Customer Reviews

Laura Nyro Live at the Bottom Line

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I guess I am very lucky to have this cd. I actually picked it up on a BMG clearance sale! I don't even remember how much I paid for it, I basically bought it on a whim. I'm not a die hard Laura Nyro fan, but I was vaguely familiar with her style of music. When I was much younger, I had obtained a promotional copy of her "Nested" album (1978) which is also a "hard-to-find" out of print gem, and I liked her music. This is from a kid who mostly listened to Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith!

The quality of her voice and musical styling really came through and "touched me." I also realised over the years as I collected music that some performers are simply best "Live" and the number of live records offered reflected that. Niel Diamond is another artist with many, many live albums. There is a reason for this. Laura Nyro is no exception. She has such an energy that comes out and can only be captured during a real live performance.

Laura Nyro's "Live at the Bottom Line" has become one of my favorite discs. I can't imagine any of her fans that would be disappointed in this fantastic set of songs. Her voice is absolutely beautiful, and the musicianship and sound quality is excellant! If you are a fan of Laura's, or can simply appreciate good music and a great Live performance, do not hesitate to seek this album out.

****Highly Recommended****

Reissue this CD NOW. I do not understand what the hold-up is to reissuing this great music by one of the premiere songwriters of the 1960's. The performance by Laura on this recording IS her legacy. It is Laura at her best. There are tons of people out there who want to own a copy of this CD. They want to remember Laura as she was, singing and playing her heart out, and this CD fills that need. Laura would have wanted this. The delay must end NOW. Reissue this CD NOW!

This is my favorite Laura Nyro live album.

By the time of this recording (1988), Laura had pretty much outgrown her
"fragile artist" stage. Instead of whispering a few serious, spacey words in between songs to the audience, here she is loose, freewheeling, at times raucous, and appears to be having a ball with a hot-rocking band.

Her other live albums: "Seasons Of Light" (1978) was jazz-fusion based,
"The Loom's Desire" (recorded '93 and '94) was late-period, intimate Nyro
in a small club with just piano and backing vocalists, and "Spread Your Wings" (recorded 1971) captures the first-period hysteria that surrounded (and engulfed her). All show the various stages of her career nicely and all are worth having.

But if you have to have only ONE live Laura, this is it. The band rocks,
Laura never sounded better and more vibrant and the recording quality is great.

This was a one-off project for the small Cypress label in between her main Columbia commitments. It is now out of print.

Will somebody PLEASE re-release this gem?

This live concert from 1988 is not as serious as Season Of Lights but is so much fun. This was a return to touring and Laura is enjoying herself with a great band backing her up. Her voice is strong and she puts some different and fresh slants on her classics while introducing new material. Again, she lets the band shine with some neat jams and kids-around with the audience. Stand outs are the opening medley of The Confession and High-Heeled Sneakers--it works!!!, and Japanese Restaurant Song. My personal favorites are The Park Song & Companion. It should be re-issued.

After her marriage and move to rural Connecticut in the early 1970s, very little was seen of Laura Nyro during the following decade and a half, except for a relatively brief comeback that produced three albums that lack the sheer wonderment of her 1968 to 1971 releases but nonetheless have a genuine power to grow on a listener. 1984's Mothers Spiritual is even more relaxed but still possesses the touching quality of the best folk music and a newfound maturity.

