From Pollstar


The Return Of The Plastic Ono Band




It’s not every day you get a chance to see the Plastic Ono Band – the late ‘60s / early ‘70s supergroup founded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. But you can catch a slightly different lineup when a re-assembled Plastic Ono Band plays Brooklyn Feb. 16.

Launched in 1969 with the recording “Give Peace A Chance,” The Plastic Ono Band’s original lineup always seemed like a party with all of rock’s royalty invited. Along with Lennon and Ono, band membership back in the day included artists and musicians such as Eric Clapton, George Harrison, bassist Klaus Voorman, Who drummer Keith Moon, saxophonist Bobby Keys and keyboardist Billy Preston. Record producer Phil Spector was also a member, as was drummer Alan White, who went on to replace Bill Bruford in Yes in 1972.


Now Ono has created a new lineup for the band, which is performing a special one-night-only show at the Gilman Opera House at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Feb. 16. Sure, some old Plastic Ono Band members will be there, including Clapton, Voorman and Jim Keltner, but the band has a few new members as well.

Like Sean Lennon, who wasn’t even a gleam in John & Yoko’s eyes during the band’s heyday. Also appearing as Plastic Ono members will be Bette Midler, Mark Ronson, Paul Simon, Martha Wainwright, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, Justin Bond, Yuka Honda, Haruomi Hosono, and Cornelius consisting of Keigo Oyamada, Naoki Schimizu and Yuku Araki.

2009 was a great year for Ono. Her new album – Between My Head And The Sky – was released in September and received great reviews from several music publications including Rolling Stone, NME and Spin.

Ono also received the prestigious Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award and the Mojo Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award. For more information on everything Yoko, please click here for the Plastic Ono Band Web site.

mojoman wrote on Jan 11^th, 2010 at 6:54pm:

From Pollstar The Return Of The Plastic Ono Band It’s not every day you get a chance to see the Plastic Ono Band – the late ‘60s / early ‘70s supergroup founded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. But you can catch a slightly different lineup when a re-assembled Plastic Ono Band plays Brooklyn Feb. 16. Launched in 1969 with the recording “Give Peace A Chance,” The Plastic Ono Band’s original lineup always seemed like a party with all of rock’s royalty invited.

We'll give peace another chance alright.Celine Dion released a $20 dvd of her Brand New Day Vegas stint and it sells well.Even New York however costs too much per night for someone living just a few hundred clicks north of it's border.Do you know how much a friggin passport alone costs?

jonathandavid74 wrote on Jan 11^th, 2010 at 9:38pm:

mojoman wrote on Jan 11th, 2010 at 6:54pm: From Pollstar The Return Of The Plastic Ono Band It’s not every day you get a chance to see the Plastic Ono Band – the late ‘60s / early ‘70s supergroup founded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. But you can catch a slightly different lineup when a re-assembled Plastic Ono Band plays Brooklyn Feb. 16. Launched in 1969 with the recording “Give Peace A Chance,” The Plastic Ono Band’s original lineup always seemed like a party with all of rock’s royalty invited. We'll give peace another chance alright.Celine Dion released a $20 dvd of her Brand New Day Vegas stint and it sells well.Even New York however costs too much per night for someone living just a few hundred clicks north of it's border.Do you know how much a friggin passport alone costs?

It's Paul who won't tour with Ringo that's who we're after.

:wtf3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH3cZb8XZek

Yoko certainly wasn't popular at the Rock & Roll Revival Sept. '69, she was booed like crazy, when she went on with that screaching wailing, that video of The R & R Circus is the same thing.

Tickets ate $79.00 & $150, still available. I'm thinking about it, for the historic value, not necessarily for Yoko ~ I hate her voice ~ it's Yoko OH NO!! But, I respect her, she's kept John's legacy going with no scandals or embarassments and always pays tribute to him whenever possible.

Heart Of Stone wrote on Jan 12^th, 2010 at 6:36am:

Yoko certainly wasn't popular at the Rock & Roll Revival Sept. '69, she was booed like crazy, when she went on with that screaching wailing, that video of The R & R Circus is the same thing.

yeah, its embarassing to watch...with the band seemingly trying to play over her vocalizing.
I respect her as a strong female, but don't get it..
The New York artsy/fartsy crowd loves Yoko, but perhaps I'm not sophisticated enough and just too old fashioned to appreciate this kind of 'performance art'...

Yoko's All Star Band?  If she played in my living room I'd pull the mic plugs.

gimmekeef wrote on Jan 12^th, 2010 at 2:18pm:

Yoko's All Star Band?  If she played in my living room I'd pull the mic plugs.

  ;D

I'm sure being forced to listen to Yoko caterwaul is against the Geneva Convention.

AngieBlue wrote on Jan 13^th, 2010 at 6:50am:

I'm sure being forced to listen to Yoko caterwaul is against the Geneva Convention.

Nah, we don't recognize that anymore . . .


Not a big fan of Yoko's vocals, but I like the melodies that she comes up with.
Especially the Double Fantasy and Milk & Honey material.

