I really enjoy this post from Billy Cheer’s “This is Fag City” blog about the greatness of New York Tendaberry. Here are my favorite lines:
It doesn’t even invite you in, it seems polarizing, like someone cuts off the lights, some of you will be able to navigate and some [of] you will not. … It’s just so difficult, it’s the sound of someone figuring out how they feel, and then changing their mind.
I love that image of Laura creating a darkness that the listener can either navigate or not. I have terrible night vision myself, but for me Laura’s music always lights the night.
Yes, I love this reference too. New York Tendaberry came out of a very wild time for Laura Nyro. She was young, in the city of NYC, the beauty of the streets, the lights, the car honks, the silences, the breath of her, the youth adaptation to becoming a woman, the figuring out as Billy Cheers indicates. It is brilliant and difficult, and she loved it, and as said, could not listen to it as she changed and got older. She said something to the effect that it was so wildly chaotic and she had grown differently. Not so that effect and change was still not a part of her focus.