No wave was an avant-garde music genre and visual art scene that emerged in the late 1970s in Downtown New York City. The term was a pun based on the rejection of commercial new wave music. Reacting against punk rock's recycling of rock and roll clichés, no wave musicians instead experimented with noise, dissonance, and atonality, as well as non-rock genres like free jazz, funk, and disco. The scene often reflected an abrasive, confrontational, and nihilistic world view.
Sonic Youth was an American rock band formed in New York City in 1981. Founding members Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo remained together for the entire history of the band, while Steve Shelley (drums) followed a series of short-term drummers in 1985, rounding out the core line-up. Jim O'Rourke was also a member of the band from 1999 to 2005, and Mark Ibold was a member from 2006 to 2011.
Yoko Ono is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
Thurston Joseph Moore is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter best known as a member of the rock band Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label. Moore was ranked 34th in Rolling Stone's 2004 edition of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
Kim Althea Gordon is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and rapper best known as the bassist, guitarist, and vocalist of alternative rock band Sonic Youth. Born in Rochester, New York, she was raised in Los Angeles, California, where her father was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. After graduating from Los Angeles's Otis College of Art and Design, she moved to New York City to begin an art career. There, she formed Sonic Youth with Thurston Moore in 1981. She and Moore married in 1984, and the band released a total of six albums on independent labels before the end of the 1980s. It then released nine studio albums on the label DGC Records, beginning with Goo in 1990. Gordon was also a founding member of the musical project Free Kitten, which she formed with Julia Cafritz in 1993.
Sean Taro Ono Lennon is a British-American musician, songwriter, and producer. He is the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and half-brother to Julian Lennon. Over the course of his career, he has been a member of the bands Cibo Matto, The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, The Claypool Lennon Delirium and his parents' group Plastic Ono Band. He has released two solo albums: Into the Sun (1998) and Friendly Fire (2006). He has produced numerous albums for various artists, including Black Lips and the Plastic Ono Band.
Imagine is the second solo studio album by English musician John Lennon, released on 9 September 1971 by Apple Records. Co-produced by Lennon, his wife Yoko Ono and Phil Spector, the album's elaborate sound contrasts the basic, small-group arrangements of his first album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970). The opening title track is widely considered to be his signature song.
Some Time in New York City is a collaborative part-studio, part-live double album by John Lennon and Yoko Ono as Plastic Ono Band that included backing by the American rock band Elephant's Memory. Released in June 1972 in the US and in September 1972 in the UK on Apple Records, it is Lennon's sixth album to be released under his own name, and his fourth collaboration with Ono. Like Lennon's previous solo albums, it was co-produced by Lennon, Ono and Phil Spector. The album's agitprop lyrics are politically charged compared to its predecessors, addressing political and social issues and topics such as sexism, incarceration, colonialism, and racism.
Double Fantasy is the fifth studio album by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and the final one before his death. Released in November 1980 on Geffen Records, the album marked Lennon's return to recording music full-time, following his five-year hiatus to raise his son Sean. Recording sessions took place at the Hit Factory in New York City between August and October 1980. The final album features songs from both Lennon and Ono, largely alternating between the two in its track listing. Other tracks recorded by Lennon from the sessions were compiled by Ono for release on Milk and Honey in 1984.
Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions is the second of three collaborative experimental albums of avant-garde music by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, released in May 1969 on Zapple, a sub label of Apple. It was a successor to 1968's highly controversial Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, and was followed by the Wedding Album. The album peaked in the United States at number 174, 50 places lower than the previous album. The album, whose title is a play on words of the BBC Radio show Life with The Lyons, was recorded at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London and live at Cambridge University, in November 1968 and March 1969, respectively. The Cambridge performance, to which Ono had been invited and to which she brought Lennon, was Lennon and Ono's second as a couple. A few of the album's tracks were previewed by the public, thanks to Aspen magazine. The album was remastered in 1997.
The Plastic Ono Band was a rock band and Fluxus-based artist collective formed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1968-9 for their collaborative musical and sound art projects, films, conceptual art projects and eventual solo LPs. The creation of The Plastic Ono Band, which began in 1967 with Ono's idea for an art exhibition in Berlin, allowed Lennon to separate his artistic output from that of The Beatles.
"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" is a Christmas song released in 1971 as a single by John & Yoko/The Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir. It was the seventh single released by John Lennon outside his work with the Beatles. The song reached number four in the UK, where its release was delayed until November 1972, and has occasionally re-emerged on the UK Singles Chart, most notably after Lennon's murder in December 1980, when it peaked at number two.
Sonic Youth is the debut EP by American rock band Sonic Youth. It was recorded between December 1981 and January 1982 and released in March 1982 by Glenn Branca's Neutral label. It is the only recording featuring the early Sonic Youth lineup with Richard Edson on drums. Sonic Youth differs stylistically from the band's later work in its greater incorporation of clean guitars, standard tuning, crisp production and a post-punk style.
SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century is an album by American alternative rock band Sonic Youth. It is a double album of versions of pieces by avant-garde composers, performed by Sonic Youth and collaborators.
Milk and Honey is the sixth and final collaborative album by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, released in January 1984, three years after Lennon’s murder. It is Lennon's eighth and final album, and the first posthumous release of new Lennon music, having been recorded in the last months of his life during and following the sessions for his 1980 album Double Fantasy. It was assembled by Yoko Ono in association with the Geffen label.
Season of Glass is the fifth studio album by Yoko Ono, her first solo recording after the murder of her husband John Lennon. Season of Glass, released in 1981, reached number 49 on the US Billboard 200 albums chart, making it Ono's highest-charting solo album to date.
Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band is the debut solo studio album by Japanese artist and musician Yoko Ono, released on Apple Records in December 1970 alongside her husband's album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. The album features Ono's vocal improvisations accompanied by the Plastic Ono Band, with the exception of "AOS", on which she is backed by the Ornette Coleman Quartet.
Rising is a 1995 album by avant-garde artist Yoko Ono. Released on 7 November by Capitol Records, it features the backing band IMA, which included Ono's son Sean Ono Lennon, Timo Ellis, and Sam Koppelman. It was her first album of new material since 1985's Starpeace. The album has sold 11,000 copies in the U.S. to date.
"Kool Thing" is a song by American rock band Sonic Youth, released in June 1990 in the United States and September 1990 in Europe, as the first single from their sixth studio album Goo. The song was inspired by an interview bassist/singer Kim Gordon conducted with LL Cool J for Spin. Although he is never mentioned by name, the song's lyrics contain several references to LL Cool J. Gordon's lyrics make reference to several of the rapper's works, including the single "I Can't Live Without My Radio" and the album Walking with a Panther. She also repeats the line "I don't think so", which appears in LL Cool J's "Going Back to Cali". Chuck D also contributed spoken vocals to the song.
