The 1981 Listening Post - Yoko Ono - Season of Glass

 Yoko Ono - Season of Glass

#226

June 8 1981 LISTENING POST ADMIN DISCOVERY

Yoko Ono

Season of Glass

Genre: A Perfect Eulogy

4.5 out of 5

Highlights:

Goodbye Sadness

Even When You’re Far Away

Toyboat

It’s been 40 years since John Lennon was shot. I was never much of a Beatles fan so it didn’t hit me as hard as other. Cuz, I was young and stupid and didn’t know what a tragic loss it was. But I have experience loss. We all have. I’ve lost all my grandparents. My parents, dad died when he was 49, mom at 74. 

My own first born child died of a terminal illness when she was 13. 

I’ve reached that age where my friends are starting to go. Just last year a high school pal succumbed to cancer. I hear drips and drabs of others from my year at Chatham Township High School who die. 

It’s becoming less and less of a shock when someone in my peer group dies. Sure, that’s incredibly young, but it’s going to be more expected than it would be when we were in our 20s. 

That’s why the tears were flowing during the opener of this record, “Goodbye Sadness”. Because that’s the very sentiment you need when people die.

I know not a few people who have clung to the dead. Especially parents. Especially those who lost their child in infancy or just after. Moving on is hard. You don’t want to forget them. You are afraid that you will.

When someone asks me how many children I have there is a moment that happens in my head where I have a little debate. (This happens EVERY time, btw). I have to weigh the present versus the past. 

If I say I have two children, which I do, does that mean I have left Lizzy to the ether of the past? 

If I say “three” I have to qualify that one is dead. That keeps the memory alive but invariably halts the conversation while the other person offers condolences. They feel bad. I feel bad. Partially because I don’t really need the condolences. It’s been 14 years. I’ve dealt with it. I only cry once a year now. I created a scholarship in her name. I really can’t wait for the funds to be paid out in full because it’s a constant reminder, it’s bookkeeping now and it’s actually served it purpose, which was to help me through my grief. 

Anyway. 

I need songs like “Goodbye Sadness”. We all do. Because you can’t mourn forever. If you do, you can’t live life to the fullest. And there’s so much time and so little to do.

Strike that.

Reverse it.

This album is long. But, so is grief. Yoko and John’s love was deep. It deserves more than just one song. This entire album is mourning. It’s like Shiva. Those seven days start off feeling interminable but, by the end, you are laughing and ready to move on in the world. 

After Side One lulls you into a state of acceptance and calm, Side Two kicks you right in the chest by addressing the elephant directly. “I Don’t Know Why” is exactly the sentiment I had when I learned of Lizzy’s diagnosis. 

And, man…”No, No, No”. That’s really something. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfB8aqDUqbU

The 1980 Listening Post - John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Double Fantasy

 John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Double Fantasy

#445

By Stephen Romone Lewis

John Lennon & Yoko Ono

Double Fantasy

Genre: Pop 

Allen’s Rating: 4 out of 5

Stephen’s Rating: 4.75 out of 5

Allen’s Highlights:

Just Like Starting Over

I’m Losing You

Beautiful Boy

Watching the Wheels

Stephen’s Highlights: 

Watching the Wheels

(Just Like) Starting Over

I’m Your Angel

Hard Times are Over

    First listen 2020.

    I needed to listen with fresh ears to honestly evaluate this album. I failed. 

Two years into a Beatles obsession, Lennon was assassinated. I was 13. My first experience with loss. My parents gave me Double Fantasy, an early Christmas present, 18 hours after his death. It’s impossible, even now, to disassociate my feelings of adolescent heartbreak from this music. Whatever emotions John and Yoko intended me to have listening to their songs are replaced with grief, hopelessness and anger. Lots and lots of anger. These are not sappy songs of blissful matrimony, they boil my blood.

Listening to “Beautiful Boy” I can only hear myself scream, “Ronny, you could have stopped Hinckley! A bullet to your lung. You almost bled out you…”

As a kid I thought the lyrics to “Woman” seemed like dreck, but now they sound like me shouting, “WHEN WILL WE STOP ARMING THE MENTALLY ILL!”

Is it over produced? I don’t know! I don’t hear production. All I hear is an increasingly hoarse voice crying to John. “You should have gone to England; the worst he could have done was stab you. Right, George?”

Do Yoko’s songs ruin what could have been a pop masterpiece? I don’t know! I stopped paying attention after I flipped the disc. Forty years of congressional “leaders” confusing “a well regulated militia” with well armed psych wards. Every song leads me deeper into a revenge fantasy where…

Wait. 

The widow is singing, “It's been very hard, but it's getting easier now. Hard times are over, over for a while.”

It’s difficult to maintain a decent hate spiral while people chant, “Hard times are over.”

BUT! But! Sandy Hook!

“Hard times are over.”

You don’t sound like you believe yourself anymore than I do, Yoko.

“Hard times are over.”

But… 

“Hard times are over.”

Okay.

“Hard times are over. Over for awhile.”

https://open.spotify.com/album/1NWA2fPLUAW5df7UGI5thp?si=m3oauSzMSHasKzfeLrG9kA

The 1985 Listening Post - Yoko Ono - Starpeace

Yoko Ono - Starpeace

#44

February 18 1985

Yoko Ono

Starpeace

Genre: Dance Rock

1.25 out of 5

Protest rock. It can really change…nothing. But at least it is a document of a moment in time when people gathered together to fight against…

Oh, who’m I kidding? 

If you aren’t going to use the proceeds to fight against some kind of inhumanity ala Live Aid, you are just yelling about something you don’t like. 

Yoko Ono makes bad music. This is bad music about needing “peace” instead of a Star Wars Missile Defense System. 

Here’s the deal: The musicians are all exceptional. So, no matter what, that part is eminently listenable. What drags this down is Yoko. Her lyrics are cloying, her voice is grating. That story is as old as her involvement in music. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5bH7mWds78

The 1984 Listening Post - John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Milk & Honey

John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Milk & Honey

#14

January 27 1984

John Lennon & Yoko Ono

Milk & Honey

3.25 out of 5

Highlights:

Don’t Be Scared

Nobody Told Me

Grow Old With Me

I really enjoyed the back and forth duality of Double Fantasy. It felt organic in the playfulness and charming in Lennon’s rebirth. This feels compiled, which I guess it was. 

Strange that the strongest Lennon tune, and the one that sounds the most fleshed out, doesn’t come until the end of Side One. Why not lead off with a song that could set the tone for the album. If this record would score higher I would probably rearrange the tracks to lead off with it and put “Steppin’ Out” in it’s place, at the end, where it belongs. So you can get up and turn the record over when it comes on because you also know that Yoko’s Side One ender “O’ Sanity” is a 1 minute trifle but a kind of hilarious one that opens a little window into what she must have been going through. I applaud it’s ending. Big ups to you, Yoko. 

It’s really challenging to be objective about this record given the circumstances but so much of it is not great and that plodding mediocrity falls on both Yoko’s work and John’s. And, when it succeeds, it’s just fine. I’ve never been a fan of Lennon’s solo work and less so Ono’s. 

But, as the album draws to a close and the lo-fi “Grow Old with Me” plays after the melancholy “Let Me Count the Ways” I am struck by how much this song, with that tambourine and it’s playfully wistful melody that calls to mind McCartney’s work, has found me with a lump in my throat.

Context is everything in this case. 

Less an album than a final statement or a closing chapter. Wholly appropriate that Ono gets the last word. Impossible for her to tell John what she wants to and it’s she that will live on, in real life and as the album closes that chapter. 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/milk-and-honey/916330318