shangri las / laura nyro / lotti golden

...twenty moody and magnifico masterpieces of teen-oh trashpop from these gum chewing gals from queens, NYC...each and every tune is a hep echo chamber blowout of sobbing singularity...each number is a self contained world of its own drama, way too brilliant to last (though now its lasted over 4decades)...fab and grooovy, essential ear wear...

...forty years back in the hazy-fazy-daze of the monterey pop festival one artist was seemingly unceremoniously dissed by the 'open minded' attendees for reasons that are still largely uncertain and yet looking at the bill in the 21st century cats can see that really only one performers work still sounds like it was maybe recorded tomorrow...as good as the others appearing were their work belongs to its time and the ones still making wax and the rounds of nostalgia are pitifully lame and only worth forgetting...this being lauras third longplayer released at the end of the hippy decade is full of her street corner future blues with her and the piano and some orchestration for effect when needed...an explosion of early 60s girl pop testifyin and beatnik intensity from the cathedral of eternal NOWness...this is not for cats who have a tendency to get itchy when listening to anything kind of 'difficult', this demands an attention span longer than time and will reward with goodness unfolding endlessly...one of those disks for when the outside world is offering nothing but relentless tedium from which there seems no escape but the journey to the innerself...

...some beautifully expansive trancy beatnik vibes from lotti...sort of like girl group pop with copious amounts of green leaf floating through the studio, the groove is intense concentration on otherworldy existance, on the beam but mellow and enveloping...shangri-las meet laura nyro could be one way of looking at this but it is way funky with stretched-out urban late six-oh soul blasts keeping all things moving...well cool guitar and keyboards, plus when lotti gets to wailing there sure ain't no stopping her...not too many wax have this 'out-there sure-nuff' going on, totally worthwhile lobeful that more than a few heads will get a right-on buzz from...

8 comments:

  1. love lotti, now i wonder if anyone can track down that elusive second album?

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  2. elusive is just about the position on that disc, some info on its whereabouts would be more than welcome...

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  3. Where are the links to your postings?

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  4. run the cursor over the text, you will see link...

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  5. you forgot to mention Essra Mohawk (aka Sandy Hurvitz) who made part of the soul-pop inovations, her contruibution was the first album in 1968 produced by Frank Zappa and it have beautiful compositions, she's also wrote some songs for Shangri-las band.

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  6. thanks for the imput, this hooks up nicely with the GTO's whose contribution to fantasical rock'n'roll should not be overlooked, the street poetry decadence of the shangs meets teeny acid priestess warriors...

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  7. Oooh, love, love, love this site. Thank you for posting these amazing women: Lotti Golden, Laura Nyro, and the Shangri-Las. With reference to the music, Golden and Nyro are like later incarnations of the Shangri-Las, infusing some of the girl group style into their music. Golden and Nyro wrote their own material--both amazing songwriters, with lyrics were metaphorically rich and emotionally compelling. The Shangri-Las didn't write their own songs--maybe they could have made the leap, but sadly the group broke up.

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  8. Gotta compliment you on your excellent description of Lotti Golden's LP "Motor-Cycle"—it’s really on target. Golden “Motor-Cycle” is an incredible opus--one of those works of genius that arise from a perfect confluence of events--in this case, Golden's exceptional talent as a poet and singer, the turbulence of the late 60's, and the tenacity of an artist wanting to be heard. Too bad Atlantic Records didn't know what to do with Golden, who was clearly gorgeous and had everything a record company would need to make a star. Golden's "Motor-Cycle" was arguably, the first "concept" LP written by a female rock artist (released the same year as "Tommy" by the Who). Regarding Lotti's second LP, GRT quickly went out of business, so it's really--really obscure. Atlantic still has a chance for redemption by reissuing "Motor-Cycle" on CD. With Golden having over 1,500,000 hits on Google, they could actually make some money!

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