Oh, Yoko Ono
http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-02-23/music/oh-yoko-ono?src=newsletter
BAM throws a cheerfully random, surreally star-studded tribute to the
Plastic Ono Band
By Rob Harvilla
Feb 23 2010
Yoko Ono still does that Yoko Ono thing. You know the one. The one
that requires italics, or caps lock, or maybe both. She crouches
slightly, one balled-up fist on her hip, her face narrowed to an
insouciant gunfighter's squint, a face reflecting not exactly joy,
not exactly rage, not exactly anguish, not exactly feral abandon, but
some bizarre, inimitable fusion thereof. And then she opens her
mouth, and hoo, Lord, out it comes: AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
EEEIEEIIIIEEEIIIEE. UHUHHUHUHHUHUHH.
And so forth. That sound, that force, that apocalyptic yodel. The
human Auto-Tune antidote. Fifteen seconds is hilarious, 30 somewhat
profound, 90 oddly transcendent. Anything beyond that, frankly, is
pretty grating. But it is undeniably, inexhaustibly hers. There is
way more to Yoko than that, of course. But there is still, definitely, that.
So let us celebrate. Last Tuesday night's We Are Plastic Ono Band
fete at BAM was a both a surreal, star-studded partial reunion of the
fantastically polarizing art-rock band she first convened in the late
'60s, and a showcase for the very much active latter-day iteration
that cut a super-weird, strangely alluring new record, Between My
Head and the Sky, six months ago. This was a tribute that made very
clear it wasn't a eulogy, looking back while charging boldly forward.
A brief career-retrospective video set the scenethe performance art,
the activism, the apocalyptic yodeling, the fawning quotes from
cohorts and contemporaries (Ann Magnuson: "No wonder the coolest guy
in the world fell in love with her!"), the indeed simultaneously
heartwarming and -rending scenes of marital bliss with John
Lennonbut when the curtain rises, it's all present tense. Behold
Yoko herself, in the flesh, prancing regally about the stage, lithe
and vivacious, clad in all black with dark glasses and a jaunty
little hat, like a feminine, septuagenarian, Japanese, diminutive Slash.
Your bandleader this evening is her son, Sean Lennon, an eerie visual
and vocal echo of his father"It's kind of creepy when he sings,"
notes a friend who'd also attended the previous night's
dress-rehearsal show, and verily Sean will later rip into the
death-haunted Beatles jam "Yer Blues" with discomfiting aplomb. For
Act 1, he commands a core band of experimental-pop heavyweights,
including Yuka Honda (she of Cibo Matto) and Keigo Oyamada (a/k/a
Cornelius), himself tossing in a little piano but mostly switching
off between guitar and bass, depending on how cool the bassline is.
They mix in a few oldies (most notably frigid, ominous dance-floor
semi-classic "Walking on Thin Ice") with Between My Head and the
Sky's various psychedelic jams, the title track (cool bassline!) a
slick blast of cracked funk, "Moving Mountains" a seedy den of
pastoral, yodel-heavy freak-folk ecstasy. Expert flourishes of cello
(courtesy Erik Friedlander) and trumpet (Michael Leonhart) mingle
with all the electronic bleeps and burps. Yoko glides through all of
it, precocious but supremely confident, her lyrics warm and direct
and unapologetically new-agey: "I flew up into the universe/I can see
you/I love you for what you are."
Throughout, she maintains a torrent of loopy banter with both the
crowd and Sean himself. "He's the music director," she tells us after
blazing through "Thin Ice." "He's always saying, 'It's great, it's
great,' to make me feel better." (Sean's reply: "I'm not lying, Mom.
That was pretty good.") This goofy, familial vibe nicely sets the
table for Act II, when the surreal parade of guest stars begins in
earnest, an odd bout of Yoko karaoke with a loose, sweet,
occasionally half-assed feel, like we've abandoned BAM's luxe digs
and are now chilling in some wood-paneled rec room at the Dakota,
indulging in a hastily assembled talent show. Jake Shears and Ana
Matronic of the Scissor Sisters strut through the mutant-disco
incantation "The Sun Is Down." Justin Bond tears theatrically into
the passive-aggressive romantic-firefight torch song "What a Bastard
the World Is." Paul Simon and his son, Harper (notably lacking in
Sean and Yoko's natural onstage chemistry), take up acoustic guitars
and wobble through a waywardly Simonized conflation of her
"Silverhorse" and John's "Hold On." And Gene Ween (!!) does his own
acoustic duet with Sean, blasting sweetly through none other than "Oh
Yoko!," straining for the high notes, which only makes the whole
thing more adorable and bewildering.
