1) It's impossible to listen to because it's impossible to find. It was released in 1969 on the experimental and very short lived Zapple subsidiary of Apple and never saw a re-issue until 1997 with the rest of Yoko Ono's catalog on RykoDisc. That is to say, it never saw a re-issue (zing!) I only have my copy thanks to pure luck. My friend found it without a jacket in the bowls of a record bin at some now-closed record store. Thank God it was in spectacular condition. Here's my make-shift cover:
2) It's impossible to listen to because Side A is a 27 min improv consisting of mainly Ono's unique vocal style (screaming) and Lennon's guitar feedback (noise). It's tough. Believe me. I like this and it's tough. It's interesting to me because after a while, the feedback and screaming feed off each other just like in jazz improv...really, really fucking weird jazz improv. John Stevens and John Tchicai join in later on percussion and sax but they're almost too late. If they came in once the guitar and vocal started meshing, it would have been more successful.
3) It's impossible to listen to because Side B is a Fluxus audio-documentary about Ono's first of three miscarriages with Lennon. Track two is the baby's last heartbeats followed by a Cage-ian "Two Minutes Silence." Yeah. Need I say more?
4) It's impossible to listen to because "Yoko Ono" has a horrible connotation in International Pop Culture. So horrible in fact that at this point, "Yoko Ono" is purely the subject of the sentence that ends with "broke up the Beatles." That's why all three of her experimental albums with Lennon are seen as obscene, not a continuation of her own artwork. They are not seen as Fluxus work finding its way into the mainstream. They are seen as John Lennon "going too far." The art world doesn't accept them either. Historians try desperately to separate Ono from Lennon, thinking that these records diminish her as an artist.
It's a good work. Not as great as their avant-garde peers, but worth it. It's hard to ignore all the pop culture shenanigans behind it, I grant you. That's defiantly the subject for a whole different argument.
wait wait.. its just ono screaming for 27 minutes?
ReplyDeleteyou poor man!