In 1966, aspiring singer/songwriter
Laura Nyro
sat at the piano to audition for
Warner Bros.
A&R agent
Artie Mogull
and producer
Milt Okun
.
Nyro
was 18 at the time, and had been writing songs for about a year but had yet to venture into music professionally.
Go Find the Moon: The Audition Tape
is the audio documentation from that meeting, capturing the flashes of
's songwriting brilliance that were apparent even in the nascent stages of her development. The recording is casual and unpolished, with no overdubs but with a few false starts and between-song chatter included. Even in this raw form,
's performances are powerful. The collection begins with a bounding rendition of "And When I Die," an original composition of
's that
Blood, Sweat & Tears
would take to the top of the charts just a few years later. Along with the tender ballad "Enough of You" and the cool, strolling title track,
runs through a few song fragments just for demonstration purposes, playing a brief medley of pop songs of the day at the request of the record executives. It's a short listen, just shy of 19 minutes, but
Go Find the Moon
puts us in the room at the very beginning of one of the greatest songwriting journeys in American history. The studio albums that followed shortly afterward are a better representation of
's musical gifts, and these early demo recordings will be more exciting for devoted fans than first-time listeners. All the same, being a fly on the wall for this meeting is a fascinating window into
's story, showing an artist already operating at full force as she's taking the first steps down the path she'd be on for the rest of her life. ~ Fred Thomas