"Let Me Be Your Yoko Ono"

I have an album called Live Peace In Toronto, 1969. The album was released in December of 1969, and it's by The Plastic Ono Band. Now if you look that album up on, say, Amazon, the artist listed is "John Lennon," which is no surprise, but when the album was released, the label said "Plastic Ono Band."

I call it the "divorce album." I call it that because my wife told me that if I ever play it again in her hearing she will divorce me.

When Lennon went on stage that day in September, he hadn't played live since Candlestick Park in San Francisco, which was where the Beatles played their last concert in 1966, not counting the rooftop concert they did in London in January '69. And here he was, having rehearsed on the plane with Yoko, and with Eric Clapton, and Klaus Voorman, and Alan White, who would go on to play drums with Yes, replacing the irreplaceable Bill Bruford. So it was a bit of a surprise when they showed up, because he (Lennon) had been invited to play, but nobody really expected him I don't think.

But he showed up. I don't know if this album was the whole concert, it may have been. They played oldies "("Blue Suede Shoes," "Dizzy Miss Lizzy"), "Give Peace A Chance" which had recently been recorded at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal and was riding up the pop charts at that very moment, "Cold Turkey" which would be the next single, and on which Yoko's voice could be heard, bleating like a sheep - a sick sheep.

Side 2 of the album, the latter part of the performance presumably, was given over to Yoko. She does her "signature song," which is called "Don't Worry Kyoko (Mommy's Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow"), the lyrics of which consist chiefly of the words "don't worry" played over a super grungy guitar riff. It actually kind of rocks, although it's still Yoko and all, and then comes "John, John Let's Hope For Peace," during which the band members stack their various instruments next to the amps, creating a howling raging feedback, while Yoko screams her head off. This goes on for quite a while. At the end she stops singing, um, screaming, but it takes a while before anyone actually turns off the amps, or removes the instruments, and so the album finishes with this droning screech that goes on for 2 or 3 minutes.

I can't imagine what the audience was thinking. They were probably expecting "Norwegian Wood." Richard Ginell at allmusic says this "was Lennon's declaration of independence from the Beatles," and so it may have been, but he dismisses side two as being "just as irritating today as it was in 1969." So he doesn't get it. It was putting Yoko on the stage and letting her loose that was his independence, that was the point, kind of like the anti-Beatles.

Ok, so I like side 2 of the album. It's noisy, no not just noisy, but ear-splitting, deafening, piercing noisy. Most of it isn't what any typical person would call "music." It is challenging; it is surprising, and it is insolent, more so than the three experimental albums he'd done with Yoko till then. It is Lennon standing up to the world and saying I'm not what you think I am, I don't have to wear any kind of clothes or hat, I don't have to give you what you want, I don't have to be whom the world thinks of as John Lennon.

I kinda get that…

Matisyahu, Trudeau, And Slow Trains Coming

This is about Pierre Elliot Trudeau Park. I was walking there last night. There is a pond and some fountains, and some trees, and adjacent there were two baseball games going on, one kid one adult, and it’s cool that, summer time and baseball games, it makes me nostalgic for a past I didn’t even have. But that’s the park. It used to be called Centennial Park, and I don’t know when they changed it, but I know that the first time I was there it was with my family and it was at a Lag Ba’Omer celebration hosted by the local Chabad organization, and that was about 4 years ago. And one of the reasons we went was to hear Matisyahu.

And that’s what this is about really. It’s about Matisyahu, not about the park at all. That was about 4 years ago, before anyone knew about Matisyahu; he was billed then as a Lubavitcher who played reggae. And my wife, she likes reggae. So do I really. But she was interested in hearing this guy.

But it got late and we couldn’t stay, so she never did get to hear him. Later, though, I got my hands on Live At Stubb’s, mostly for my wife who was interested, but she didn’t like it in the end, and I can’t say I blame her.

