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

I was recently able to pick up a copy on eBay for no less than 15 EURO - with OBI and inner sleeve, in MINT condition. Fabulous!

It is my understanding that John and Yoko were both addicted to smack at the time this album was recorded. Sometimes the use of drugs by the performers enhances a recording (Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, etc.)

And sometimes they don't.

This is the WORST Sound ever put onto a record. Yoko screaming that make no sense for a whole 26:30. Music is just noise no. No redeeming value. 2024

If any of you are a singer or even if you sing in the car on long drives, try singing along to the entire track "Cambridge 1969" while on the road. It's a horrible song, but you will appreciate Yoko's endurance as she "sang" LIVE for the better pat of 26 minutes. Not as easy as it looks.

For the morbidly curious, Side 2 contains only the last 45 seconds or so of Cambridge 1969. Based on how swift the fade-down/fade-up is between sides, I'd imagine that the Capitol engineer responsible for creating the tape master was none too pleased in having to listen to this in full!

No Bed for Beatle John features reverb like all other US original pressings, this was removed from all digital masters of the track. From what I can see/hear, it also appears to be mixed in fake stereo. Quite a bit of extra work for a track only recorded on a cassette tape originally.

This was way ahead of its time and has influenced many artists since then. Yoko defied convention about Beatle wives being submissive and residing in the background. She came with a body of avant-garde work before she met John and Cambridge 1969 displays her ability to challenge musical convention by using her voice as an instrument to create a soundscape of improvisation. I have since seen a clip of a Jazz artist improvising in much the same way, unfortunately, I didn't catch who it was. I bought this when it came out and later bought I Japanese pressing of it too. It inspired me to buy her subsequent record releases and have enjoyed her work immensely over the years

The best thing on the entire album is the “review” from George Martin: “No comment.”

'Two Minutes Silence' is by far the best track on the album...

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...

Matrix side A : SN1-3357-B2 , Matrix side B : ST2-3357-X2