max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

#533: yoko ono & sean lennon - higa noboru (2009)

“i have to tell you,” yoko ono said to her audience at the brooklyn academy of music on tuesday night, a few days before her 77th birthday, “you have a long life ahead of you, and it’s going to be beautiful.” her brooklyn academy of music show—half concert, half tribute—was filled with all kinds of things: shimmying, screeching, thumping, family members, guitar gods, art films, drag, a tuba, a cello, and as ms. ono would say, a lot of cosmic splendor.

the first half was full of thick, loud, strange, twisting grooves, which probably wouldn’t sound like promising news to those who know her only as a screechy-voiced beatles destroyer. but this wasn’t music for a pilates class in westchester—it was interstellar and kaleidoscopic, with pelvic bass lines bouncing below gooey guitars and horns. she sashayed, shuffled, shook and swayed.

but the tribute half of the concert stole the show. in the spirit of ms. ono’s canyon-sized proclamations, the sound paul simon and his son, harper, made on the two songs they played and sang together was one of the most exceedingly warm things i’ve ever heard live on a stage. they played hold on from john lennon’s first solo album, and silver horse from season of glass, her first after his death. one is sung to a wife, and the other is sung by a widow.

eric clapton, the guest that came on afterward, turns 65 next month, but his guitar, especially on the white album’s yer blues, was hysterical, sludgy, and huge. “in sound check, he was teaching me to play how my dad did it,” said the younger mr. lennon. “a touch sophisticated.” after rising, one of the first set’s arty disco songs, full of ms. ono’s points and crouches and marches, mr. lennon son whispered something to into her ear. “he’s always saying, ‘oh it’s great, it’s great,’ to make me feel good,” she explained.

“i’m not lying, mom,” he said. the crowd sighed. a few days before the concert, ms. ono  discussed her maternal feelings: “you would never know, because you’re not old enough, i’m sorry to use those expressions, but when your son grows up, and he’s doing his own thing,” she explained, “it’s nice to get a chance to be with him for a while.” she said the show’s guests had been his idea. “they’re sort of added. added bombs! not bombs! bombs is a bad word! what is it? added sparkling stars.”

#521: yoko ono (with antony hegarty) - i’m going away smiling (2009)

this morning i had a delicious breakfast bar, drank some o.j., and then spent a half hour on the phone with yoko ono, who turns out to be a radically lovely person to talk to. “it’s just that i’m myself, and me, and whatever comes to me, at the time, tends to be something probably, i don’t know, au courant, but then, it’s me, as usual,” she said. she offered some more future classics (to be used in an upcoming nyo article) like: “i think i’m wiser now. well. i hope i’m wiser. i make so many mistakes every day—oops!”

it turns out that she does not listen to 60s pop music. “i’m an emotionally frail person,” she explained. “i don’t listen to anything. i just listen to the music in my mind. it’s wrong to say i don’t listen to anything. you know what i listen to? i listen to john’s songs, because i have to. have to is not the right word. almost every day, i listen to it because people request it—‘can i use it?’ and for relaxation i listen to indian music, old.”

on eric clapton, paul simon, thurston moore, jim keltner, and the other guests at her upcoming brooklyn academy of music concert, she said: “each one of these people—people? these stars!—i know them personally.” basically it was like conversing with the inspiring elementary school art teacher i never had. “just remember, you’re talking to me,” she said at the end. “we’re talking the same way, we’re on the same page. you’re 25—don’t think i’m not 25.”

#519: paul mccartney - uncle albert / admiral halsey (1971)

an important part of growing up is realizing that paul mccartney was not so uncool. first you become aware that he looked smart on a bicycle in a suit, though not as smart as george harrison honeymooning or ringo starr pouting, then you admit that he had some fun solo songs, then you spend seven hours with michael deal’s outrageously beautiful chart of beatles song authorship, which reminds you just how many outrageously beautiful beatles songs he wrote, and then you spend seven straight days listening to 1971’s ram, which has the best song ever half-written about the u.s. navy’s bull halsey.

#485: taj mahal - leavin’ trunk (live, 1968)

as far as very gorgeous and very barbiturate-soaked performances from the rolling stones’ famous latenight late-60s rock and roll circus goes, john lennon’s yer blues may have gotten the intro from mick jagger and the back-up from eric clapton, the who’s a quick one while he’s away may have gotten the three-part harmonies and cod pieces and sparkly black blouses, but it’s taj mahal’s version of the old folk song corrine, corrina and leavin’ trunk that sound like an empty barroom at sunrise.

