By
Mikihiko Hori I flew to Chicago for the Pitchfork Music Festival
to attend the all-day event and to listen to cutting-edge Indie bands. But my
main intention was to see the performance of the headliner for the evening, the
woman I've been admiring since I was a little boy: Yoko Ono. July 14th was such
a nice sunny, hot, but breezy day, and I was highly anticipating seeing Yoko's
performance again. When I arrived at Union Park before noon,
literally thousands of people had already lined up around the park, waiting for
the gates to open. When I joined the end of the line, I could see the roof and
backside of a stage inside the park. Before long, when I was just standing there,
I started hearing an unfamiliar song with a familiar voice, singing through the
breeze: "We're dying in a city
where the streets
bear no seed" ... It sure did sound like ...Yoko.
When I stared at the stage, I could see that the band was rehearsing and that
there was a figure wearing black clothes and a white hat singing on the stage.
My presumption became totally true when I heard the next line a bit later: "We're
dyyyyyyiiiiiiiiiiiiing!" That was indeed Yoko Ono
and she was rehearsing on the stage! I could hear that Yoko kept singing "I'm
Dying" on "Rising" for a while, adding her trademark vocalization.
I was thrilled to just be able to see her from afar, even before the gates opened. After
a little break, Yoko started singing another song: "Snow
falls silent
Wind blows violent
I really wanna ...
I really wanna
..." Even from a distance, I could recognize that
Yoko's vocal was in great condition, and I could hardly wait to see her performance
that evening. After she sang "Snow Falls Silent"
briefly, she got off the stage, and got in a black Mercedes, and left the site. A
few minutes after noon, the gates for the park finally opened and all these anticipating
fans rushed in. At the entrance of one of the gates, I saw a few female staff
members of the "Pitchfork" were giving away Yoko's "ONOCHORD"flashlights
and postcards to everyone who came to the concert. 
Thousands
of flashlights and postcards were there in the cardboard boxes for free distribution.
I saw that many people took the "ONOCHORD" flashlights and played with
them. That was really fun to watch. Inside the huge park,
there were three stages set up at different locations, and various bands were
already playing on each stage. The age range of the crowd was mixed, but predominantly
youngsters, like early twenties, and I was hoping that these kids would stay to
see Yoko's gig as well. According to the program distributed at the entrance of
the gates, Yoko's performance was planned at the Aluminum stage, 9PM. After
the Virginia Beach-based heavy hiphop band "Clipse" finished their performance
around 8PM, most of the young crowd left to see other bands at different stages,
but, gradually, the site started generating the crowd for Yoko. I saw guys wearing
T-shirts that said, "You Are Here" or "Mind Train", so definitely
there were a bunch of Yoko fans there. Before Yoko's gig
was about to start, and while Yoko's band members were preparing for the performance
on the stage, the "ONOCHORD" flashlights and postcards were handed out
by the staff standing in front of the stage. Hundreds of "ONOCHORD"
flashlights and postcards were literally "flying" through the air. Now,
I was really ready for Yoko. I'd been standing on the ground more than five hours,
anyway! Around 9PM, when the park was covered with a mantle
of darkness and the audience's anticipation of Yoko's appearance reached its highest,
a familiar female voice filled the air: "Just for
a moment, let's remind each other about love." While
the sounds of a heartbeat echoed in the dark, I noticed that Yoko's ONOCHORD
documentary had been projected on the screen to the left of the stage. I
was standing at the center of the very first row, leaning against the fence, which
was placed a few yards away from the stage. When I looked back, I saw the crowd
intermittently flashing the ONOCHORD flashlights, imitating Yoko's gestures in
the film: "The message I LOVE YOU in ONOCHORD is:
I i
LOVE ii
YOU iii" The sight was breathtakingly
beautiful and looked as if the stardust was blinking right in front of my eyes.
