My Amazon Reviews: John Lennon and Yoko Ono "Milk and Honey"

The Milking of The Legend Begins Here
2 Out of 5 Stars

Three years after John Lennon was assassinated, the first of his posthumous albums appeared. "Milk and Honey" is a collection of songs that John and Yoko were working on at the time of "Double Fantasy," but were unfinished. So let's be frank about this; "Milk and Honey" is half a finished album composed primarily of John Lennon's incomplete demos and Yoko's finished works.

While in 1983, this might have been met with the still lingering pain of John's murder, 26 years later and newly remastered, this album comes up painfully short. It's interesting to hear Lennon's playfulness and the goofy ad-libs, but that is the kind of patter that would have been gone when the time for the master take was laid down. When I hear the la-la's and na-na's in "Borrowed Time," I get the feeling that Lennon was still treating the lyrics as a work in progress. Even the album's best known single, "Nobody Told Me," has such a jerky chorus vocal that I figured it to be an unfinished segment. (Even so, it's one of "Milk and Honey's" highlights.)

Only once does the roughness of the recordings transcend, and that is on Lennon's cassette demo of "Grow Old With Me." Lennon was aiming for the stars on this one, and there's a certain raw charisma that comes out of this very simple love song. There's a hint of an "Imagine" to come, had there only been the chance. Like what the surviving Beatles ultimately did with a similar cassette of "Real Love" years later, perhaps.

Yoko also gets one really great song, in the closing "You're The One," which she wrote after John's death. "In the world's eyes, we were Laurel and Hardy," she pines, only to follow that verse with "in our minds, we were Heathcliff and Cathy." It's one of the few times she's hit upon an amazing song, and it almost justifies the album's purchase. But ultimately, while not as gawd-awful as "Menlove Ave" (which not-so-mysteriously did not get in this 2010 remastering blitz), "Milk and Honey" is unfinished music, placed on the market to feed the morbidly curious. I re-bought it, yes, but now I remember why I sold it out of the collection decades ago.

Keeping America Stupid (and Unsafe): Political Terrorism Comes Home

Wow. "Second Amendment remedies." "Don't retreat, reload." "Texas Republican House candidate says violence, revolution, "on the table." Congratulations, Rethuglicans. Arizona heard you loud and clear today.

When did we become such an irresponsible pack of rabid lemmings? When did Arizona become the new haven for psychobiscuits (such as Gov Jan Brewer's death panels and those 'headless Mexicans')? How did we get to a point where a know-nothing idiot like Sarah Palin could become a leading force in government? When a moron like Christine O'Donnell garners 40% of the vote?

Arizona's tea party douchebag opponent to Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords campaign included the opportunity "Get on Target for Victory in November...Shoot a fully automatic M15 with Jesse Kelly" as a freaking fund raiser. Sarah the stupid Palin put 'crosshairs' on her website, and Giffords was one of them. And every jackwagon who flippantly repeated the "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots" over and over helped to bulldoze today's path to Tuscon. As did the fact that the guntards who think that every single unbalanced individual with a criminal record should be able to walk into a store and purchase a semi-automatic pistol; which Jared Loughner did this week (in a State where it's 100% legal to carry your firearm into a bar).

I'm going to steal a line from those tea-bagging morons. I want my country back. Back to when the worst thing a President could do was lie about adulterous sex. Back to when candidates seemed to be more interested in public service than sticking a power-vac into the corporate accounts of their lobbyists' vaults of dough. Back to being able to attend an event without fear of some "real American" waltzing into the food court and opening fire on "libruls."

Ultimately, and sadly, I am not shocked that today's shootings took place. I am actually more surprised that it took over two years since President Obama has been elected for an assassination to occur. Because these conservabots don't look at politicians as people. They see one sided arguments that must be targeted and removed. Not a wife and mother. Not a nine year old girl born on 9/11/2001. Not 17 other people that now have grief stricken families wondering how a day at the Safeway has irreversibly changed their lives. They, like assclowns John McCain, John Boehner, or Eric Cantor (who, in a very bitter irony, has called off his vote to repeal Health Care Reform in light of today's events), only see a win/loss column. Heaven help the individual that takes their "We’ll aim for these races and many others. This is just the first salvo in a fight" rhetoric to the gun closet for a Saturday on the town.