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Unfinished Music, No. 2: Life with the Lions

John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Unfinished Music, No. 2: Life with the Lions Audio CD

A fair review of the John Lennon & Yoko Ono "Unfinished Music, No. 2: Life with the Lions" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all John Lennon & Yoko Ono reviews here, or go back to the John Lennon & Yoko Ono tabs.

Band: John Lennon & Yoko Ono
Title: Unfinished Music, No. 2: Life with the Lions
Rating:

Release Date: 2008-01-13
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Cambridge 1969 2: No Bed for Beatle John 3: Baby's Heartbeat 4: Two Minutes Silence 5: Radio Play 6: Song for John [#][*] 7: Mulberry [#][*]

Yoko Predominant in the Empress' New Clothes
Varese experimented with sound poems but there was always an underlying structure that justified its definition as music. There are any number of avant garde or experimental recordings one could consume. The Residents have made a variety of albums with varying degrees of weirdness but they didn't just pass themselves off as a concept, there was more going on than that. Many minimalist composers have explored structure, composition and development without losing the link to musicality.

Then there is. . . this. "Unfinished Music #2: Life With The Lions" comes off as performance art without the visuals, a performance piece purposed to examine the degree to which consumers can be lured in by a familiar name (Lennon), then exposed to an objet f'art. The Beatles' "Revolution 9" was a warm up for this album, but that was infinitely less repetitious and more engaging.

Most avant garde recordings revolve around the grand 'concept'. For instance, Harry Partch pursued new sounds by creating a whole new scale and an armory of musical instruments capable of delivering his audio vision. But 'concept' isn't just the domain of the avant garde, it's exploited from the most grand of recordings to the most base of popular musics. You've undoubtedly read some sort of Rolling Stone babble where the artist or their proxy journalist shill "explains" an album to make apparent the meaning that was otherwise absent from unindoctrinated listenings. But once the concept is digested the questions that remain are,

* how well did the artist achieve what they set out to do?
* apart from the constructs used to purpose, design or restrict the expression, are the end results something to which you'd actually care to listen?

Often the concept is exploited to explain away a universe of expression so self-absorbed that it becomes reminiscent of the type of insanity that creates its own language entirely incommunicable to others. The artist in the self-imposed straitjacket deliberately babbles in an incomprehensible 'language' to obscure communication. A universe of one certainly provides a sense of being elite. And critics reward this, as they love to play hide and seek with artists, chasing implied or hidden meanings.

But while a caption applied to the work may indicate a context for meaning, it doesn't mean that it's worth one's time or money. Think of it as the 180 degree inverse of musicians who actually had promise at one point but devolved into whoring out their music to the lowest common denominator, then trying to pass off that soulless gristle as "music from the heart". At what point does desperate populism also become a form of insanity?

The tracks in this recording must be consumed in sequential order for any hint of narrative to be apparent. For instance, a five minute recording of a fetal heartbeat, followed by two minutes of silence, does tell a sad tale.

However, Yoko's vocals are a vanity pressing at best, and will undoubtedly be defended by those for whom the DIY ethic trumps everything. One could listen to Tuvalu throat music, or Iranian folk singing, or the voices of India communicating in a more nuanced scale of tonalities if one had a curious mind eager to explore the world. But 26 minutes of random screaming - albeit with slight changes that might justify its eventually being broken up into "movements" (symphonic, bowel, or otherwise) - is not a narrative, nor is it music, it's just an arbitrary, unpleasant vanity.

The listener can set expectations by framing this not as a musical recording but as sound effects which require no readily apparent structure, skill or training to deliver. The recording might have been more efficient by limiting each sound sample to one minute so that more feedback, screams, offkey singing, and such could have been employed to convey more separate moments of anguish and resentment in the sequence of events leading to the miscarriage.
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You are now officially ripped off!
8 five star reviews for Lennon John Yoko Ono - Wedding album. I was looking up the worst LP's ever made just for a laugh, and to my amazement 14, 5 star ratings for life with the lions. Lots of 5 star ratings for Billy Joel's cold spring harbor an LP that was recorded at the wrong speed and was yanked out of production. So bad it caused lawsuits between Billy and his record company and caused Billy to go into hiding for 2 years. Who are the goofs that give these LP's 5 star ratings, you undermine Amazon's rating system! I just bought several CD's trusting in high ratings here on Amazon, they stunk! it's time to stand up when something is bad it's just bad, more people need to say so. For the 5 star reviews I dare you to play this at work or for your friends. You know that 9,999 out of 10,000 people would say this is the worst piece of junk they have ever heard! So you give it 5 stars, thanks for the bad advice!!! The best part of this record is the 2 Minutes of copyrighted silence. . . . You are now officially ripped off!.

Total Dreck
Boy do I feel like a sucker. Being a John Lennon fan I bought this on vinyl years ago. There is no music on this - just John & Yoko's pretentious avant-garde "art". Anyone who claims to enjoy this is either lying or just nuts. If Lennon had not been a Beatle then this would never have seen the light of day. Save your money for actual music.

Wow................Truly wretched.....No other word, for it.........!!
Still not too sure, exactly why. I bought this, back in 1969. The only thing funny about it, was the horns at the end of Side 1. Otherwise, it's just noise, ie, Yoko's wailing. More of a waste than George Harrison's " Electronic Sound ". Just a waste of $ 4. 98 then.

another comedy masterpiece

With the exception of the recording of their unborn child's last moments of life,these records are a way of Lennon flipping us all off and purging himself as best he could of the Beatle myth;or he was trying to destroy the Beatle myth once and for all.

I just want to add my two cents:
I feel that given Lennon's wicked sense of humor,that these three records are probably more of a put-on to all the Beatlemanics,art critics,music industry boffos,etc. He must have been busting w/ laughter thinking about how the public would handle these records.
We were not smart enough to figure that out,so John spelled it all out for us on the Plastic Ono Band LP track "God". That's one aspect to these recordings.
With the exception of the free-form jazzy stuff on Cambridge '69 with Ornette Coleman and the baby heartbeat-these records were not meant to be taken seriously.
Lennon was trying to show us a mirror image of our celebrity obsessions-we were and are too blind and stupid to be able to see and understand. The other aspect is:
Nexttime you listen; slap on the headphones,load up the bong and open the wine or whiskey and prepare to go on a hilarious journey with these two tricksters as Conductors-you can have your own magical mystero-comic trip.
as is appears: the sounds on these records have a catalytic effect on a brain that is turned on w/ the right combo of chemical helpers,such as the two mentoned above and the acoustic-entheogenic synergism can launch you into the outer limits. . . quite a lot of fun,by Jove!!!

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