It is said that when we see the twinkling of the stars, we are actually seeing
lights that glistened one billion years ago. I wondered, if one billion years
from now, someone on a different planet - who could be our offspring who migrated
to another planet from the Earth - might be able to see the glistening lights
emitted by us with love. So touched and caught up in the
spirit of the moment, in spite of myself, I told the guy standing next to me,
with whom I had been chatting earlier, "I love you." He gave me an awkward
smile, not knowing how to respond. Then, I said the same thing to the lady who
was standing beside me, and she said, "I love you, too." In
the "ONOCHORD" film, while flashing a flashlight, Yoko says: "I
do it to men ... and they are all like ... shy.
I do it to women ... they
say 'ah, yeah, of course.'
Because men are more inhibited, it seems.
So
we have to open their hearts." I guess Yoko is right. New
song
When the "ONOCHORD" documentary ended
with the echoes of the lines from Yoko's song, "Give Peace A Chance 2004",
the audience screamed and applauded. Yoko finally appeared
on the stage, following the band members. Yoko was all in black - a beautiful
black shirt, sheer around her arms and upper chest, black trousers, a black hat,
and of course, black sunglasses. She was also wearing a long white scarf with
the shapes of black hearts in print that hung around her neck. Yoko looked simply
stunning. I have never seen a woman in her seventies looking so chic. Yoko greeted
the crowd in the park and stated that she was pleased to be in Chicago. Then,
she said, looking totally relaxed as usual, as if she was having a conversation
at a restaurant or something, that she was going to sing a song "dedicating
to Chicago" that she had just written two days ago. She mentioned, "that's
the kind of thing we used to do in the 70's. You would just come with the song
that you were writing in the house or something." Then
she introduced Stephen Trask, who was the music director of the band and who also
played the keyboard. Yoko has worked with Stephen Trask before, when she sang
the song, "Hedwig's Lament/Exquisite Corpse" for the "Wig In A
Box" CD (2003). The CD was based on Trask's musical soundtrack, "Hedwig
and the Angry Inch", about a transsexual rock star named Hedwig. Yoko
launched the first song, the one she was rehearsing earlier in the day, with only
Stephen Trask's keyboard accompaniment. The lyrics of the song went like this: "We're
dying in a city
where the streets bear no seed
As far as you can see
There's anger and heat When one finds treason
as life's reason
Confusion and depression
bred by manipulation
While
we're running, running, running
to the horizon of our dreams This
is the body of silent tears
where dead meets dead
and watch the living
cry This is the body of silent tears
The wet,
dark alley
called a city" This new song Yoko
just wrote with a nostalgic melody and apocalyptic lyrics was so beautiful it
reminded me of another song, "Where Do We Go From Here" on "Rising".
Listening to the lyrics, the image of the city of Hiroshima came to my mind, where
the whole city became wreckage after the Atomic Bomb was dropped and they said
no plant would grow in thirty years because of the radiation. Then,
without intermission from the previous opening song, Yoko started singing "I'm
Dying" with heavy bass sounds: "We're dyyyyyiiiiiiiiiiiiing...." Yoko
kept screaming the stuttering sounds that were not structured enough to call words.
It was the sound of fear and desperation. It was as if the people Yoko was singing
about - or shall we say, "channeling" - were on the verge of death and
surviving by screaming out loud: "We're dyyyyyiiiiiiiiiiiiing!
Help us
Help us
The Universe
It's burning
I'm burning" Yoko
was moving all over the stage from left to right, literally, expressing urgency
and desperation. With heavy riffs of the guitar sounds, the song ended. The crowd
applauded Yoko's performance. With the above two songs, Yoko
showed a glimpse of reality in the world - a story of warzone. Even at this moment,
someplace on the globe, people are crying, screaming, and running around in fear
caused by wars. Those songs might havebeen inspired by Yoko's own "original
scenery" - the one she witnessed when she was a little girl, running around
in the middle of the night through the Tokyo air raid by U.S. bombing during World
War II. After the song, Yoko said, "We're all together,
right?" Next, while the heavy heartbeat sounds filled
the space, Yoko started a monologue by a woman: "I
had to do it
I had to do it
There was no choice
I mustered my voice" This
was the line from "I Want You To Remember Me", a song Yoko was inspired
to write after hearing the news of a domestic violence by which a husband killed
his wife. Yoko also played the male part: "You want
out
Out? Out?
