Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band - "Between My Head and the Sky"
I, like Yoko Ono, am a New Yorker.
The day after I first got hold of Between My Head and the Sky, I was listening to it with headphones on the 4 train coming from the Atlantic Avenue station in to Bowling Green. While waiting for that 4 train, I was listening to Yoko wait for the D train. I'll get back to that. But in the middle of a crowded train, in the tunnel under the East River, I listened to her song about meeting John Lennon, watching him die and finding a place of gratitude for their time together. With literally no place to go and nowhere to hide, I started tearing up, hiding my eyes with my forearm, trying not to be seen or to make a scene. (This wasn't all for the love of John Lennon. I'd lost someone close to me recently. More than one, really. These things happen.) We reached Manhattan and as I came up the escalator into Battery Park, the song had segued, without a gap between songs, into a meditative beat of drums and sitars and then naturally morphed once again, without a seam, into a steady beat of horns and percussion with Yoko singing basically, simply, ridiculously simply really, about two people making the best of life and "being together" (echo: being together) and "touch[ing] each other" (touch each other...). As I walked north on the narrow strip of Broadway past taxis and delivery trucks to my office everything seemed to turn into a stop motion time-lapse version of New York City... going to fast and yet slowing down.
A few things here: the music had the same rhythm and tempo of New York itself, at least to me, at that very moment. If Yoko proves nothing else, it's that her time with and without John at the Dakota has made her, very much, one of us. (Yes, us.) Secondly, I'm the type of person who appreciates the slow, sad song and one who takes expressions of loss very personally... but it was the steady beat of ‘Calling’ that made me want to dance, jump, shout to the world declaring that life had purpose. Yoko may have been the woman who recorded Season of Glass but she has survived, regrouped and coped. And in doing so, she knows how to keep a groove going. Listening to this song made me wish I wasn't afraid to take ecstasy so I could see what the song would be like on ecstasy.
And thirdly, it was all as seamless - actually moreso - than the Abbey Road medley that her husband, ironically, didn't quite go for. Actually it was a bit more seemless. I felt like she out-Beatled the Beatles. And how ironic is that??!!! 2009 was the year of the Beatles. The weird, cynical reason: they were in a video game. For weeks before Rock Band came out, we were bombarded on VH1 and elsewhere: Beatle movies, Beatle tell-all documentaries that didn't tell all, Beatle re-remasters - in stereo, in mono. (Now available, by the way, with matching T-shirts!) I was drawn in myself. But honestly, what have the Beatles done for us lately? Their last album was a Cirque du Solei soundtrack for God's sake! But seriously, I do look at Sir Paul with his marriage problems and his sad post-Linda life, and I look at Ringo and I find myself depressed. But even when Yoko echoes water metaphors from Sometime in New York City (in the title track) or if she's singing on The View about meeting John in the afterlife (‘I'm Going Away Smiling’), she's moving forward. And she sounds current and vital. So, okay, besides the churning of ‘Calling,’ the bits I love the most are: the weird ska mixed to the Japanese lyrics of ‘Hishire, Hishire,’ the opener ‘Waiting for the D Train,’ which actually invokes a subway and which, like ‘Calling’, utilizes every bit of vocal gymnastics Yoko has (the two songs play on every grunt, every "ah", every orgasmic sounding "yi yi yi") and the song about asking the elephant and the tiger about themselves, which I have a feeling my 5-year old niece would love. It's these moments, when Yoko brings the joy, where I actually can recall, a little bit, of how I felt when I was in the 10th grade and my aunt moved out of my grandparents' place, leaving her Beatles albums in my parents' house for a few months.
One can really argue that it's not just Yoko doing this. Sean Lennon produced this thing and, not to take away from Yoko, but he brings not only his own understanding of how her music influenced his friends, but he brings his friends: Cornelius, Erik Friedlander, Yuka Honda, Shimmy Shimizu, Shahzad Ismaily (second review in a row to mention Shahzad Ismaily) and on and on! These youngsters may be said to be propping up 76-year-old Yoko, who people seem to love to hate as much as they love to love. But Yoko did write all the music and all the words (even if she has been having fun running contests online allowing people to remix the already fun and very simple structure of ‘The Sun is Down.’ So give credit to Yoko for re-forming a Plastic Ono Band with these kids, and for knowing who they are. And therefore mixing the old and the new: she's out there on Twitter and Facebook (although she loses points for me when she tweets things like "Imagine all the statues in the world are the color of the sky." That's a terrible idea!) Her last album featured Peaches, the Flaming Lips and Cat Power. Someone let's ask Paul about Peaches and Cat Power. Please, lets!
If there's a down side for me, it's that I do tend to skip past the emotional slow things just because with Yoko, to me, it's all about the noise. But I have to love that even when she gets sappy; she says "remember, no tears." I'm sure if John is anywhere, he loves it all. But I hope he's happiest the most when his true love and their son have fun on the mixing board.
