Yoko Ono has released a remix album called Yes, I’m A Witch featuring many renowned musical artists from today’s music scene. The neat concept of this album is that the artists only chose Yoko’s vocals and created entirely new backing tracks to show how versatile her songs can be. The songs range from the late '60s and also include her solo material in the '70s and '80s.
Admit it, you know who Yoko is, almost everyone knows the name. She was married to John Lennon of the Beatles. Most remember that she and John Lennon stayed in a hotel and protested the Vietnam War for ten days. She also was an artist, a mother, a drug addict, an activist, and a musician. She was at close range when John Lennon was murdered. She has been though a lot.
Maybe I should not be doing this review because I have honestly never heard much of her solo material. The only reason I was truly interested in this CD is because The Flaming Lips do a cover. I am glad I did show interest because there are also a number of other bands that caught my attention once I read the back of the CD such as Le Tigre, The Apples In Stereo, The Polyphonic Spree, and Peaches.
After listening to the first track I was expecting a techno dance album, thankfully that track was only an intro. It was not a bad intro, featuring Hank Shocklee, but usually an intro defines what to expect for the rest of the album. Track two was “Kiss, Kiss, Kiss” by Peaches. It was a good attempt, but a little too weird for me. Another track that I did not care for was “Rising” done by DJ Spooky. Halfway through the song it sounded like Yoko was giving up her lunch to the porcelain god, not too attractive if you ask me.
Article comments
1 - zingzing
diesel, you should check out "yoko ono/plastic ono band" (obviously, she knew about krautrock before anyone else) and "fly" (madness in double album form). those are her two most interesting solo albums, in my view. fucking marvelous, both of them.
next, go get your copy of "double fantasy" out. go into it with an open mind, listen to it, then afterwards, ask yourself who, john or yoko, was really the more relavant artist at the time. yoko grew and changed as an artist, while john stagnated (starting in 1971 in my opinion).
also find yourself a copy of the "walking on thin ice" single (actually, you can find the lovely 6 minute version on the internet if you poke around enough). now that is a monster. a masterpiece, i say.
2 - Connie Phillips
Congrats! This article has been forwarded to the Advance.net websites.
3 - Vern Halen
John stagnated in 1971? You'll likely have legions of Lennonites on your case for that one, zing. Sadly, you're probably right.
As to whether Yoko was the more relevant artist, I don't know if Yoko ever was relevant in the rock scene of the day, or any day. She might very well have been in some circles - but, rightly or not, I think the mainstream audience saw (and continues) to see her as a hanger on riding the coattails of her husband.
4 - zingzing
yoko was certainly more relevant than john on "double fantasy," which, for his half, is throwback rock and wonky ballads. her stuff, for the most part, was straight-up new wave madness, which was the order of the day.
she certainly rode his coattails into the charts, but she had more business being there based on the music they produced.
5 - JC Mosquito
You may be right there, ZZ, and I concede that point to you - John's tunes weren't his best, fer shure, and on a critical level, Yoko's might even have been better. But it's the whole issue of relevance I'm thinking about here - I'm thinking back to that time and I seriously don't remember a lot of reviewers or music fans supporting her art with any real conviction...........
........... I just finished digging up a review of Double Fantasy from CREEM (March 1981), where the writer, John Swenson, comments on the hypocrisy of the established rock critics who were all set to dump on the album until Lennon's assasination changed their bylines. I suspect they weren't going to be kind to Yoko either. And I think there are relatively few music artists that would cite her as a major musical influence - maybe she is in some other art media, but not in mainstream music. Also, I can't think of anyone I know personally that considered her music essential listening.
I'm not saying she wasn't a good musical artist - perhaps she was, and perhaps still is influential in some small circles, but rightly or wrongly, she's been assigned a dark part in the saga of the Liverpudlian Quartet, which likely won't change for a long time to come.
I'll try to track down a decent copy of D> Fantasy & give it another spin - I think I traded my copy off when I was purging my vinyl years ago. Ach - what was I thinking?
Best to ya,
Skeeter.
6 - zingzing
contemporary views of yoko were often clouded by her supposed role in the break up of the beatles. she may not have directly influenced all that many artists, because people had preconcieved notions about her (and, secondarily, her music).
but! those that were paying attention learned quite a bit. her earliest musical efforts, with and without john, were certainly avant garde, but she mellowed, a bit, by the time the beatles broke up. yoko ono/plastic ono band was a proto-punk krautrock psych masterpiece. think about it. it's 1970. how many of the supposed great krautrock bands are even doing the krautrock yoko ono was doing? can had just started to rev up, faust was still a year away from recording, neu and kraftwerk were still in kraftwerk, mach 1, which was great, but nowhere near as dirty and dangerous as yoko's work of the time.
she prefigured punk, krautrock and the intermingling of noise with those genres far before any had really even taken off in their own right. i can't say if the punks and the krauts and the noise crowd were listening, but they certainly seemed to absorb some of her ideas.
her music from double fantasy was recorded in 1979, but it sounds more like stuff coming out in 1981 or 82... and you know a shit-ton of people heard that album.
people who refused to separate her from her image certainly weren't listening to her. she kind of straddles a line... she was heard by a lot of people she wouldn't have been heard by because of who she was, but she was also ignored by a lot of people because of who she was. still, those that have open ears for such things were influenced by her, i am sure.