I Love You Yoko Ono (my little dedication)

Me and my Onochord :-) Send the message of LOVE!

I saw Yoko Ono perform at the Pitchfork Music Festival last Saturday and she was AMAZING! She is truly one of the greatest artists/musicians EVER. The performance opened with the vidjo short she did in 2004 for the "Onochord" which was set to "Give Peace a Chance." What a beautiful moment that was. They threw several of the chords out to the audience and we flashed "I Love You" as the video instructed. When she came onstage, everyone was still flashing their Onochords and they looked like lighters onscreen. It was beautiful! Watch the vidjo, even for a little bit!
WAR IS OVER (IF YOU WANT IT)! This song was by far the highlight of the show. Ono kept going and the crowd followed. It's unbelievable how this song resonated decades ago because of the bullshit then and we're in the same fucking situation now. My experience with this performance was unforgettable. I will never forget how warm and excited she made me feel. She kept waving her hands saying "Don't worry" and "War is over if you want it." The crowd chanted back with passion. Here's a decent mish-mash of songs from the night with a little of that performance at about 01:20.
Another great part of the show was its avant-garde extreme: “Mulberry,” with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth on guitar. She said she had only done the song with John and Sean and that Thurston would be the last to perform it with her. WHAT A RARE TREAT!!! Here is the clip!
"Walking on Thin Ice" was awesome, no surprises there. "A song that I wrote called 'Walking on Thin Ice' was inspired by Chicago, of course," the 74-year-old artist said during a recent interview from her office in New York. The lyrics: "I knew a girl who tried to walk across the lake / 'course it was winter when all this was ice / That's a hell of a thing to do, you know / They say the lake is as big as the ocean / I wonder if she knew about it?" She was sooooo cute when she recited these lyrics during the performance. This song also happens to be the song the she and John Lennon were working on in the studio minutes before he was gunned down. Here is the original vidjo....
Her new album "Yes I'm a Witch" is soooooo good. The collaborations on the album are INSANE with SO many amazing people (most notably Peaches, The Flaming Lips, The Polyphonic Spree, Le Tigre and Cat Power). In the title track "Yes I'm a Witch" she addresses how the world used to and still does perceive her (it's pretty funny AND awesome). I suggest doing a li'l research before writing her off as having "broken up 'The Beatles'" as she was probably their most important influence. After all, she was already a famous artist of the Fluxus movement when Lennon met her!

I first fell in love with Ono in 2001 when I was in New York City with my junior college's Art League and went to her show "YES YOKO ONO," a forty-year retrospective of her work. Below is the vidjo "Fly," which caught me at hello! Love her or hate her, she is the cutest little old Japanese woman you could ever meet. I will always remember how warm and safe she made me feel.  Oh, and if you think everything she does is shrill, download the song "O'Oh" from the new album, it's BEAUTIFUL!