After five more years bringing up child Gil, Laura Nyro returned to touring at the tail end of the 1980s and wanted to record a live album as her comeback, an idea quite unacceptable to Columbia. However, Laura went ahead with her original intention, but "Live at the Bottom Line" had to be released on independent label Cypress and received very little promotion and very few critical reviews. The expense of obtaining it deterred me for a long time, but as it turned out "Live at the Bottom Line" is probably worth more attention than Michele Kort gives it in interviews concerning her biography Soul Picnic. In comparison to "Mother's Spiritual", "Live at the Bottom Line" shows a clear reversion to the sound of her middle period, with soulful grooves in fact more emphasised than on any other record Laura made. This is evident especially on second track "Roll of the Ocean", which even shows a reversion to a smoother version of the dramatic dynamics of her prime period from the late 1960s and early 1970s. The groove on opening medley "The Confession"/"High Heeled Sneakers" is powerfully funky especially on the latter part, and the joyful mood suggests Laura really had found peace through nurturing her child. "Wild World" is in fact even closer to funk rock, even featuring a guitar solo that fits wonderfully with the dense mood and reminds one a little of Eddie Jobson's best work on Stranded.

The medley of "My Innocence" (from Nested and "Sophia" (from "Mother's Spiritual") was in Laura's last concerts the only representation of those two long out-of-print albums, and in some ways is even better than those songs together, whilst "Park Song" is an ambient style piano piece of delicate simplicity that still manages to change mood from reflective to a slow burn anger. "Broken Rainbow" may be familiar from Laura's 1997 compilation Stoned Soul Picnic but shows a similar, though less effective aim as the previous track. "Women of the One World" (originally titled "Dancers, Sweepers, Bookkeppers") was later to metamorphose into "A Woman of the World" on her last album Walk the Dog and Light the Light and does sound too skeletal here, but "Emmie" and "Wedding Bell Blues" retain all their original beauty despite the changes of style Laura has made over time. "Wedding Bell Blues" actually benefits from the rock-ier arrangement and the distinctive backing vocals. "Japanese Restaurant Song" is not easy to follow but retains interest when Laura sings "I became a geisha". "Stones Soul Picnic" is transformed even more than the other songs from Laura's prime years, but has impressive atmosphere even if it does not have the memorable hooks of the original version.

All in all, "Live at the Bottom Line" stands as an impressive if, if always futile, effort at a comeback by one fo teh great singer/songwriters of all time.

My favorite live Nyro, this is just a perfect example of a live recording. She has a full band with her and the song choice and execution of the songs are perfect. The sound quality is impeccable. No wonder there is such a demand for this out of print recording.

This is my favorite Laura Nyro live album.

By the time of this recording (1988), Laura had pretty much outgrown her
"fragile artist" stage. Instead of whispering a few serious, spacey words in between songs to the audience, here she is loose, freewheeling, at times raucous, and appears to be having a ball with a hot-rocking band.

Her other live albums: "Seasons Of Light" (1978) was jazz-fusion based,
"The Loom's Desire" (recorded '93 and '94) was late-period, intimate Nyro
in a small club with just piano and backing vocalists, and "Spread Your Wings" (recorded 1971) captures the first-period hysteria that surrounded (and engulfed her). All show the various stages of her career nicely and all are worth having.

But if you have to have only ONE live Laura, this is it. The band rocks,
Laura never sounded better and more vibrant and the recording quality is great.

This was a one-off project for the small Cypress label in between her main Columbia commitments. It is now out of print.

Will somebody PLEASE re-release this gem?

A great album. Excellent musicianship, a mature Laura Nyro actually enjoying her audience, her colleagues, herself and the music. And something about the live performance makes one especially aware of how she carried her love of - and respect for - pop music into her own "meta-pop" music and as a result, was a transforming influence on both pop and alternative music styles from Elton John to Joni Mitchell and Jenny Lewis.

A great selection of songs; an historic live performance.

I didn't know this album existed until I received an 'ad' from Amazon.com for music I might be interested in. Read the reviews and decided I had to have it. No regrests! First song on the album "The Confession" gave me goosebumps so intense I thought I was going to come out of my skin! This is definitely a 'must-have' for Laura Nyro fans. Having seen her in concert in 1970 as a shy, soft-spoken but force-to-be-reckoned-with, this was a delightful change of pace. Laura's energy comes through without filters. Her band provides some incredible support--and great guitar licks that magnify the passion and intensity of this amazing woman.