Laura Nyro On Track: Every Album Every Song (Sonicbond)
Laura Nyro (1947-1997) was one of the most significant figures to emerge from the singer-songwriter boom of the 1960s. She first came to attention when her songs were hits for Barbra Streisand, The Fifth Dimension, Peter, Paul and Mary, and others. But it was on her own recordings that she imprinted her vibrant personality. With albums like Eli and the Thirteenth Confession and New York Tendaberry she mixed the sounds of soul, pop, jazz and Broadway to fashion autobiographical songs that earned her a fanatical following and influenced a generation of music-makers. This book combines her life story with detailed discussion of her recordings.
Instead of a Critic: Essays Written and Unwritten (Minos Press)
This collection brings together pieces written over twenty years or so in search of whatever links them. The topics range from Anglo-German cultural relations and the refugee flight from Nazi Europe to myth, pictorial art and the ‘Two Cultures’ question. A number of the essays are biographical in character, with subjects as diverse as Josephine Baker, Louise Brooks, the Mitford family and the von Hofmannsthal dynasty.