Music Review | 'We Are Plastic Ono Band'
Amid All That Experience, Innocence
           
By JON PARELES
Published: February 17, 2010
In some ways Yoko Ono is still an amateur. At “We Are Plastic Ono Band,” mixing concert and tribute at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Tuesday night, her voice could be shaky and her stage patter giggly and unplanned. She looked genuinely surprised when the audience interrupted her and sang “Happy Birthday.” (She turns 77 on Feb. 18.) She’s also untamed. She can still let loose the bleats, wails, yips, howls and shrieks that alienated Beatles fans in the 1960s and inspired avant-rockers soon afterward.

Ms. Ono’s well-preserved air of naïveté — and the license it gives her to say things simply and primally — has been her artistic gift since the ’60s, first as a conceptual artist and then, with John Lennon’s impetus, as a rocker and songwriter. She reveals things with purposeful guilelessness: physically in her ’60s performance art and films, and emotionally in songs like “It Happened,” which she sang unaccompanied to start the concert: “I know there’s no return.” Now her main collaborator is her son, Sean Ono Lennon, who organized the show and led the band.

“We Are Plastic Ono Band” brought together, for the first time in decades, members of the informal group John Lennon assembled in 1969: Eric Clapton on guitar, Jim Keltner on drums and Klaus Voorman on bass. Guests, including Paul Simon, Bette Midler and members of Sonic Youth, also performed songs by Ms. Ono and by John Lennon.

But Ms. Ono was never overshadowed. For the first half of the concert she performed songs from her 2009 album, “Between My Head and the Sky” (Chimera) and some older ones, like “Walking on Thin Ice.” The band vamped through hard rock, funk and psychedelic drone, closely following her voice. Singing melodies, Ms. Ono sounded high and fragile, as deliberately exposed as the lyrics. And her wordless sounds were by no means random. They were ghostly, furious, dreamy, caustic, urgent, exultant, orgasmic. Between the abstractions were tidings of peace-and-love optimism, of loss and loneliness, and of uncertainty. She ended her set with “Higa Noboru,” a ballad set to impressionistic piano chords: “I hear the fish calling from the ocean/I hear the birds warning from the sky,” she recited.

Guest singers claimed Ms. Ono’s songs for their own genres. Ana Matronic and Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters rode a disco beat in “The Sun Is Down,” dancing across the stage in glittery shoes. The cabaret singer Justin Bond, in high heels, reveled in the drama of the bitterly ambivalent breakup song “What a Bastard the World Is.” Mr. Simon and Harper Simon, his son, fingerpicked acoustic guitars in the fond “Silverhorse” and John Lennon’s “Hold On.” Ms. Midler gave Ms. Ono’s whimsical birthday song, “Yes, I’m Your Angel,” a winking New Orleans insouciance, lingering over the tra-la-las. Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, the married couple in Sonic Youth, joined Ms. Ono to perform the arrhythmic noise of “Mulberry,” making guitars clank and screech to mirror her voice.

The reunited Plastic Ono Band was still proudly unrehearsed, crunchy and sinewy. Mr. Clapton sent slow-blues phrases curling around Ms. Ono’s voice in the elegiac “Death of Samantha,” and the band turned the blues-rock stomp of “Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)” into a full-fledged maelstrom. Naturally Ms. Ono ended the concert with “Give Peace a Chance,” the 1969 song that introduced the Plastic Ono Band, adding updated lyrics, flashing V signs and leading a singalong.

Sean Ono Lennon said onstage that he had tried to get Mr. Clapton to show him the slide-guitar part for “Don’t Worry Kyoko.” But in 1969, he was told, the Plastic Ono Band and Mr. Clapton were “having so much fun that he has no idea what they were doing.” Ms. Ono spoke up. “I knew what I was doing,” she said — not so naïve after all.

No matter how many 'cool' guests show up or how many members of the rock critic intelligensia rave,
I just don't get it....

could someone give me the gist of this, I'm a very busy man.

Some Guy wrote on Feb 17^th, 2010 at 7:17pm:

could someone give me the gist of this, I'm a very busy man.

Yoko Daltrey is doing a solo tour.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOKO!!!

For what it's worth, friends of mine were at the show and they said it was a really great evening! John's son Sean was worth the price of admission, Clapton and Simon and everyone there were playing a tribute to John. He was well loved by many, including Yoko who has made it her life's mission to preserve his image in the best way she knows how ~ through music and the arts. There were art exhibits with rare pictures of John from the early days. There was a big "Wish Tree" where the people there can write their wishes down on the tree. Not sure what happens to the tree but it was a cute idea!

Yes, happy 77th birthday, Yoko! Hard to believe that's her correct age...

Bitch wrote on Feb 18^th, 2010 at 7:14am:

For what it's worth, friends of mine were at the show and they said it was a really great evening! John's son Sean was worth the price of admission, Clapton and Simon and everyone there were playing a tribute to John. He was well loved by many, including Yoko who has made it her life's mission to preserve his image in the best way she knows how ~ through music and the arts. There were art exhibits with rare pictures of John from the early days. There was a big "Wish Tree" where the people there can write their wishes down on the tree. Not sure what happens to the tree but it was a cute idea!

I agree.

Happy Birthday, Yoko.