You ungrateful bitch
I'm gonna throw you in a ditch" Yoko
was singing and screaming in this tune, using her whole body, trying to show what
every woman has to go through in society, governed by violence of men. This is
a story of another warzone - a battlefield at home. Yoko turned into music a woman's
scream uttered while she was being beaten to death. "No
shadow was left of me
No shadow was left of me" At
the end of the song, Yoko whispered in Japanese over and over again: "Tasukete
...
Tasukete ...
Tasukete ...
Tasukete ... (Translation:
Help me ...
Help me ...
Help me ...
Help me ... )" As
the song progressed to the end, Yoko's voice was also getting smaller and smaller
as if the woman Yoko was playing in this song was in her last breath. Instead
of swearing at the man, calling out, "fuck you, you motherfucker," her
last words before her death were simply: "I want
you to remember me" After singing three songs with
a theme of "death", Yoko said she would sing one of her old songs. Yoko
said, the song was made for her daughter who had disappeared from her life when
she was 5 or 6 years old. Not knowing her daughter's whereabouts or if she was
alive or dead, she kept wishing that her daughter " would hear my voice somewhere."
Yoko also mentioned that this song was for everyone. With the heavy guitar riffs,
the song "Don't Worry, Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow)"
started. The reason why I put the subtitle, "(Mummy's Only Looking For Her
Hand In The Snow)" here is because she sang that line clearly. "Don't
worry
Don't worry
Don't worry
Don't worry, Kyoko Mummy's
only looking for her hand in the snow ..." The way
she sang was pretty similar to the way she did with John Lennon at the 1969 Rock
and Roll Revival in Toronto, which can also be heard on the album, "The Plastic
Ono Band - Live Peace in Toronto 1969" (1969). She screamed and kept saying
"don't worry " as if she was trying to wipe off worries from the audience's
hearts, like a mantra. Yoko sang "Don't Worry, Kyoko"
for maybe about 3 minutes or so. According to Yoko, " people said 'Don't
Worry, Kyoko' was very heavy " when it came out, but comparing it to "I'm
Dying" now, " 'Don't Worry, Kyoko' sounds very romantic. " Yoko
continued, " we don't have to worry. We are gonna survive, " and introduced
another Yoko masterpiece, "Rising". With heavy
drumming sounds as the background, Yoko started singing "Rising". "Listen
to your heart
Respect your intuition
Make your manifestation
There's
no limitation Have courage
Have rage
We're
all together" After Yoko did the improvisation with
her voice modulation during the song, she spoke in Japanese in the middle of the
song. What she said in Japanese was a little prayer and sounded something like
this.
"Tozai Nanboku no kamigami
Shunka Shuto no reikon
Douka wareware o omamori kudasai" ( Translation:
Gods in East, West, South, and North
Spirits in Spring, Summer, Fall, and
Winter
Please protect us )" Yoko also assured
in the middle of the song that "we will survive together," and then
she ended the song. Next, the sound of a nostalgic guitar
solo started. This was the intro of "Snow Falls Silent". Yoko decided
to sing a "winter song" in the middle of summer. "Snow
falls silent
Wind blows violent
I really wanna ...
I really wanna
..." The last word of each line in this song trailed
away with heavy echoes and reverberation. Imagine the snow is falling in the park
in the middle of July to cover the wounds on the ground or sorrow in people's
hearts. "I miss you ...
