Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band “TAKE ME TO THE LAND OF HELL”

[GUEST REVIEW BY MADELINE BOCARO] (Chimera) Take Me To the Land of Hell is a pure Yoko fest – including screamers, dreamers and free form rock/jazz/funk excursions to places we’ve never been before. It’s not all peace and love. The dichotomy of life is passionately illustrated with hellish imagery and delicate moments of hope and love. Yoko was spun out of a cyclone that was the first half of her life. After all the turmoil and ugliness, she can still see the world as Oz with all its beauty. She keeps on telling us that if we just believe, all good things will come. Then…there is the dark side. During the recording sessions, Sean proudly proclaimed, “It sounds like the end of the world!” I couldn’t wait to hear it!

Sean re-formed the interchangeable Plastic Ono Band in 2009. POB was first revived for Between My Head and the Sky, reinstating the essence of Yoko’s instinctive primal rock sound. Other collaborators this time include Lenny Kravitz, a couple of Beastie Boys, Cibo Matto, Cornelius and many others. Yoko recently told The Independent, "People tell me this kind of music is young people's music, and I tell them, 'I was doing this kind of music before you were born.’"

The album’s opener ‘Moonbeams’ starts with a birdcall. Not the pleasant chirping of a sparrow, but a warning to us all. Our duality of good and evil is examined in this wild dance in a ‘cosmic club’. ‘Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…!!!’ ‘Cheshire Cat Cry’ is a warning disguised as a heavy rock jam. Yoko has always had a Cheshire Cat smile, and like the enigmatic creature, she is trying to tell us something. The mythical storybook cat is known to be philosophical, baffling, amusing and mysterious – just like Yoko, but her message is blatant. ‘Stop the violence, stop all wars’. The Declaration of Independence is reinterpreted to reflect our self-destructive urges. The Cheshire Cat is crying instead of smiling. Featuring Lenny Kravitz on drums and clavinet.  ‘Tabetai’ is a reworking of song that Yoko performed live in 1974 on her tour of Japan. Meaning ‘I want to eat’, juicy steak, sweet pancakes and fried chicken are all on the menu. It is a playful commentary on famine/gluttony, in an upbeat/offbeat song. When there is no food left (as in her childhood in war-torn Japan) ‘let’s go to another country.’ Accented by strange and beautiful beats, and a bottle played like a Japanese flute. A collaboration with tUnE-yArDs.  Who’s bad? She’s bad! Bad means good, get it? ‘Bad Dancer’ will most likely be Yoko’s eleventh No.1 dance hit on Billboard’s Dance/Club Play Chart. You will think of the B-52’s ‘Rock Lobster’, with its psychobilly surf-punk 4-note guitar riff… but wait, THEY were influenced by YOKO! ‘When your mind is dancing, your heart is bouncing!’ Members of the Beastie Boys collaborated on this one, and it was produced by Yuka Honda.  Opening with the tinkering sound of a music box, ‘Little Boy Blue’ is a haunting lullaby, not far from Yoko and Sean’s own truth. ‘Mommy’s weeping, daddy's gone…’ Yoko’s delicate singing morphs into haunting screams. Also with tUnE-yArDs. ‘There's No Goodbye Between Us’ could be a beautiful love song about anybody, but obviously, John has never left Yoko. Mellophones and backward piano loops bring a wonderful other-worldliness to the song.  The funky ‘7th Floor’ (with Questlove) has some crazy beats. Lyrically, it’s an amalgam of all the nightmares that Yoko must have had on the 7th Floor of the Dakota after John’s death. She sees a dead body on the sidewalk, imagining that it is her own, then realizes that it’s just a shadow. Angrily, she threatens a phantom killer. Yoko told The Arts Desk, “’7th Floor’ is the conceptual jump in a way. I just wanted to do something that furthered the form of my lyrics and music. The song is about a kind of reality that hasn’t been expressed or pursued yet. We are living in a three or four-dimensional world, and this is more like a fifth or sixth dimension.  The stunning ‘N.Y. Noodle Town’ is Yoko’s anthem to her hometown, New York City, with a beautifully poignant guitar solo! ‘Take Me To The Land Of Hell’ is surprisingly a ballad. ‘Moon River’ becomes Blood River, which Yoko asks to take her to John. She is going through hell and back to reunite with him. ‘Where you and I meet soul to soul, to never be apart again’. This piano based lament echoes ‘Mrs. Lennon’ and also evokes Nico’s beautifully chilling, ‘You Forget To Answer’. ‘Watching The Dawn’ reminds us that we are ‘offsprings of lovers & dreamers, and ‘descendents of thinkers and builders”. Yoko ruminates about our transformation into evil leaders and victims. She is compelled to tell us that it is still possible to hold onto our dreams in this frightful world. This is hard to believe after all of her hardships, but Yoko is still trying, still hopeful.  In the vein of ‘Yes, I’m Your Angel’ (Double Fantasy), ‘Leaving Tim’ is a playful old-fashioned tune. It’s great to hear the laughter!  ‘Shine, Shine’ is the ultimate wakeup call. It is driven by an incredible bass line, similar to the powerful ‘Why’ (from Yoko’s first Plastic Ono Band solo album, 1970), but with positivity, love and light! The song ends in a vortex of sound that sucks every thought out of your brain except for the one that says, “This is now my favorite album of all time!”  The silent ‘Hawk’s Call’ could possibly be a cover version of John Cage’s 4’33”, or a reprise of the 'Nutopian International Anthem'.

