, la, la, blackpatch
In blackpatch, in blackpatch
Clothespins on wash ropes
Window to window tie
Socks and bells and nightgowns
Tassels in the morning, tassels in the morning sky
People, are you ready?
(Ready, ready)
People, are you trying?
Ready, ready, ready, ready
(Ready, I'm ready)
I'm ready, I'm ready
Womanchild on the side street
Flashing in blackpatch
Lipstick on her reefer
Waiting for a match
Read more: Laura Nyro - Blackpatch
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Very interesting commentary on Laura Nyro --
The Black Christmas of Laura Nyro
by Jorge Luis Fernández
(March 2003)
In a Joni Mitchell interview published by MOJO, in 1998, the legendary Canadian songwriter recognized her debts to the recently departed songstress Laura Nyro. Hugely talented and overlooked in equal measure, Nyro wasn't just 'an influence' for Mitchell: she 'took some direction from her,' and on her account 'started playing piano again'. Sorely, it was a late adjust to history. But then it was revealed: the big lady's first steps were inspired by someone who (a sin even at Aquarius Age) rejected both of her sex and color.
Under the influence of Brill Building and female composers like Carole King or Ellie Greenwich, Laura Nyro started writing songs that found best fortune in the hands of pop stars like Barbra Streisand and The Fifth Dimension, among others: "Stoney End,” "Wedding Bell Blues,” "Save The Country,” "Blowing Away,” all of which were songs that were also recorded by herself. But luck and good timing were never by her side. After all, it wasn't easy to hear Laura, bisexual in sunny California, singing 1966's "Stoney End”: a sing along tune with controversial lyrics. "I was raised in the good book of Jesus, 'Til I learned to reed between the lines." Nyro included the song in her first record, but it became instead an anthem for hundreds of people thanks to the version of the good-natured The Fifth Dimension.
Besides, Laura was one of the first musicians who challenged the myth of authenticity. While listening to her voice, most people believed she was black. But no, Laura was white; more precisely surnamed Nigro, of Italian descent. Though she wished to be black, that was out of question. And she expressed her frustration with strong piano staccattos. And a powerful, unpredictable voice always fluctuated between tenderness and violence.
All that was conveniently swept aside. It was instead her talent for balladeer composing, and her unusually gifted vocal delivery that made her unique. Soul-tinged, orchestrated, addressing both Kurt Weill and Gospel choirs, her songs were the songbook for various rock stars of the seventies -Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones and Todd Rundgren, above else. At the times and contrary to her desire, Laura Nyro (like Miles Davis or John Coltrane) made music of musicians, not for the big public. The hippie audience adored Joan Baez, and Melanie descending from a helicopter to inaugurate the Isle of Wight Festival. But Laura Nyro was booed and forced to quit the stage when she appeared at Monterey, due to the uneasiness of her performance.
Towards 1968, her style evolved. Still relying on the piano as her main interpretative tool, Laura incorporated rhythm changes, modal scales, unheard-of timbres, and extended the conventional song structure with internal developments, doing to the ballad something similar to what The Incredible String Band was doing to the folk rock domain. The seeds of change were seen in the last track of her second album, Eli And The Thirteen Confession. "The Confession” starts as a usual Nyro ballad: richly textured and stylized, but permeating rage and passion through the pores. Clocking at two minutes, the song proceeds to subvert every law of the palatable Carole King's song theory. The rhythm accelerates, incorporating a syncopated accentuation. Laura gets agitated and "The Confession” ends with a circular and beautiful motif at the piano. But curiously enough, the song never seems to be in process of a radical transfiguration. While being a little bit far out, it remains an exquisite ballad.
With New York Tendaberry (1969), her new style was firmly established. In the short span of a song, a variety of arrangements flows with ease, and her vocal delivery is astounding. With probably the most carefully intonations of the time, Laura pronounce every phrase punctuated by a subtle piano or harsh attacks, depending on how soft or powerful she sounds. Timpani, keyboards, woodwinds, and strings were also devices to emphasize her expressiveness. Unusually, she was giving paramount importance to textures over harmonic arrangements, something that could explain the cult status the album acquired over the years (other fine contemporary records like Todd: The Ballad Of Todd Rundgren were obviously influenced by Tendaberry). Laura also made studio tricks with vocal overdubbing, and was evidently eluding a constant pattern in the songs. But architecturally amazing as it is, Tendaberry still sounds gentle to the ears. The true revolt came in the aftermath of the Black Panthers trials, the upheavals and shootings of Kent State, and the Charles Manson murders. It was then that Laura proclaimed the demise of the hippie movement with her fourth record: 1970's Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat.