Oh, plus Bette Midler shows up and burns it down, turning "Yes, I'm
Your Angel"Yoko's gift to John for his much-dreaded 40th
birthdayinto a kicky cabaret farce, her booming TRA-LA-LA-LA-LA's
commanding their own italics-and-caps-lock action. And this just
after Yoko joins Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon for "Mulberries," a
free-form, guitar-shredding tantrum of shrieking feedback and copious
yodeling. Yoko explains the song's genesis: As a child in Japan
during World War II, she'd attempted to feed her family by picking
mulberries, holding up the hem of her dress to carry as many as she
could while enraptured by the beauty of the skythe mind that can
translate such a strange, sad, gorgeous scene into a violent, atonal,
Sonic Youthassisted dirge deserves respect, study, celebration.
We conclude with the original Plastic Ono Band semi-reunion,
featuring Jim Keltner on drums, a smiley Klaus Voormann on bass, and
a befuddled-looking Eric Clapton, rumbling through "Yer Blues" and
early Ono ringers "Death of Samantha" and "Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's
Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)," Sean initially trying to
trade surly guitar solos with Clapton but eventually, wisely laying
off. We serenade Yoko with "Happy Birthday," en masse. (77!) In
return, she gives us songwriting advice (be general, not specific)
and a brief pep talk: "You have a long life ahead of you. And it's
gonna be beautiful, if we just keep hugging each other and loving
each other. It's good for your health, you know."
And then, of course, there's the inevitable encore of "Give Peace a
Chance," all the special guests piled back onstage at once, a
ludicrous scene indeed: Kim grabbing Thurston's hands to pull their
shared mic down to her height, Jake and Ana bobbling their cue, Bette
cheerfully refusing to do a verse by herself, Yoko yapping to a
bewildered-looking Paul Simon about something or another as the song
winds down. A suitably bizarre way to end a deliriously strange
evening. We love her for what she is.
--------
Yoko Ono pushes the edge on eve of 77th birthday with star-studded
show at Brooklyn Academy of Music
Jim Farber
Wednesday, February 17th 2010
To the uninformed, she's one of the great punch lines of the last
half century.
But last night, Yoko Ono appeared before a knowing and faithful crowd
at the Brooklyn Academy of Music to re-assert herself as a longtime
musical pioneer, as well as an artist still pushing the edge.
To help her toast the event, a mighty round of guest stars showed up
to play her songs, including both cult stars (Kim Gordan, Gene Ween,
and Justin Bond) and brand name icons (Paul Simon, Bette Midler, and
Eric Clapton).
The last named star took part in the most historically resonant part
of the show. For the final four numbers in this near three hour
event, Ono fronted much of the same band that backed her on the
historic "Live Peace In Toronto" album from 1969, including Clapton,
bassist Klaus Voormann and drummer Jim Keltner (subbing for original
stickman Alan White).
Ono's 32-year-old son, Sean, pitched in for his dad on those numbers,
along with serving as musical director for the entire event.
The night began with a series of short films capturing such early
Yoko pieces as 1966's "Play It By Trust" (in which people were
invited to cut off parts of her clothing as part of a live
instillation) to 1966's "Bottoms" (which features just that part of
the human anatomy).
Lots of film of John and Yoko unspooled during this segment,
threatening, for a spell, to turn this into "home movie night at the Lennons."
Luckily, as soon as Ono appeared live with her backing band, her
connection to her insanely famous husband faded and she emerged as a
force of her own.
Even in her seventh decade, Ono has lost none of her vocal power or
shock-appeal. Her "singing" has always involved its own eccentric,
fidgety take on Arabic ululating. The result sounds like a vocal
equivalent to an Ornette Coleman free-jazz sax solo - creating
something curious, brave, and free.
The music behind Ono often had more conventional roots, mining funk,
jazz, and progressive rock.
In her old song "Mind Train," Michael Leonhart's trumpet mined a
jazz-funk groove with a very '70s feel, while the more recent
"Rising" had the loose structure, and escalating crescendos, of
classic psychedelic-rock.
In this first "act," Ono included her one, great pop hit, the new
wave disco classic from the early '80s, "Walking On Thin Ice," which
has lost none of its thrust.