But I was thinking about that a bit the other night when I was listening to Slow Train Coming by Bob Dylan. And that’s what this is really about. It’s not about Matisyahu at all. It’s about Dylan being a “born-again Christian.” Of course Dylan couldn’t be a born again Christian because to be born again you have to be born once. And Dylan was born alright, or so I presume, in the complete absence of stories of storks, but he wasn’t born a Christian, not with a name like “Zimmerman” he wasn’t.

This album is 30 years old, well 29 actually – it was release in August, 1979 – so surely others have written about it and done so more elegantly. But thing with me is, that I hate this album, and I hate it because it’s so damned good. Lyrically the album is a pure rant. “Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief and there ain't no neutral ground” sings Dylan on “Precious Angel.” And that pretty much sums up the album. Dylan sings of a vengeful God, uncompromising in His demands, and of the massive unrelenting unparalleled corruption of mankind. Not much about love and brotherhood here. But here’s the rub. Dylan had Barry Beckett of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section playing keyboards, he has legendary producer Jerry Wexler, with Beckett, on the console; he has Mark Knopfler playing lead guitar and Pick Withers on drums, and so Dylan delivers his pinhead theology with a force that nails you to the wall. He creates a thing of great beauty out of platitudes and clichéd claptrap. Not just beauty, no, what he creates is riveting, you can’t argue with it, because the lyrics, one dimensional as they are, move in a context of such power and conviction. It’s so beautiful that I hate it.

That’s side one (it used to be vinyl remember?) Side two kind of lapses into “do unto others” platitiudes without quite the musical punch of side one. Let’s leave that for now.

So that’s what I was thinking about as I walked through Pierre Elliot Trudeau Park, formerly known as Centennial Park, and about how we missed Matisyah – Matisyahu with his lyrics like:

Dirt covered earth lays beneath my rib cage

Giving birth to overgrowth invading on to path ways

Burnt out trees cover streets where children once played

Sown seeds decay through sacred stepping stones in disarray

…

Aish tamid eternally

A fire burns continuously

Wondering where you been

Won't you come on home to me?

They are nice words, and different from Dylan, but Matisyahu is no Dylan, and he doesn’t have a Mark Knopfler or Jerry Wexler to bring him home, either. He is a showman, and many like him, but there is no personal dimension to his music, no filtering of meaning through the lense of experience. Ultimately, it’s plastic, nice words notwithstanding.

And it’s a microcosm. And that’s really what this is about. This isn’t about the park, or about Dylan, or about Matisyahu. This is about the meaning that we bring to our experience. This is about those whose words are hidebound, but who bring such meaning and intensity into their lives that no one can argue. This is about people who do and are the opposite. This is about how it’s not always what we say, but it’s how we say it, and what we do with it.

But in the end, it’s not quite true, because while I wouldn’t want to be a Matisyahu with all the superficiality that that entails, I wouldn’t want to be the Dylan of Slow Train either, because notwithstanding the beauty of the delivery, the message is still ugly.

So I’m going to go back to Pierre Elliot Trudeau Park, and maybe stop and watch a game for a while if I’m lucky enough to catch one again, and breathe the air under the trees, and next time I’ll listen to Gordon Lightfoot…

I used to like Jackson Browne. I say that, I used to like him, because I don't think that he's done anything worthwhile since 1978, that was Running On Empty.

The critics were always partial to For Everyman which was his second LP, but I'm not a critic, so that doesn't have to be my favourite, and it isn't, though "Ready Or Not" has been known to make me cry. It's not sad, but at some point I suppose my life was sad, and the song just cracked something inside me. But I didn't bawl or anything, just sniffed a bit, being a guy and all. And my kids were in the car, and so it wouldn't do if Dad just suddenly started to "greet," as the Scots would have it…

It's that line about "she's gonna be a mother…" Gets me every time…

But never mind that. I've always favoured Browne's first album, which either doesn't have a title, or is called "Jackson Browne," not very creative that, or is called "Saturate Before Using," which it isn't called that, not at all, but those words are on the cover, so it looks like it's called that, though it isn't. But I'm partial to that album anyway. It drills into your soul if you let it. It's sad stuff a lot of it, and it was done even before his life got majorly sad, which it did between Late For The Sky and The Pretender, and at the moment I don't want to think too much about that, what he went through, I can't think about that.

