Courtney Love and Yoko Ono

over and over again! Yoko Ono is a far fucking superior musician to John Lennon. She is in no way connected to Courtney Love. She is as connected to Courtney Love as Dido is to Schoenberg.

yoko can sing.

So can courtney.

It's not individual women (however strong and clever) who destroy artists, it's LURVE that destroys artists. Once you start thinking about people besides yourself, you're fucked.

That is the nastiest and most cynical thing i have heard.
What about June and Johnny or Thurston and Kim

Thurston and Kim don't make 'art', they do 'experiments', which tend to be less successful than Ms Ono's

Uh, I like one or two Dido songs -- the two I saw on TV (my only exposure -- a new haircut for each video, is that her trick ?). I like Schoenburg a lot more (his tricks: rigging opus nos. to match years of the century, rigging serialist pieces to make them easier to listen to, etc..).

Just comparing Ono's output with Lennon's during their time together produces a quantitative result way in her favour. People forget she was using screaming a lot less by the mid '70s, and that she started out making albums with 'primal scream' m.o. Most of her singning albums endure where it seems that only Lennon's POB/scream album can be listened to more than once a year.

All her albums have been re-released, and that's two double albums and about four single albums from the '70s off top of my head. Once re-released they didn't sell and may have been dumped by record company in a cutout bin near you, making the complete collection available potentially v/cheaply.

All her singing albums have good words which are usually pleasantly arranged by session musos to create quite a number of good songs -- she is really a singer/songwriter during the '70s, and despite that categorisation, she's very good, unlike Lennon's '70s stuff -- the category he helped create.

But I can't compare her music to Love's. Ono did her own stuff and it worked -- it didn't/doesn't matter that the punters did not vote with their money and may have hated her for unrelated reasons. It's those non-music similarities that could be the only coincidence re: Love and Ono. I've tried to like (listen to) Love's music. Compared to Ono or not, home truths seem to be the last thing on her agenda.

What I was getting at was, Ono/Love terrible examples of the power of LURVE, if you look at the respective fates of recluse Lennon and suicidse Cobain. The women aren't at fault, it's the Rock Gods who reverted to an infantile state once they found their surrogate mommies.

That Ono box set (Onobox) is one of the most solidly great collections I've ever heard. I'm still sad that, while working at a record store, I had to pull it from the counter display because I was sick of people making fun of it.

Go Yoko!

I have so many of her albums (24 at last count) it was only yesterday I realised that I had another three dupes. There's no connection between Courtney and Yoko that I can see of, except perhaps the fact both had disproportionate influence on me. Except Yoko is easier to do bad (and funny) impersonations of...

Uh, no. Scratch that.

heroin did a pretty good job on both lennon and kurt

When Cobain was a teenager and got asked what he wanted to do in life he always said the same thing; he wanted to be a rock superstar and kill himself at 27 like Jimi Hendrix. He didn't knew Hendrix died accidently,still! It turns out he was a VERY focused fetischist. People close to him knew all along what was coming, it was predictable like a fetischist ritual. His wife had a payoff from this; she played along. Yes, Courtney is unfairly blamed for destroying Kurt, but only because the non-solipsist blamers don't use the appropriate arguments.

Courtney Love treats Grohl and Novoselic like Yoko treats Julian Lennon. It's disgusting. Both of these woman inherited a fortune from their dead husbands and they walk around as if they somehow deserve it. The arrogant manner in which they direct their ex- spouses estates is sickening.

Frankly unless she's locking him in a cupboard and feeding him only dried bread I can't imagine Yoko is treating Julian Lennon badly enough. "Too Late For Goodbyes" and "Saltwater" have more than forfeited any rights he may have had.

Dave Q's point on love - but is not unfulfilled love often the motor of an artist?

As well Courtney is trying to perserve a legacy while our friend Grohl is trying to whore as ebst he can. See box set.

Preserve a legacy my ass. She wants the money, same as Dave and Krist, and she wants it all for herself. They should just release the goddamn thing - music deserves to be heard, we can decide for ourselves where it fits in The Nirvana Canon.

How d'you "get the money" by NOT releasing records? It is a secret many of us would like in on...

Odds and Sods deminish an artists rep.

Odds and sods are always out there in bootleg form or tacked onto the b-sides of singles, and if you're interested in the minutiae of the creative process you will seek them out, or they will be foisted upon you eventually by record companies desperate for cash. It has little or no effect on the legacy of the band - has the Beatles Anthology series made them any less popular or diminished their perceived greatness?

I should step back a second and admit that I haven't followed the Courtney / Dave & Krist dispute too closely, but from what I heard it seemed likely that she's trying to prevent the release either so she can negotiate a better cut of the royalties with them, or so that she can somehow cut them out of the deal entirely.

Fair point Tom - but the emotion that drives all those yearning lyrics, is it really LOVE or is it some form of infantile desire?
Re Odds'n'Sods - good way to test an artist's rep - can it withstand the outtakes?