For the second half, the show moved into tribute mode, with various
guests covering Yoko songs, along with two pieces by John.
The singers from the Scissor Sisters rendered a recent Ono piece,
"The Sun Is Down," while performance artist/drag queen Bond delivered
an irony-heavy take on Yoko's feminist anthem from the '70s, "What A
Bastard The World Is."
Both pieces suffered from their crude use of language. (In general,
Ono proves far more eloquent, and nuanced, when shrieking than when
speaking). At least Bond's gay connection lent Yoko's piece fresh appeal.
Bette Midler proved the night's most creative arranger, giving great
instrumental humor, and highly theatrical rhythm, to "Yes, I'm Your
Angel," a tongue in cheek piece Yoko penned to John to ease his
anxiety over his 40th birthday. (He would be murdered less than two
months after that event).
Paul Simon performed delicate harmonies with his son Harper on
"Silverhorse" and "Hold On," John's beautiful tribute to his wife.
Two members of Sonic Youth - Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon - met Yoko
at eye level by offering careening blasts of guitar feedback to
accompany her vocal cries and wails. It provided the night's zenith
of abstraction.
Still, the capper had to be the reunion of the Plastic Ono Band.
Forty years have passed since the surviving members last played
together. Here they offered songs like The Beatles' "Yer Blues," with
Clapton taking a great blues solo, and the inevitable "Give Peace A Chance."
Yoko's speeches throughout the night underscored her idealized, and
numbing, hippie views, elaborated in that tired, old hit. Yet, when
she belched, yelped, and whined with her Plastic band on the classic
old "Don't Worry Kyoko," she proved the range of her art, and
re-asserted just how far ahead of the curve she was.
--
---------
Yoko Ono
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/21/PK101BVATG.DTL
Aidin Vaziri
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Last year, Yoko Ono revived the Plastic Ono Band for its first studio
album in decades, "Between My Head and the Sky." It's hard to blame
her for the delay; her time has been occupied by making art,
campaigning for peace and handling the affairs of her late husband,
John Lennon. Ono, 76, tells us it was their son, Sean, who suggested
bringing back the group - which at points counted Eric Clapton, Keith
Moon and Frank Zappa as members - with a new lineup that includes
Japanese indie-rockers Cornelius and Yuka Honda. The Plastic Ono Band
kicks off this year's Noise Pop Festival with a performance Thursday
at Oakland's Fox Theater.
Q: I thought you invented noise pop.
A: I know. Are they going to give me credit for it? It all happened
when my mom put me in early music education. I learned chords and
melodies there. This is the 1930s. Can you believe it? In Tokyo one
of the homework assignments was to listen to all the noise of the day
and transpose that into music notes. So sounds and notes were
something I was familiar with since I was 4 or 5 years old.
Q: Have you been brushing up on the original Plastic Ono Band records
to prepare for the concert?
A: No. It's all in my mind. I don't memorize any of my lyrics. That's
the problem. But I know my songs. It just comes to me.
Q: Why bring back the band now?
A: Well, because I should have continued it all my life. I just
stopped using it after John passed away. It happened in a very
strange way because of Sean. He just called me and said, "Is it all
right to use the name?" I said, "Why would we do that?" I blocked it
because John passed away. Then I thought about it and I thought,
"That's it." It's a band John named for me. For Sean, it's his dad.
It would be wrong to drop it.
Q: Do you and Sean work well together?
A: Yes, we do. It has a lot to do with the fact that he's a very
independently good musician. If it's his album, I generally won't
interfere. With this, he would make suggestions, but he had a strong
sense that it's my band.
Q: In New York you performed with original band members Eric Clapton
and Klaus Voorman, plus guests including Bette Midler, Thurston
Moore, Kim Gordon and Paul Simon. Not bad.
A: I know. I wasn't expecting that. I think Sean created this concert
as a tribute to me or something. I know what it is; my birthday is
Feb. 18 and it's a birthday present. I'm not going to ask him because
birthday presents are supposed to be a secret, right?
Q: It's not a very good secret.
A: No, it's a very public surprise.
Q: To his credit, you're probably not the easiest person to shop for.
A: Isn't that funny? He could have given me a pebble or something and
it would be easier. {sbox}
To hear Yoko Ono's music, go to www.imaginepeace.com.
--
E-mail Aidin Vaziri at avaziri@sfchronicle.com.
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