The very first form of music that existed must have been just like Yoko’s – millions of years ago - before language, before instruments...the first prehistoric bird call, the grunt of a cave man, the first vocal expression of joy or sadness. The music of the future will probably resemble hers as well (whether it be made by humans or aliens).

I really hope there is an afterlife for one reason only - so that John Lennon can see all of Yoko's triumphs, and know that his dream has finally come true. For all we know, he might be behind all of this.

TAKE ME TO THE LAND OF HELL features the talents of YOKO ONO, Sean Lennon, Yuka C Honda, Keigo “Cornelius” Oyamada, Hirotaka “Shimmy” Shimizu, Yuko Araki, Nels Cline, tUnE-yArDs, Questlove, Ad-Rock & Mike D, Michael Leonhart, Bill Dobrow, Jared Samuel, Shahzad Ismaily, Lenny Kravitz, Andrew Wyatt, Erik Friedlander, Lois Martin, Joyce Hammann, Thomas Bartlett, Douglas Wieselman, Julian Lage, Toyoaki Mishima, Toru Takayama, Christopher Sean Powell, Christopher Allen, Andre Kellman, Michael H. Brauer, P.J. van Sandwijk, Bob Ludwig, Kevin Harper, Mark Bengston, Geoff Thorpe and Greg Kadel.

Listen Here http://www.yopob.com

Dan Hubbard "Livin' in the Heartland"

(Dead Letter) Hubbard's vital country-tinged singer songwriting is worthy of hubbub, his lyrics as observant as the Hubble, and despite mellowness, his music rocks like a hobby horse.

The Future Primitives "into the primitive"

(Voodoo Rhythm) Stripped down, digital age-averse, animal-esque garage-abilly from South Africa that's as ominous as a South African villain in a Lethal Weapon movie and as dangerous as a starving lion in a neglected South African game park and as awesome as the classic South African garage rock of A-Cads or Johnny Congo (and exactly 1 million times awesomer than Dave Matthews). This sounds like genuine 60s rock...as in the year 60, when people made music by beating rocks.

The Burning River Ramblers "To Cover a Fool"

(brramblers.com) Endearing Cleveland college bar alt rock voodoo that has many seductive charms, the least of which is that's it's hard to describe exactly what they do, as they mess around with jam band, Island sound, bluesy stuff, pop, the mellow, and the rockin'. Burn on!

Jobriath "Amazing Dope Tales"

(Guest Review by Jonathan Poletti) (Eschatone) It takes the world awhile to catch up to Roctober but you like to note progress. The Jobriath appreciation way back in issue #25 (summer 1999) set in motion an effort by the ill-fated Rhino Handmade to release the glam un-star's fairly extensive unreleased catalogue, to include "one of the most exciting items ever to emerge on eBay" as David Thompson once wrote: "a reel of unreleased material recorded by Jobriath with producer Eddie Kramer, shortly before he signed to Elektra." Now in 2013 three tracks off the 1971 demo reel are released by the maverick genius Jed Davis of Eschatone Records, who promises more, including hopefully Jobriath's resulting 1972 album. But check out "As the River Flows," his ode to time. It takes a closer listening: what could be a generic "oh whoa ohh oohhh" is in his transcription "oh woe" — a reminder he was a tragedian & his view of life & himself star-crossed. For the studio version he'd draw on his teenage direction of church choirs & haul in a chorus from the casts of HAIR and Jesus Christ Superstar. The refrain — "As the river flows / so must you and I" — would not have been as dark to them as I hear it now. "Must" is the key: in a hymn to a universe with no God in it, he's impelled forward to the scene, two years later, of his crucifixion by media & his life's grim end. 

