One of the major myths about the Monterey Pop Festival is that Laura Nyro was booed off the stage. This video of Laura's performance of "Wedding Bell Blues" and "Poverty Train" from the bonus DVD puts those myths to rest once and for all.
This was the second major performance by an virtually unknown 19 year old girl, in front of eighty thousand stoned hippies waiting to hear the Jefferson Airplane. If the crowd look stunned, it's only because Laura's performance was so stunning, and at the end, the closest thing to "boos" is someone shouting "beautiful". She was not booed off the stage!
I had a major crush on Laura based on the photo on the Eli and the 13th Confession album cover and it broke my heart to discover that she "played for the other side". When I saw her live in 1989, the crowd was divided between people like me who were there for the oldies like "Wedding Bell Blues" and "Stoned Soul Picnic" and a militant LGBT crowd. That was a strange experience, but probably nowhere near as strange as seeing her in 1967 at Monterey would have been.
Of course, Eric Burdon actually sang in "Monterey" that Ravi Shankar's music made him cry, but Laura Nyro's singing on "Poverty Train" makes me weepy! It's that strong. I've sampled lots of "next Nyros" from Nellie McKay to Amy Winehouse, but there will never be another Laura Nyro for me.
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