I personally was thrilled to see them get up onstage and tackle a tricky non-hit song, “Beads of Sweat” with a taste of “Nowhere to Run” before moving into the better-known “Eli’s Comin’.” Felix Cavaliere - now there’s a name we haven’t heard in years! His Nyro connection is that he produced the Christmas and the Beads of Sweat album, and here he sat down at the Hammond organ and plunked out a fun version of “Blowin’ Away,” from Nyro’s first album. He and his female trio Rouge made two terrific, now-forgotten albums around 1980, before Desmond wrote and produced a bunch of hit records (most notably Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time”). A little pretentious, of course - I doubt if more than ten people in the audience even knew who Desmond Child is.
“Without Laura Nyro, there would be no Desmond Child,” the singer-songwriter-producer intoned, when his group took the stage. Still, what Laura Nyro fan wouldn’t be thrilled to see the kid in person? (I met him briefly at the opening night of the Vineyard Theatre’s wonderful revue, Eli’s Comin’, directed by Diane Paulus.)
He came out at the tail end of Desmond Child and Rouge’s rendition of “Eli’s Comin'” to perform a rap - let’s just say Jaz-Z needn’t lose any sleep worrying about competition from Gil-T, as he calls himself.
It was a raggedy sort of family affair that opened with Nyro’s brother, Jan Nigro, performing a sort of skiffle-band arrangement of “And When I Die” with his band, the Ebony Hillbillies.Ī young performer named Kate Fletcher, who does a Nyro-centered cabaret act called “One Child Born,” sat down at the piano for a fairly whitebread version of “Stoney End.” Much was made of the presence at the concert of Gil Bianchini, who is indeed the “one child born” Laura Nyro left behind when she died. I’ve looked forward all summer to “The Triple Goddess Twilight Revue: Celebrating the Music Of Laura Nyro,” scheduled as part of Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors’ 29th Annual Roots of American Music Festival.
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