I Got Somethin’ To Tell You (d. Whoopi Goldberg, HBO 2013). Dave Chappelle, live, Oddball Comedy Tour 2013 (Tinley Park, IL)

(GUEST REVIEW by Jake Austen) I had a pretty amazing comedy-themed Memorial Day Weekend. Setting the table was the closing night of the Black Harvest film festival, featuring a preview of Whoopi Goldberg’s Kickstarted Moms Mabley documentary, I Got Something to Tell You, which will be on HBO eventually (hopefully before Black History Month). Goldberg, who once did a Mabley tribute show, does a wonderful job creating not so much a portrait, but a satisfying survey/appreciation of one of the greatest stand up comics in American history. Because the Mabley character was a coy construct and she did not break character in interviews, there is really not enough available material to present a true biography of Mabley a/k/a/ Loretta Mary Aiken, who (like Grandpa Jones of Hee Haw fame) was playing an elderly person from her youth and aged into the image. And because other than a few race movies, footage of Mabley is mostly from the last few years of her life when the presumed septuagenarian (her birth date is disputed) found a new audience on talk and variety shows in the late 60s and early 70s, Goldberg had to devise clever methods to play material from her excellent 60s LPs (with animation or animated text on the screen as the records spun), or have comics who came up in the 60s and 70s discuss her impact. Though not a problem exactly, what this does is skew the focus to her late standup career, when I personally want to know more about her vaudeville/minstrel circuit/Broadway career in the twenties and thirties. When Goldberg, as narrator, gives Mabley props for co-writing a show with Zora Neale Hurston and then doesn’t follow it up (I know she and Hurston played cheerleaders in a skit where Tim “Kingfish” Moore was a footballer, but not much more than that), it a bit of a tease. This is made more frustrating by the few interviews with survivors of that era revealing genuinely fascinating snippets of info about Mabley’s personal life (her offstage life as “Mr. Moms,” for example).

Goldberg, however, doesn’t let the gaps in Mabley’s history serve as pit traps, instead focusing on her material, particularly the bold political content of her humorous, scathing, critiques on American racism. Though she dressed in a house coat and funny hat, took out her dentures, and spoke in a relaxed, stammering drawl (perfect for lengthy raconteuring, though not always the best for sound bites, as this film demonstrates), she seemed safe and harmless, but her jokes about the absurdity of segregation, lynching, and racial epithets are all the more powerful because this sharp commentary is coming from an unexpected spokesperson.  The comics and scholars interviewed who provide context and commentary include Cosby, Arsenio, Kathy Griffin, Bambi Haggins, Robert Klein (interviewed on the Apollo stage [?]), and a rare Eddie Murphy talking head (though his explanation of his elderly female Klump character being a Mabley impersonation demonstrates a coarse misunderstanding of Mabley’s bold take on female sexuality). But most impressive is the way deft editing of the sparse Mabley film footage advocates for her genius. Her earnest singing tribute to her slain friends MLK and Jack and Bobby Kennedy has been presented as a novelty record over the years, and seeing her perform it on Hugh Hefner’s TV show with Barbi Benton, Sammy Davis Jr, Paul Mooney, and various Playmates paying rapt attention could also be presented as silly or absurd. But here we see it as the artistic, soulful triumph it really was. And her terrible movie Amazing Grace is reduced to one scene of pleading oration that is presented as improvised, honest, and vital. In our house Mabley’s records get a lot of spins, so I hesitate to call her a forgotten figure, but for the countless folks who don’t know how awesome Moms was, this is a vital work.

I thought about Mabley’s coy stage character a couple of days later when Dave Chappelle took the stage headlining the Oddball Comedy Festival in Suburban Chicago. Even before walking off his TV show (close to a decade ago!) Chappelle had starred in a stoner comedy and certainly appeared half-baked during the introductions to his skits on his iconic program which tackled taboos and stereotypes with bold, unnerving recklessness. So combine an image of a guy who’s high and doing dangerous comedy with his mysterious exodus from the show, abandoning a huge contract to disappear overseas, and people started calling Dave Chappelle crazy. That his rare stage appearances over the last 8 years have been odd at times (unannounced appearances at the Laugh Factory where he spent hours talking intimately with the audience; theater shows where he seemed ill prepared) further fueled that reputation. And when he reacted to a disrespectful crowd in Hartford, CT two days prior to the Chicago show by basically walking off in disgust the legend of volatile, anything-can-happen Dave was further cemented. But watching Chappelle on stage, chain-smoking, mumbling profanities, raging against the Hartford crowd (he considered doing a “reverse Kramer,” and just yelling “Crackers!”) it certainly felt possible that the “Crazy Dave” persona was a smokescreen; like Mabley he was presenting himself in such a way that it made it so much more impactful when he made brilliant, deep-cutting commentary on profoundly disturbing, important subjects (such as referencing two ancestors both born of interracial couplings, “one from love, one from rape…but alls well that ends well!”). And while I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the Hartford incident was a calculated stunt, I will say that if it was, it was incredibly successful! To start off a tour with the equivalent of punching out the biggest guy on your first day in prison could not have been more effective. Not only was the audience nervous and vulnerable in ways that left us primed us for laughter, but we were on some otherworldly good behavior. Signs were posted everywhere about not heckling, texting, or taking pictures or video during the show, and during Chappelle’s set I did not see a single phone out! When was the last time you were out a show where no one took a picture or video? And this is 17,000 people!