It is an act of extreme disrespect to an artists legacy to cobble together everything he or she did not want you to see. These were works in progress not necroporn for fanboys. Love realizes this , Yoko unfourtanlty does not.

I see that Suzy hasn't said this already, so I will:

The connection between both women is that both women got to FUCK the fanboy's idols, while the fanboys never did. It's all about the jealousy and the latent homoeroticism of the male fan experience.

Kate, Why cannot you get paid for this. You should be given lillies and 100 pound notes everytime you open you mouth.

That said i am not sure it is homoerotic, i think it is a FReudain thing, kill your heros and all that.

I think Kate's point is good as a point but deterministic as a rule. It is definitely an undercurrent which I'm seeing here a bit - giveaway terms are generally sexual, calling the woman a slut, whore etc.

Anyway, I don't like Kurt much, but up until her last catchy album I didn't like Courtney much either. So who did *I* want to fuck? (And does my preference for Yoko over John mean that I want to fuck YOKO? Or am I playing hard-to-get for John? Blimey it's complicated this sex stuff.)

Also th'other problem with Kate's idea is that it still puts the locus of meaning for both women on WHO THEY FUCK which strikes me as still a bit disrespectful even if it is making a good point.

Don't get feminazi on me, Tom, I've had a bit too much of that lately... ;-)

Yes, I am saying something very sexist and derrogatory towards both of their obviously huge talents. But in order to decry sexist attitudes, you really do have to get them out in the open first. I'm saying something that a lot of people are afraid to say, but you know, that's nothing new...

Damn! Van is at the Firkin on the corner, I can see it, gotta go.

Queer theory says WHO THEY FUCK is part of their art
Feminist theory says: hang on, what abt the life of the mind, gurlz have branes also y'know...
Anthony it is not Freudian but Nietzschean heh: not kill yr idols but triumph over them by total absorption.

Interesting that it is always THESE TWO, YO and CL, that stir up the rubbish (eg Gail Zappa is not under attack for HER oversight of the Barking Pumpkin back-cat)
(A Zappa fan [gazing at *that*, er, tash]: "Gail you are welcome to him, sex-wise. Now, to important things: when is YOU CAN'T DO THAT ON-STAGE Vol 100000000000000000000000000000000000: this time nothing but guitar solos due out? "

(Dave PTon Mwaah: sorry, above post = NOT aimed personally at you, despite appearances!!)

No it is Freudian because it deals with FUCKING YOUR IDOLS AND KILLING THEIR WIVES . Claaic Oedipus/Electra thing here .

I prefer the Narcissus complex. You know, where you look at yourself and hear beautiful music and think you're pretty damn great.

Did Yoko ever get Lennon to write her "work"? Then after Lennon died, did she go to Mick Jagger or David Bowie to write her followup albums? Did she ever chase Grace Slick down a street with a bat yelling "You killed John!"?

The images in my head, they please, they hurt.

revive

no.

yes

maybe

Anyone see the Time magazine piece a few weeks back about Yoko's unexpected "comeback" re: "Walking on Thin Ice"? I kept reading the article waiting for some mention of the Williamsburg scene, DFA, '80s retro, NYC artsy-danciness... but no, apparently it's just a lost gem that's finally been recognized independent of any scenes, revivals or lucky coincidences. Bravura reporting, Time!

If Grohl and Novoselic were in charge of the Nirvana trademark, something tells me they would treat it like the Doors. The gold standard here is the Rolling Stones, who can't stand the idea that they're not part of the immediate zeitgeist, so they've never dallied darkly in the rehearsal-tape graveyard of tombstone box sets.

Courtney is absolutely right to hang onto the grotty stuff as long as possible...look no further than this week's #1 record and DVD, Led Zeppelin. Absinthe makes the heart grow fondle. Now, compare that to the Who, who give such a microscopic shit about their twoo fans that they've re-released "Live at Leeds" three separate times, adding more tracks with every salvo. I'm not going to bother to count, but something tells me they have more "Greatest Hits" comps than they do official albums.

BTW, I think "Pretty on the Inside" absolutely smokes "Bleach" any ol' way ya choose it. And if "Live Through This" is really Kurt's record, then "In Utereo" is a Hole album with boy vocals. If they helped each other with songwriting, so fucking what? They. Were. Married. And if Courtney is brave enough to seek outside verse/chorus/verse assistance today, ditto. Christ, I wish the Stones would pull an Aerosmith, not to mention a billion other bands whose creative wells have gone dustbowl, but still insist on grinding out "original" material. How many songs did Elvis write again?

I don't think Courtney really relishes administering Kurt's estate for Frances the way Yoko simply adores being a de facto Beatle. After all, the asshole did off himself the day before her major-label debut hit the stores...hard to say "fuck you, bitch" more convincingly. Still, can you imagine the kind of money they get dangled from ad agencies? Could you resist that kind of temptation?

Wow.
Thats about 30 very good points. I have to go away and rethink my position on Courtney now.

(besides...unlike Yoko, Courtney's singing has actually *improved* sincer her debut.)