Like Talk Talk yesterday, here's someone else who seemed to get forgotten, only to be rediscovered more recently. Rediscovery has been the big new sub-industry within music this decade, obviously driven as much by economics and marketing — how can the record labels 'sweat their assets' of deep catalogue recordings — as much as by cultural curiosity. Not that I'm dismissing cultural curiosity, because I'm still curious.
Same formula here as with many CD purchases from 2001 and 2002 (from Gene Clark to Black Sabbath). I don't remember hearing of Laura Nyro before Stuart Maconie featured her on his Critical List radio show, but his advocacy combined with Fopp's bargain (as they seemed at the time) prices left me unable to resist.
And not for the first time with purchases made this way, I have to admit it's not quite my thing. Yes, yes, I maybe should have been able to tell that from hearing it on the radio, but I thought maybe Laura Nyro was an acquired taste. With prolonged exposure I might acquire it. I haven't yet, but I still might. Patience and persistence. This video helps move me on a bit.
I heard a documentary about Laura a few years ago — probably this one. That didn't help so much. All I remember about it was some slightly tendentious comments about the iconography of the very the red lipstick she often wore, what it said about her sexuality and so on; also some mutterings from professors of hindsight about her being something of a feminist role model to later piano-bothering songstresses (Regina Spektor's about the only one of them I like). You can hear some of that in the title track of this compilation, Time and Love, I guess.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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