Bowery Ballroom, NYC, Sunday, September 16, 2013
Sold Out

Very few people accept the idea that watching Yoko Ono do her thing is entertaining.  It’s interesting how you get universally similar reactions from very different types of people, all very negative. But to paraphrase Bill Murray in Stripes, one day Yoko Ono is going to die and you’re gonna say “I’ve been listening to her for years and I think she’s fabulous.”  Sure enough, Yoko is now 80 years old.  My dad was 81 when he died but he seemed decades older.  She is still an all-out assault on your senses, ululating, sonically reverbulating, the like — but when combined with this particularly heavy crack incarnation of the Plastic Ono Band, the results are BIG.  Head banging music.

This night was Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band’s  only 2013 show, and it featured one Yoko, one Yuka, and one Yuko. They opened up with the show with an hour of Yoko’s films, some dating back to 1966.  Bare 60s asses, and so on.

The band is amazing.  Yuko Araki from a group called mi-gu is a seriously demure powerhouse drummer. They had to set up the fiberglass around her she didn’t blast waif Yoko out into the audience. A big room drummer. Behind the keys was her eminence (based on audience reaction) Yuka Honda from Cibo Matto. Yuka’s husband Nels Cline, feedback-enthusiast and Thurston Moore-gentrifier, most commonly associated with the dinner-party rock group Wilco was impressive on guitar, as he usually is.  If anything, he deferred to the band leader and Yoko.  Cline seemed to be channeling Adrian Belew at times, with an enjoyable 70s Talking Heads groove there for a good chunk of the show. The bandleader, as it were, is Sean Lennon — even though I didn’t realize it until three-quarters of through the show. Pushing 40, Seanboy is a surprisingly musical multi-instrumentalist.  He has so much to work against, the reputation of every Jason Bonham, Ziggy Marley, or Julian Lennon (did I really need to say it?).  He held his own against Nels Cline on guitar and generally guided the direction of the attack. The show featured one surprise guest, utility man Earl Slick from the mid-80s not-so-supergroup “Phantom, Rocker, and Slick” and John and Yoko’s Double Fantasy album. Slick’s pentatonic focus added a bluesier angle to Yoko’s guitar army on the last few songs, including Don’t Worry, Kyoko.

So, the question is: If Yoko Ono rocks hard live and nobody is there to hear it and nobody believes you because they can’t imagine how anyone could listen to that shit — did it really make a sound? <ululate>YES!</ululate>

Top photo: James Prochnik