Saturday, October 8

October 8, 2016 - Yoko Ono - Greenfield Morning I Pushed an Empty Baby Carriage All Over the City (1970)


This is Yoko's song of grief after having a miscarriage. It begins with a snippet of George Harrison on sitar that gets looped as Yoko Ono starts singing, tons of echo added to her vocals. After the first pass through the lyrics, a looped drum pattern comes in with some funky bass from Klaus Voormann and hurdy-gurdy sounding guitar from John. Yoko's voice becomes more anguished as the song progresses. At 3:50, Yoko and the carriage drift away from us, and we are left with bird songs of a typical morning.

Experimental and droning, it makes me think of something that Can or Faust might do. The lyrics are the title words sung verrrry slowly. This is from Yoko's Plastic Ono Band album, but I heard it on the Onobox set, which my local library owns or owned. I'm not quite sure. If you like this song, and you want to dip your ears further, by all means do so. I can probably name a handful of other songs I like and/or tolerate. I wish she had more songs like this one. Sometimes a couple of her Double Fantasy songs enter my consciousness and I'm not too bothered, but in general my ears can only go so far into the Yoko catalogue before they get scratched and irritated by her screechy claws and I run for the hydrochloric ac--, I mean hydrogen peroxide. Ow! It burns! Yeah, OK, I appreciate the artistic efforts, I'm just not that into the output. As Paul said in a recent RS interview, 'She's so Yoko!'
Image result for yoko ono 1970





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