★Secretly Canadian
Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins
*2022 stock* 'The Lennon/Ono collaborative albums were a critical part of their take on celebrity coupledom. Their first two LPs carried the series title “Unfinished Music,” a conceptual gambit with deeper roots in the aesthetic of the Fluxus art movement than in that of the British Invasion. The first set to be issued, subtitled Two Virgins, was a sound-collage set reportedly produced during their first night together. The album’s name, and the full-frontal nudity of its cover, referenced the c…
Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With The Lions
*2022 stock* "These two need no introduction, but "Cambridge 1969," which takes up all of side one, is a completely unheralded classic. For twenty minutes Yoko vibratoes her way around a single note while Lennon provides terrifying power-drone feedback accompaniment. This is the ultimate punk/metal take on La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela's Black Album (which, considering Ono & Young's history together, might be both figurative and literal). Towards the end John Stevens and John Tchichai chi…
Musik
Native Memphian William Eggleston, 77, is widely regarded to be the most important photographer of the late 20th Century, but there is another side to him that took root in his Sumner, Mississippi childhood, where he discovered the piano in the parlor that ignited in him a lifelong passion for music. It was a passion he carried forth his entire life, playing quite adeptly when a piano was handy: improvised turns on Bach, Handel, gospel, country, and popular selections from the Great Americ…
Fly
What you hear on Fly is Yoko Ono's disarming combination of opacity and visceral, personal transparency in full bloom. It's one of the most unbridled, most captivating soul albums ever made. And that's right where she wants you: vulnerable, wide open to any-and-everything, ready to have your world tipped onto its head. She's a master of spinning your head around. First, you get the Bar Band from Hell of "Midsummer New York" to kick things off. It's about the last thing you'd expect from O…
Feeling the Space
If you've listened to Feeling The Space, Yoko Ono's personal-is-political 1973 album, it should come as no surprise that the once-reviled artist is inspiring a new generation of activists in 2017. On such songs as the righteous chant "Woman Power," the empathetic ballad "Angry Young Woman," the hilarious proto-grrrl "Potbelly Rocker," and the satirical "Men Men Men," Yoko sings in surprisingly straightforward fashion about the burdens carried by women and the mandate for feminism. Support…
Approximately Infinite Universe
There's a fury at the core of Yoko Ono's 1973 rock opus Approximately Infinite Universe that was not apparent on previously recorded efforts. Ono has always been a master of turning pain and sadness into art, but here, there's a clenched-fist intensity that sets it apart in her deep, unparalleled catalogue. Ono is angry. She proved that one can carry a boundless love for humanity and still be furious – furious at male/female relationships, at war, at your partner. Meanwhile, on a sonic leve…
Plastic Ono Band
This long-overdue vinyl reissue of Yoko Ono's seminal, but massively under-appreciated Plastic Ono Band has all the makings of a classic rock nostalgia trip: Ono, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Klaus Voorman and free-jazz legend Ornette Coleman. All the pieces are here to stir up a dangerous amount of nostalgia. But once the needle drops, the record achieves something exactly perpendicular to nostalgia. Released in 1970, the album not only influenced the approach of other musicians for decades, it …
The Enchanted Forest
After a decade of appearances on Loren Mazzacane's albums, Suzanne Langille releases a full length of her own songs. The Enchanted Forest combines Suzanne's celestial voice and lyrical talent with Loren's crystalline guitar work. Loosely based on John Lebar's 1945 film of the same name, Suzanne acts out the story of a lost child, a forest's impending end and those that try and save it, through the voices of six characters. As on previous MazzaCane albums, Suzanne's soulful and blues fille…
1987-1989
In 1987, Loren Mazzacane Connors first played with his future wife, Suzzane Langille. Together they performed Langille-adapted traditional and gospel standards, slowing them 'down to a crawl'. Two albums were released on his own St. Joan label under the moniker Guitar Roberts with Suzanne Langille, entitled Bluesmaster 1 and Bluesmaster 2. This album represents the best of their material as a duo from those two records, plus the one song they performed as a duo from Loren's 1989 In Pittsburgh fu…