Posted on 02/18/2010 4:49:42 PM PST by a fool in paradise
In some ways Yoko Ono is still an amateur. At “We Are Plastic Ono Band,” mixing concert and tribute at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Tuesday night, her voice could be shaky and her stage patter giggly and unplanned. She looked genuinely surprised when the audience interrupted her and sang “Happy Birthday.” (She turns 77 on Feb. 18.) She’s also untamed. She can still let loose the bleats, wails, yips, howls and shrieks that alienated Beatles fans in the 1960s and inspired avant-rockers soon afterward.
Ms. Ono’s well-preserved air of naïveté — and the license it gives her to say things simply and primally — has been her artistic gift since the ’60s...
“We Are Plastic Ono Band” brought together, for the first time in decades, members of the informal group John Lennon assembled in 1969: Eric Clapton on guitar, Jim Keltner on drums and Klaus Voorman on bass. Guests, including Paul Simon, Bette Midler and members of Sonic Youth, also performed songs by Ms. Ono and by John Lennon.
...Singing melodies, Ms. Ono sounded high and fragile, as deliberately exposed as the lyrics. And her wordless sounds were by no means random. They were ghostly, furious, dreamy, caustic, urgent, exultant, orgasmic. Between the abstractions were tidings of peace-and-love optimism, of loss and loneliness, and of uncertainty...
The reunited Plastic Ono Band was still proudly unrehearsed, crunchy and sinewy. Mr. Clapton sent slow-blues phrases curling around Ms. Ono’s voice in the elegiac “Death of Samantha,” and the band turned the blues-rock stomp of “Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)” into a full-fledged maelstrom. Naturally Ms. Ono ended the concert with “Give Peace a Chance,” the 1969 song that introduced the Plastic Ono Band, adding updated lyrics, flashing V signs and leading a singalong...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
And yet ... and yet ... Yoko did it.
it was great progressive rock and roll, the whole record, a marvelous legacy from a master. i thought it depicted John in a good place and it made his assasination all the more tragic, if possible.
On the other hand, he certainly went out on, well (should I say it?)...a high note.
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