I miss you ..." This
short song ended with the sound of the wind blowing. Thin
Ice
After the snow covered the park conceptually by Yoko's
singing a snow song, another "winter song" started. Yes, it was "Walking
On Thin Ice". "Walking on thin ice
I'm
paying the price
for throwing the dice in the air" "Walking
On Thin Ice" was written when Yoko got inspired looking at Lake Michigan
in Chicago. The song finally came back to Chicago where it was born twenty some
years ago. In the middle of the song, Yoko started her regular
voice modulation, where you can hear the "ice, ice, ice, ice ..." riffs
on the record. Then, she clearly stated the "little story" about a girl: "'I
knew a girl
Who tried to walk across the lake
'Course it was winter and
all this was ice
That's hell of a thing to do, you know
They say this
lake is as big as the ocean
I wonder if she knew about it?'" After
Yoko finished singing "Thin Ice", she mentioned her hesitation to sing
this song on stage but this time around she decided to "do it". Mulberry
Before
Yoko started her next tune, she asked her band, "is this time for 'Mulberry'?
Great. Where is my partner?" Man, "Mulberry" was the last song
I expected to hear during this gig, so I was utterly overjoyed by her announcement. Then,
Yoko mentioned how the idea of this song was conceived: as a little girl in Japan
during World War II, when she had been evacuated to the countryside and food was
scarce, she found mulberries in a field. The scenery of the mulberry field was
so beautiful ("the field was spreading out, the sky was still blue, but the
sun was going down on the other side of the mountain") and it almost looked
like a "van Gogh painting". Yoko started picking up the mulberry fruits
for her younger brother and sister and took them home. "So
I did the 'Mulberry' song with John," Yoko said, "and then after that,
Sean did it. And then after that, Thurston did it." And now, she said she
would do it with Thurston Moore again. The mysterious special guest and Yoko's
partner she was referring to a minute ago turned out to be Thurston Moore. Yoko
said that the song "Mulberry" was so special after she performed with
John, Sean, and now again, Thurston, that she would "stop here" and
not perform the song with anyone any more. Thurston Moore
came along running to the stage as cool as a blast. He picked up the guitar and
started playing all these "noises," whereas Yoko kept saying "Mulberry,
Mulberry ..." in the beginning of the song, and then, as you already know,
she started uttering all these un-word "noises," with only Thurston's
guitar accompaniment. Thurston's helluva gut-wrenching guitar sound was a perfect
match made in heaven with Yoko's vocal, and it was like a duet. Thurston
bent over his body and knelt down while playing the guitar and reminded me of
Jimi Hendrix. The "noises" Yoko and Thurston made together echoed in
the dark park and it lasted approximately eight minutes. My
jaw dropped and I could not even say a word. Listening to "Mulberry",
my feeling of shock I had was the same when I heard "Cambridge 1969"
on "Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With The Lions" (1969) or "Don't
Worry, Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow)" and "John,
John (Let's Hope for Peace)" on "The Plastic Ono Band - Live Peace in
Toronto 1969" (1969) for the first time. It was as if I was witnessing a
history. Damn, I will never forget it. After Yoko and Thurston
finished playing, they hugged each other. Then, Yoko gave us the behind-the-scenes
story of how this song came about. Yoko said all these noises in the "Mulberry"
song are by-products of the noises Yoko heard as a girl when "they were bombing
in Hiroshima and Tokyo was burning." The audience applauded Yoko like crazy. Mind
Train
Thurston Moore stayed for the band to continue
playing with Yoko. Then, the band started the familiar sound riffs: it was one
of my favorite funky Yoko tunes, "Mind Train". "dub,
dub, dub, dub,
dub, dub, dub, dub,
dub, dub train passed through my mind" The
"dub, dub" lyric always makes me think that it is about the sounds of
a heartbeat. "33 windows shining
33 windows shining" When
Yoko finished singing, she mentioned that "'Mind Train' is something like
musicians love. John loved it. Sean called me and said, 'you better do 'Mind Train'',"
and that all she has to do was just keep saying, "dub, dub ..." while
the musicians played. We laughed. Yoko was quite funny. War
is over! If you want it
Then, Yoko said, "we're
gonna do something with you." Yoko started singing, "War is over! If
you want it," and asked us to repeat the words as the way she sang it. We
responded back to Yoko, "War is over! If you want it." This was like
a "call and response" type of music, a very catchy tune sounding like
a jingle. "War is over! If you want it
(War
is over! If you want it) War is over! If you want
it
(War is over! If you want it) War is over
now!