I had gone in with low expectations. A massive, outdoor comedy festival sounds like a nightmare to me. Comedy outside in a giant venue with the scale not allowing the performer to vibe with the audience seemed like a terrible formula, and the eclectic lineup seemed theoretically appealing, but inevitably disastrous, as so many of the drunk, mob-mentality masses would be disinterested in too many of the acts. But I was wrong. Though I missed the warm-up second stage with lower profile comics (overseen by Brody Stevens, perhaps the best crowd work comic I’ve ever seen), the main show, a well-paced four-hour extravaganza, was a rousing success. Emcee Jeff Ross had some decent jokes (I thought he had cornrows to address the black concertgoers coming to see Chappelle, but it was revealed on Memorial Day that it was to mimic James Franco’s Spring Breakers character for Franco’s TV roast). Opener Kristin Schaal came out in male drag as an offensive Gen-Y Diceman-type sexist comic, and was hilarious. Al Madrigal’s disaffected domestic comedy was sharp (you’re not going to get better piñata jokes). Westside comic Hannibal Burress destroyed the crowd with a killer, dynamic set, ending with a huge semi-coherent rap parody with lights, smoke, and ballet dancers. The only misstep of the night was making Dmitri Martin follow local hero Burress, but his low-key set was funny and warmly received. And co-headliners Flight of the Conchords certainly drew had a lot of fans of their acoustic folk-rap musical shenanigans, but a majority of the crowd who came to see Chappelle had no idea who they were, and despite thick New Zealand accents and absurdist juxtapositions of R&B tropes with mild tales of complimentary muffins and weekend parenting, the crowd was with them.

Then it was Chappelle time. My expectations for his set were also low, for while I would have loved to have been at an intimate five hour Comedy Store set, with stage and audience barriers breaking down and vulnerabilities exposed, that wasn’t going to happen here, and if he was going to come out ill-prepared his deficiencies would be magnified after 3 hours of exquisitely crafted comedy. And if such low-expectations were another trap Chappelle set, I fell into it, because he was amazing. Mixing old and new material, Chappelle’s 45 minutes were rock solid, his storytelling enchanting, his comic timing Redd Foxx-like, his fury at Hartford, and subsequent satisfaction with Chicago, functioning as the most successful “It’s great to be here tonight in (fill in the blank)” imaginable. He masterfully wove together stories of family life (a lecture to his son about it being OK to quit causing community repercussions; a Chappelle classic about his wife having to explain what “pussy” is to their young child), he fantasized about hiring Paula Deen as a private chef, and he playfully messed around with his deejay and a security guard. He addressed all the themes about Chappelle that fascinate and confuse us, and most importantly, he demonstrated that he is a masterful stand-up comic, and like Richard Pryor before him, whatever might be troubling him personally he is able to translate into electrifying energy on stage.

The bottom line is, Hartford hecklers aside, people deeply want to love Dave Chappelle, and when he’s this good he makes it easy for us. Stand up may be the best outlet for him, but anything’s possible (he seemingly mended bridges with his sketch writing partner Neal Brennan earlier this year by appearing at Brennan’s comedy night). In Hartford he had his deejay play Kanye West’s “New Slaves” as his early exit music, marking his state of mind that evening (he told us several times it was a miracle he continued the tour). In Chicagoland he recounted a funny anecdote about putting Kanye on TV for the first time (shortly after he’d been anointed by Jay-Z on the same stage Chappelle now stood upon) and when he exited it was to the joyous NWA/Watts 103^rd Street Band “Express Yourself.” I’m anxious to see how Chappelle expresses himself in the future, and I’m thrilled to verify that he truly deserves to be considered alongside comedy heroes like Pryor, Foxx, Moms Mabley.

Big Dipper "Joke Outfit" b/w "Market Scare"

(Almost Ready) Two little dips of charming, elegant power pop from the decades-dormant band's recent comeback album, packaged pretty for Record Store Day, and far more valuable than that that 360 gram vinyl quadruple LP reissue of Huey Lewis' "Sports," or whatever else they reissued last RSD.  

Wiseguys-N-Scallywags

(wiseguysandscallywags.com) Pop punk? Poop puke.