Disc of the day
Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Magnificent late-'50s singles round-up that keeps on giving.
Features Disc of the day
Laura Nyro
New York Tendaberry
(Columbia, 1969)
The queen of kook's tribute to the city that never sleeps it off.
It's hard to imagine so loving and soulful a record being inspired by scummy old London. Our true Brit suspicion of anything approaching sincerity means we're much more comfortable with London Calling's grimy urban declamations or Madness's affectionate tragic-comedy. But '60s pop sophisticate Nyro lived and breathed the streets of her Manhattan home. A drawn-out ancestor of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, New York Tendaberry took a full year to make, Nyro often travelling to Columbia studios through Central Park in a horse-drawn carriage from her Upper West Side apartment, in a ball-gown. "She was very theatrical", engineer Bob Halee remembers sweetly in the sleeve notes. She certainly was; unable to read music, she reportedly expressed what she wanted to the studio guys in wonderful, synaesthetic metaphors ("Here I would like some light blue, then go more pink over here," Can you hear that, Kevin Shields?). The mostly stark, voice and piano arrangements are definitely bluish in hue, while the vibrant gospel magenta of Save The Country - an increasingly frantic, horn-driven plea for spiritual and social cleansing, like an East Coast answer to the Youngbloods Get Together ("In my mind I can't study war no more") - was the track most likely to be a hit for someone else, à la Stoned Soul Picnic. Even so, an earlier full-band version of Save The Country failed to chart in 1968 but it makes a fascinating bonus on the 2002 reissue.
Jenny Bulley
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 28/10/2009
Further Listening
Laura Nyro - Eli And The Thirteenth Confession (CBS, 1968)
Madness – The Liberty Of Norton Folgate (Lucky Seven, 2009)
Rickie Lee Jones – Duchess Of Coolsville (Warners, 2005)
Previous Disc of the day
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Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Magnificent late-'50s singles round-up that keeps on giving.
6:00 AM GMT 20/11/2009
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Isley Brothers - The Brothers: Isley
The Cincinnati siblings bed into their heavy period.
6:00 AM GMT 18/11/2009
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Lee Morgan - Search For The New Land
The trumpeter's most soulful excursion entrances MOJO messageboarder.
6:00 AM GMT 16/11/2009
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Comments
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Nyro was a genuis.
Posted by JLS at 3:32 PM GMT 28/10/2009 Report Abuse
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"queen of kook's?" i would have expected better from Mojo.
Posted by kd at 8:04 AM GMT 12/11/2009 Report Abuse
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"queen of kook's?" i would have expected better from Mojo.
Posted by kd at 8:04 AM GMT 12/11/2009 Report Abuse
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