Did someone say "Late For The Sky?" There's no point, no point at all, saying anything about that song. I have a cyberfriend, he's a clergyman, Protestant, and he posted the lyrcs to that song on a messageboard around the time his marriage was collapsing, and it seems trite in a way to post pop song lyrics when your life is collapsing around into fragments, but he did it, and it wasn't trite, because if I were to say anything about "Late For The Sky," which I'm not, I would try to relate the power that's in there, no not power really, more like pain, real pain, not just pop music pain, and I don't know how he does that , though David Lindley has something to do with it, and I would describe it, but here I've undertaken not to say anything about it.

Late For The Sky

Now the words had all been spoken
And somehow the feeling still wasn't right
And still we continued on through the night
Tracing our steps from the beginning
Until they vanished into the air
Trying to understand how our lives has led us there

Looking hard into your eyes
There was nobody I'd ever known
Such an empty surprise to feel so alone

Now for me some words come easy
But I know that they don't mean that much
Compared with the things that are said when lovers touch
You never knew what I loved in you
I don't know what you loved in me
Maybe the picture of somebody you were hoping I might be

Awake again I can't pretend and I know I'm alone
And close to the end of the feeling we've known

How long have I been sleeping
How long have I been drifting alone through the night
How long have I been dreaming I could make it right
If I closed my eyes and tried with all my might
To be the one you need

Awake again I can't pretend and I know I'm alone
And close to the end of the feeling we've known

How long have I been sleeping
How long have I been drifting alone through the night
How long have I been running for that morning flight
Through the whispered promises and the changing light
Of the bed where we both lie
Late for the sky

Next Time You Hire A Clerk...

Roxy’s was a store on Kennedy Street north of Portage Avenue, back when such a thing existed. It was in the paper once, Roxy’s, not Kennedy, though Kennedy must have been in the paper occasionally, the street that is, not the president, although here in Montreal there is a President Kennedy Street, which may or may not be in the paper. Anyway, there were people who felt that the window display was sexist and that it objectified women. What they had done, the store people, was this. They took mannequins, plastic ladies, just the bottoms, and dressed them in bikini bottoms, then stuck LPs into the waist band. So people didn’t like that, some people. The store management was unrepentant. And rightly so – it was tasteless perhaps, but there is no law against being tasteless.

I tried to made a swap with them – not the mannequins. The store offered to tape any LP in the store for $10 but I had a better deal. I gave them some LPs, and in return they would tape Bobby’s Big Hits by Bobby Rydell together with some other odds and ends that appealed to me. You have to understand, the LP was selling for about $20; Bobby Rydell’s music was incredibly difficult to find. Ok, so I left there happy, and came back after the specified interval, and found a woman behind the cash, and I inquired about my tape and she knew nothing about it. Who did you talk to she said. The manager I said. Did he have a beard she asked. Oh yes. Oh she said. My CLERK. She looked contemptuous. I will look into it she said. Come back later.

I went back and the “clerk” handed me my blank tape and the LPs I’d left for him. Couldn’t do it he said. I was disappointed, and I took my stuff and left. Later I brought the tape back, and there was another clerk, and I gave him $10 and asked him to tape the Bobby Rydell.

Fast forward I don’t remember how many years. Roxy’s was long gone. Guy walks into my office, charged with petty theft. He had taken magazines from the Coles at Eaton Place and had forgotten to pay. He walked as far as the escalator in the concourse, realized what he’d done, turned around to go back, and got nabbed my store security. After I’d met with him a few times, and we’d gone to court for adjournments and such, I remember who he was. You used to work at that stored on Kennedy I said. Roxy’s he said. I owned it. Owned it? The clerk? I kept quiet.

We set the matter down for trial. His wife came to support him. Yup, it was the same woman. For the life of me, I have no idea what that was about.

He was convicted…