John Lennon / Yoko Ono* ‎– Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With The Lions

second long player from johnyoko and this can be divided into two distinct entities, first side a 26 minute freejazz blowout and side two, more personal type stuff and some 'home experiments'...the long piece on side one's called cambridge 69 and its yoko giving out with her primal trance screaming with john buzzing around with some guitar feedback and a couple of jazz cats honking up a storm with the saxes...it's a top groove that would look real neat on a ESP-Disk record (one sided with maybe some lennon etchings on the reverse, blurred b&w photo on the cover), up there with yokos 'mind train', though not as rock'n'roll as that track, more basement avant that probably sold a couple of copies back in the day in places like cleveland that had a nascent fervour for the developing avant rock underground (rocket from the tombs/mirrors etc)...this was probably not passed over by the destroy all monsters collective out in detroit who knew about doing things differently as this sort of racket is right on their beam...the other sides got yoko intoning for beatle john, who being a decent chap gave up his hospital bed when it was needed, some unborn heartbeats, two minutes of silence and some radio dial twiddling set to a crazy backing beat, all jolly good fun and for lennon he was puncturing the fab4 myth by stepping outside the given norms of pop stardom and coming up with the surreal, much like an aural sculpture of his book writings, with this release he was putting a 'spaniard in the works', possibly more so than with the first johnyoko, 'two virgins' which many saw as a momentary lapse of judgement hopefully not to be repeated...

Totally I feel your pain! Bought this record hot off the presses back in the summer of 1969 when I was 12! While the record is.....well different, hang on to it. Is the Zapple label silver? I was once read years ago that this record was rather pricey so your $30 investment might pay off down the road. Of course me & my friends hated the record and it was used as a prank. If someone wanted to borrow the Temps, Jimi or Miles Davis record of mine I would slip this in the sleeve! Of course when my buddy got home the phone would ring and I would answer laughing. Finally we used it as a Frisbee and broke into pieces. Not going to lay any $$ on this now but kinda wish I still had it.

So I bought this at my local record store. The store is very small and it's always a major hit or miss whenever I go. The day I got it was one of the "miss" days. I bought this record on a whim because I enjoyed John Lennon's work and never really knew about this album. Unreleased songs? How awesome.

Oh how was I wrong. The first side was literally Yoko screams, and I haven't even bothered with the second half.
I really should have done my research before paying 30 bucks for this record I probably will never listen to again.

As far as quality goes, it's pretty decent.