Approximately Infinite Universe

Then suddenly we realized that this time

we were both drifting out in a cosmos

somewhere together, like God’s two little

dandruffs floating in the universe….

Astral identity! Wow! Something else, right?

— liner notes

It is indeed a shame that the vocals on this album have been allowed to dominate the music, for the boys from Elephant’s Memory have rarely sounded better. Yoko, however, in her role as lyricist, is, as they say, laughable. Her sense of poetics and metaphysics are not even up to your average garage-band standards. Jimi Hendrix himself, that prince of cornball pantology, would probably giggle in his box were he to hear the likes of:

I was looking for my head in the closet

I was sure it would be there

But to my surprise it wasn’t there

And I had to look all over the world.

Is that shit or is that shit? I mean, is there any need to dissect and discuss the faults of such schticks? The beatnik poets on Perry Mason used to write better stuff, for Chrissake. What is this search for meaning anyway? Didn’t that go out in ’68? Can stuff like “Leave your private institution/and get down to real communication/leave your scene of destruction/and join us in revolution” still be foisted off as lyrics?

And, if there is any other single attribute of Yoko’s that can even be compared to her lyrical idiocy, it is her total obnoxiousness. Can you image some little creep whining out commands to the world like: “Give up, cut out/Tune up and join us,” or,

People of America

When will we stop

It is now or never

There’s no time to waste.

There’s no time to waste.

Or the abject, self-indulgent silliness of:

Sisters, don’t blame my man too much

I know he’s doing his best

I know his fear and loneliness

He can do no more no less.

What does any of this have to do with the universe? Since when does the staggering, ever-expanding universe have anything to do with some rich kid sniveling about the turmoil within her run-of-the-mill soul or crooning philosophical and political party-line corn that went out of style with last season’s prime-time TV?

And it’s not just me. I know a guy who’s in the forefront of the avant-garde and he doesn’t like it either.