(War is over now!)" Yoko raised her arm
and waved it while we were singing together. When I looked around, the audience
imitated Yoko and raised their hands and kept singing. It was such a beautiful
sight. I hoped that all the wars on the globe would stop immediately with our
powerful singing. As soon as Yoko finished the song, she
shouted, "I love you!" The audience screamed back to her saying the
same thing, "I love you, too!" And then Yoko said,
"I'm sure we are going to survive," and left the stage with the band
members. Encore
After
Yoko left the stage, the audience kept roaring and started chanting her name in
chorus: "Yoko! Yoko! Yoko! ... " We definitely wanted more. Pretty soon,
Yoko came back to the stage. Then Yoko announced that she
was going to play "Don't Worry, Kyoko" again. In addition to her voice
modulation, Yoko kept saying "don't worry" over and over.
"Don't worry
Don't worry
Don't worry
Don't worry, Kyoko" Listening
to Yoko chanting, "don't worry," I could not help but think where does
such strength in Yoko come from? Yoko's life was not always glamorous, and she
had to go through all these ordeals you could not imagine - rejection, humiliation,
deportation, exploitation, you name it. Nevertheless, here is a woman who still
strongly says " don't worry " to us and "YES" to life, in
spite of it all. When the song ended, Yoko greeted the crowd
with a big smile and said, "don't worry," and then disappeared into
the darkness. Tapestry
Thinking
back about Yoko's gig, it was as if looking at a "life story" on a tapestry,
so to speak. My interpretation about this gig is that the story started with showing
savage elements of life that involve "death" ("Unknown titled song
- Silent Tears -", "I'm Dying", and "I Want You To Remember
Me"), then re-establishment of hope through desperation ("Don't Worry,
Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow)" and "Rising").
After that, "winter" came along symbolizing that nothing can be changed
("Snow Falls Silent" and "Walking On Thin Ice"), but no matter
how long "winter" seemed to be, "spring" - a change - would
come ("Mulberry"). Then, in order to break through the walls, like "spring"
comes after "winter" by all means, you simply have to move on by using
a vehicle called "mind" ("Mind Train") so that any darkness
will fade away ("War Is Over! If You Want It" and "Don't Worry,
Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow)"). I
have seen Yoko's live shows several times but the "Pitchfork" show was
definitely one of the best. Yoko's message through this show, I would say, was
simply, as she said over and over again during her performance, "don't worry,
we will survive together." All wars in history end.
So the next step we can do is to create the world in which there will be no more
war at all. Look, a world filled with only peace is coming, just around the corner! So,
like Yoko said, instead of "worrying" and spending time with negative
thoughts, let's IMAGINE PEACE.
Stephen
Trask (Keyboard, Music Director)
Pedro Yanowitz (Drums, Percussion)
Willie
Forreal (Guitar)
Ted Liscinski (Bass)
M.B. Gordy (Tabla)
Thurston Moore
(Guitar, special guest after "Mulberry")
1.
Unknown titled song - Silent Tears -
2. I'm Dying
3. I Want You To Remember
Me "A"
4. I Want You To Remember Me "B"
5. Don't Worry,
Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow)
6. Rising
7. Snow
Falls Silent
8. Walking On Thin Ice
9. Mulberry (with Special Guest, Thurston
Moore) (Thurston Moore joined the band hereafter)
10. Mind Train
11. "
War Is Over! If You Want It "
12. Don't Worry, Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking
For Her Hand In The Snow)
Encore
 Photos
of Yoko Ono at Pitchfork
Watch
Yoko Ono's ONOCHORD documentary
Review
by Concert Live Wire
Clips
from the gig at YouTube / 2
|