The record (whose title is a figure about Vietnam's rosary of blood) became premonitory in several issues. On one hand, it's a mournful farewell to flower power, resenting the turn from tribal gatherings to individualist, confessional songwriters (the so-called Me Generation). On the other hand, it's a nihilist premonition of the new right's advent of the seventies. Surely, Richard Nixon and Edward Heath were giving her a clue about what to expect: a bleak future. No future -rock culture will have to wait another six years to be aware of it. In this context, Christmas translates its songs to a ghostly, isolated area. And right from the start, Arif Mardin's string arrangement depicts an elegant blank page for Laura (and a dream team of musicians including Duane Allman and Alice Coltrane) to write her haunting visions.
An exemplary aspect of her innovative work is "Been On A Train,” a heartfelt rendition of a slowed-down paced blues, compressed to two tones. Disquieting silences abound, randomly conducting the piece, and Laura sings as if her life depends on it: "He said, 'I got just one thing gonna soothe my pain'. No, no, damn you mister, and I dragged him out the door. He died in the morning sun, and I won't go north no more." Her singing accumulates and releases tension as no one else had before, and probably Peter Hammill took note of this. This is just one of her unprecedented signatures on rock music. In "Beads Of Sweat,” Laura rocks rapturously, with Duane Allman's cutting licks stealing the show. And with its modal flirting, "Upstairs By A Chinese Lamp” is, quite simply, one of the most beautiful tracks ever made. Alice Coltrane has a stellar guest appearance with her harp in "Map To The Treasure," where Laura alternates between whispers and cathartic cries, and a sublime interlude of minimal piano gives evidence of the mutual influence that Meredith Monk and Nyro then had. On the other hand, Coltrane's crystal glissandos are the perfect painkiller for Laura's tortured soul.
The climax came at the end of the record, with her voice overdubbed several times, reproducing a heavenly choir tarnished by mournful bells. "I love my country as it dies, in war and pain, before my eyes. I walk the streets where disrespect has been the sins of politics, the politics of sin; the heartlessness that darkens my soul on Christmas (...) Black Panther brothers, bound in jail; Chicago Seven and the justice scale; homeless Indian of Manhattan Isle. All God's sons have gone to trial, and all God's love is out of style on Christmas."
I always loved Christmas not just for its beauty and uncommon vision. I also love it for the clarity of its message, and because it's clearly the work of someone desperately searching her own vision. As a female rock artist, seated in between genres, only Annette Peacock (whose groundbreaking I'm The One saw the light of day at almost the same time) was as daring, innovative and uncompromising. And more than thirty years later, Laura's music still seems poignant, with her cries preserved as fierce as a lion caged. Undoubtedly, this is the best way she deserves to be remembered as: a woman who made beauty through anger. And, while being a product of its time, Christmas remains a timelessness masterful piece of art.
Afterwards, Laura's provocative stance subdued. Her follow up, a collaborative effort with black female group La Belle entitled Gonna Take A Miracle, was a retreat into conventional soul music, covering such staples like "Spanish Harlem,” "I Met Him On A Sunday” and "You've Really Got A Hold On Me.” Following the same steps, 1976's Smile was even more disappointing. Though jazz and R&B were always at the core of her compositions, her idiosyncratic style was definitely missing. From then on, Laura herself revealed as a compromised feminist and an amiable musician. But it's true to say that she laid the ground for the compelling developments of women in the seventies. Or at least, without her pioneering recordings, womens' place in music wouldn't be the same.
Several years after Christmas, other artists would release equally honest works (Patti Smith's Horses), or ambitious (Joni Mitchell's The Hissing Of Summer Lawns; Kate Bush's The Dreaming), but none of them were made from the perspective of a real outcast. Laura Nyro lived a life full of contradictions. She wanted to be Patti La Belle, but forget to shave her legs. She adhered to rock's rebellion, but was the first artist signed to then novel impresario David Geffen, now a big tycoon of entertainment business. Assumed a homosexual in the sunset of her life, Laura Nyro died of ovarian cancer in the arms of her lover, Maria Desidero, at the age of 49. It was April 1997. Coincidentally, that was the same that year Joni Mitchell was inducted at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and further assumed immortality.
http://www.furious.com/perfect/lauranyro.html