#456: george harrison - true love (1976)

when you read something george harrison once said about bob dylan and shakespeare and billy joel, you remember what a hilarious genius the bearded beatle was. and then you watch him play your true love with carl perkins (or you watch him play an impromptu call and response version at his funeral) and you think that his life after the beatles was definitely cooler than mccartney’s. and then you watch him play cole porter’s true love in a striped double-breasted suit in a gondola, and have to wonder if all things must pass and thirty three and 1/3 might rival imagine and john lennon/plastic ono band. they don’t, but still: george harrison, quite a guy.

#455: bob dylan - it takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry (1965)

UPDATE: VIDEO REMOVED, BUT LISTEN HERE.

bob dylan’s music is so perfect that the only thing you can really say is what george harrison once said, which is “he makes william shakespeare look like billy joel.” another thing you can say is that between 1964 and 1966 he released 25 songs that are so perfect you can listen to any them over old footage of trains and die happy. and that’s not including the songs that are just wildly good but not definitely great, or anything on the times they are a-changin, which was released in 1964 but recorded in the previous autumn.

it’s true, just try it at home: there’s spanish harlem incident, chimes of freedom, to ramona, my back pages, i don’t believe you (she acts like we never have met), ballad in plain d, subterranean homesick blues, she belongs to me, love minus zero/no limit, bob dylan’s 115th dream, mr. tambourine man, gates of eden, it’s alright ma (i’m only bleeding), like a rolling stone, it takes a lot to laugh it takes a train to cry (see above), from a buick 6, ballad of a thin man, queen jane approximately, just like tom thumb’s blues, desolation row, visions of joanna, stuck inside of mobile with the memphis blues again, just like a woman, 4th time around, and of course sad eyed lady of the lowlands.

and if you want to avoid lists you can just repeat what johnny cash said: “i love bob dylan, i really do. i love his early work, i love the first time he plugged in electrically, i love his christian albums, i love his other albums.”

#301: the beatles - all you need is love (1967, our world live telecast)

last week nick sylvester wrote about what makes animal collective’s merriweather post pavillion so good, though he was really writing about someone else’s takedown of the album and what made it so bad, but actually he was really writing about getting swept away by beautiful things and trying to fathom how that happens, instead of being cooly dismissive and self-conscious and snarly.

“i have this relationship with music,” he says. “there is this cold and dizzy feeling that overtakes me sometimes, when a song or a passage of a song happens to gun it to my heart. and i am addicted to this feeling—i seek it out, sludging through days upon days of music, much of it very objectively “good”, for those moments capable of the cold and dizzy.”

all you need is love does that for me—especially the wobbly strings, but especially the bach horns, and especially the she loves you finale, and then there’s the gum chewing in the famous live tv performance, and mick jagger clapping along giddily from the tv audience, and, oh god, the moment when paul shouts “everybody!” and he and john smile at each other, even though fucking paul was wearing a rose in his headset to upset john’s plans for all-green uniforms.

anyway: “i don’t mean to paint things in binary but there are two basic poles here, with all of us probably falling in between them. you can be open, and vulnerable, and ignorant, and admit to your ignorance, and try to understand your own wiring and ignorance, and come to terms with the fact that you are one complex motherfucker with complex and not exactly logical or objective reasons for liking and loving what you do, but nevertheless still liking and loving the things that you do, or you can be the person who points out that everyone is pretty fucking ignorant, nobody ever has a clue what they’re really doing on this earth, everybody’s reasons are all so screwy, and do so on a daily basis, as a way of masking your own ignorance and insignificance and vulnerability. you can try to know, and own the fact that there are things you do not know, or you can be knowing, and hide your own ignorance with sideways shots of been-there done-that familiarity.”

my main man leon introduced me to the piece, and he liked it too.

#300: the beatles - you really got a hold on me (1969)

gee golly, this is the super goovy music video extravaganza’s 300th music video— although this and lots of the other 299 haven’t quite been music videos, really just videos of music. bona fide music videos can be great too (remember when aerosmith’s joe perry stepped out of the way of a moving train at just the right time?) but only videos of music show the pre-breakup, hugely-bearded, heroically konked-out beatles tripping over and then easing into one of their most beautifully clean-shaven early hits. and when you really, really get lucky they show slightly-evil paul mccartney lecturing john lennon on how to play the i got a feeling guitar lick, which makes john say, “queen says no to pot-smoking fbi members.”

#291: paul mccartney - coming up (1980)

in this new era of fraternity, optimism, effort, hope and change, i say it’s time we join hands and accept that even paul mccartney (who as everyone knows was by far the least cool beatle—less cool than even ringo, who at least hung around in spaceships with godly harry nilsson) has had some good songs since his old band broke up. coming up, for example, even includes a reference to the mustache on the keyboards player in sparks, which makes it immediately awesome.