Some Time in New York City

Some Time in New York City是英国摇滚音乐家约翰列侬的第3张个人专辑，也是小野洋子第5张个人专辑。这张专辑是一张双专辑，第一张是新歌，第二张则是被命名为live jam（活在困境）的现场歌曲。 相比于前两张专辑plastic ono band和imagine，这张专辑在商业上表现极为不佳，发行的单曲也遭到了惨痛失败。 by Bruce Eder & William Ruhlmann The first album co-billed to John Lennon and Yoko Ono to actually contain recognizable pop music, Sometime in New York City found the Lennons in an explicitly political phase. This was understandable -- at the time, Lennon was neck-deep in his struggle to remain in the United States, a conflict rooted in his antiwar and antiestablishment politics and the enmity of the Nixon administration. At the same time, having written, recorded, and released the music on the Plastic Ono Band and Imagine albums -- and musically exorcising many of the emotional demons associated with aspects of his past, and working out a musical and publishing "divorce" from Paul McCartney -- he was now reveling in the freedom of being an ex-Beatle and exploring music and other subjects that he'd never felt fully free to delve into during the first decade of his career. This album was actually a long time in coming, as there had been hints of Lennon moving in this direction for years -- he'd long looked upon Bob Dylan with unabashed envy, emulating his sound at moments ("You've Got to Hide Your Love Away") and striving for some of the same mix of edginess and depth, once the group got beyond its original two-guitars-bass-drums and love songs sound; "Revolution" (and "Revolution No. 1") and the anthems "Give Peace a Chance" and "***** ** *** ******" saw him trying to embrace outside subjects in his work, and Sometime in New York carried his writing a step further in this direction, introducing John Lennon, protest singer -- true, he was ten years late, in terms of the musical genre (even Joan Baez and Judy Collins were doing pop-style records by then), but it was a logical development given the time in Lennon's life and the strife-filled era with which it coincided. Seeking his own voice in all of its permutations, and living amid the bracing pace of New York City (which made London, much less Liverpool, look like a cultural and political backwater), Lennon entered a phase similar to Dylan's 1963-1964 period, represented by songs such as "The Ballad of Hollis Brown," "The Death of Emmett Till," and "Talking John Birch Society Blues." Except that where Dylan had toned down that side of his work, never officially releasing his versions of two of those songs (the two most confrontational, in fact), Lennon didn't hold back, delivering his topical songs with both barrels smoking, expounding on such topical subjects as radical feminism, the Attica prison riot, the treatment of activists John Sinclair and Angela Davis, and the rising strife in Northern Ireland (which was on its way to becoming for the British the same kind of military and political quagmire that Vietnam was for America). Lennon had some advantages in getting heard, as an ex-Beatle, not an up-and-coming talent as Dylan... Read More...